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omtimizing an Xserve RAID for uncompressed HD question
Hi all
wondering if I can dip into the fountain of knowledge on this one.
we’ve got a project currently being cut offlineRT that is going to need mastering to HD.
i’m leaning towards 8 bit Uncompressed 4:2:2 1080i60 for upres, but would like to hear some of your experiences and opinions on this.we’re going to be using an Xserve RAID at RAID 50 for storage … i understand we need to ensure we have 512 MB RAM cache per controller, and fully populate all 14 drive bays. are there any other things that should/could be done to optimise the Xraids for HD work? will an optimised Xraid (w/ 3.5TB) be sufficient for 10 bit Uncompressed 4:2:2 1080i60 ?
if necessary we could pool a couple of Xraids to pull up the bandwidth but this would mean temporarily downsizing one of our suites to a 500G G-RAID, which is something i’d prefer to avoid.
your time and comments are much appreciated (especially at $1500 per day … damn! I should move to the US
) thanks in advance
Andy -
2 Replies
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The main thing is wiring. Go FC from the dual port card to the xraid with two individual cables. Avoid FC patch and hubs. Also a fresh format and new soft raid is a good idea to avoid fragmentation. Each bank of 7 drives should be in a raid 5 and then stripe them. also make sure that your FC card is in the pci-x slot or 133mhz slot. The 133 slot will give you about 250MB/s so don’t go over that. No dual steams now. If your going to need to run faster than that, you’ll need another xraid, and FC dual card, and use the two 100Mhz slots. That’ll get you up to about 400MB/s. What HD card are you running? I have a kona 2, and do onlines all day long. Also 4GB of ram is about as little as you can get away with, as the system will need about 2GB, and FCP will take 2GB too.
Vm
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thanks for that, Vm.
As it stands we’ve got 4 x 250GB in each bank, RAID 50, and do already go direct dual port FC to XRaid on separate cables.I ran Blackmagic Speed Disk on it yesterday and got a shockingly crap 50MB/s read and write.
Obviously we won’t be trying any HD until we fill her up, but nonetheless I’d have hoped for better results.I dare say my expectations we too high, but we live and learn.
I’ll take a look and make sure the FC card is in the right slot.
Cheers
Andy
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