LSI 9341-8i or SAS 9361-16I

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Margus,

Question 1: Your max. performance is 12mb/s, bandwidth 8x PCIX. You’ll get around real 600-800 Megabytes/s.
The difference between i8 and i16:
The i8 has 8 external mini SAS ports and supports just Raid level 5
The i16 has 16 external mini SAS ports and supports Rais level 5 and 6.
5 and 6 are the Raid levels, you are looking for.
To me the i16 is the better raid card.
But another question puzzels me: Do you want to connect 8 or 16 drives direct to the card, or do you have a cooled external box, where the raid drives do their job?
The SAS connection in the card is for data only and provides no power supply for your drives.
SAS or Sata is non-relevant for your data speed.
Look for support of your comuter system in the technical specs of the card you are going for.
Generally speaking: I would go for an external housed raid system, based on Fibre channel or thunderbolt instead of a software-based raid system, like the LSI.

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Margus Voll]

Thanks.

Ok i have read now and yes it seems now that i8 is soft raid in a way.

As i do not have any ideas or comparison of other manufactures or models this is why i came up with these models.
Any better ideas i would appreciate.

I plan to build my own system from ground up in very large box so no external connection mandatory for now.

https://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-d8000/

This is the one i’m thinking of.

As i have pretty much one or two man band we do not need many big separate arrays.
My initial plan is to “see” mac pro 5.1 and win10 machine which i’m building over dual 10 gig network but if that will work is another subject on another thread.

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu

Resolve 11
BMC 2,5k

[Bob Zelin]

and why don’t you just buy a premade Chinese NAS that does exactly what you want without any aggravation ?

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Margus Voll]

Because i’m not familiar any of those.

Educate me please.

Also lan part is secondary concern and working locally on one machine is primary.

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu

Resolve 11
BMC 2,5k

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Margus,

let’s begin from scratch. What is the main job your new raid array should do for you?
Second: What platform (Mac or Windows) do you want to play?
Third: How much storage do you need for your projects now and in the near future?
Do you work mainly in HD or 4K?
How do you want to do your monitoring? (picture, sound, colour)
You have to define and set up your workflow!

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Margus Voll]

Hi.

Sorry not describing my actual needs:

>let’s begin from scratch. What is the main job your new raid array should do for you?

4k EXR for Resolve and Fusion as starting point

>Second: What platform (Mac or Windows) do you want to play?

Win10 as i build new machine now on i7

>Third: How much storage do you need for your projects now and in the near future?

Lets say i start with 40 TB. I have chosen big case so i can reconfigure my array how my need changes

>Do you work mainly in HD or 4K?

Now HD and 2k but i have strong pressure for 4k

>How do you want to do your monitoring? (picture, sound, colour)

DeckLink 4K Extreme to my monitor so that is covered.

>You have to define and set up your workflow!

I have similar workflow now on mac pro 5.1 but it is already 6 year old and loosing some of it’s edge as i can not do 4k
if needed and this is a bit limiting now.
It seems now reasonable to go over i7 for now and in couple of years if the need comes to jump over xeon.

Does it describe my workflow a bit in more detail?

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu

Resolve 11
BMC 2,5k

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Margus,

excellent, from here we can start to work.
For a proper 4k workflow you need roundabout 800 MB/s raid speed.
If you want to go for a SAS connection you are on the edge, but it is possible with Raid5.
The connection card I recommend is an ATTO ExpressSAS® H1248.
This provides you with 4 external miniSAS links and enough speed, plus software and support through Atto.
My recommendation would be a FC connection Atto Celerity FC-162E.
With a FC solution you can work on Raid level 6 for more redundancy.
The enclosure for your raid:
A SAS enclosure with 4 mini SAS external connections.
Or a FC Raid enclosure with 2 external FC ports (16gb each).
You should use just enterprise HD’s 8-16 bay raid enclosures. Power supply and cooling over the external enclosure.
All HD’s must meet the tech specs of Atto and the enclosure manufacturer. The HD’s must be of the same kind (firmware number) and size.
There are numerous raid enclosures on the market, they must meet your specs and connect with the computer card.
I hope this helps,

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Rainer Wirth]

a very good enclosure is Promise J5000,

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Alex Gardiner]

So what you’re really describing is a shared storage server, not direct attached storage…

Unless you’ve done this before you’re unlikely to get the kind of performance you need over the network.

To actually answer the question, the LSI 9361 is an excellent card, I work with them all the time. They perform very well, but MegaRAID Storage Manager is atrocious – hate it with a passion. Areca have better management software in my book, but the performance isn’t really all that different between products at that level.

NB: As above, the 9341 is probably not for you.

Storage Engineer
alex@indiestor.com

[Rainer Wirth]

The problem is, that Margus want to built a SAS data connection.
SAS is much cheaper than FC or Thunderbolt.
With FC or thunderbolt you’ll get faster performance, but you need a bigger budget,

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems