Pegasus3 R8 RAID for 4k Video Editing and Storage

[Rainer Wirth]

Hi Curt,

the basic idea is okay,
what puzzels me is the idea of 4 HDs and 4 SSDs ?
The raid gets its performance out of 8 working HDs or SSDs together.
Either you built up a 8 bay raid minimum Raid5 level of SSDs or HDs.
I would prefer HDs, because of costs. You won’t get that much more performance with SSD’s.
I would built one Raid level 6, using enterprise class HD’s 10TB each.
cheers

Rainer

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

[Curt Goodwin]

HI Rainer,

Thanks for the feedback.

We don’t have the budget for a 60TB RAID.

To be more clear, I was thinking of creating a RAID 5 out of just the 4HDD’s, and use the other 4 SSD’s as like a scratch disks for video editors – 1 TB for each editor.

If I just did a RAID 5 with 8 disks, 4 TB each, is that alone faster then a RAID 5 with 4 or 6 disks + a separate volume of disks (SSDs) for cached files and proxies, etc. from Premier?

I don’t any experience with a RAID 6, what is that and is that the most ideal?

Thanks.

[Bob Zelin]

boy oh boy, this is a confusing post – both this one, and your second post.

1) Promise does not sell empty RAID arrays. They come populated, and are pre raided for your use.

2) you expect to have shared storage for 6 people ? Well unfortunately, if you are going to stick the Pegasus on a thunderbolt 3 Mac running High Sierra Server, macOS 10.13 Server no longer works properly, and you will be unsuccessful with simple file sharing with a configuration like this. I know – I used to build Mac based server systems from 2008 until December 2017, when they released High Sierra. Then everything stopped working. You certainly could keep an older OS like Sierra 10.12.6 on your Mac server.

3) you need a minimum of 8 SATA drives running to achieve the speeds that you want. 4 drives are not fast enough to serve 6 simultaneous editors.

4) your SSD Media Cache (if you are using Premiere) CANNOT be on the shared volume. Your SSD Media Cache should be kept local to the computer. Your video media, and project files can be kept on the shared storage.

5) all of this can easily be done by an 8 bay Network Attached storage system from a company like QNAP, Synology or Netgear for very little money, compared to a Promise Pegasus R8 and a dedicated Mac Pro or iMac combo. And the Mac mini (which is Thunderbolt 2) is too slow for this application for 6 editors.

6) for backup, you can purchase a second network attached storage system, and backup to this second system that you keep at your home.

No matter what you do, you need a 10G port in your server, and a 10G switch. You can get a QNAP QSW-1208-8C 8 port 10G switch for $589. WiFi is not fast enough to edit over, and you won’t be doing 4K editing over a 1G Ethernet connection.

Bob Zelin

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

[Curt Goodwin]

Sorry took so long to reply. but here is what I am thinking of going with:

Option 1: Server RAID 6 @ 10Gb/s Ethernet Connection

NAS/Server: Synology DS1817
Storage: (6) 6 TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro Hard Drives (will upgrade to 8 eventually)
Switch: QNAP QSW-1208-8C 12-Port 10GbE Switch
Cables: (1) Cat 7 Ethernet Cable
10 Gb/s Ethernet Adapter: (1) Intel X540T1

Any thoughts on this set up would be great. Also, has anyone ever used the QNAP switch and Intel adapter with a Synology RAID? Thanks.

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
the DS1817 is an older unit that is now obsolete. The DS1817 uses the horrible Annapurna Amazon CPU (QNAP uses this in the horrible TS-831x as well). The DS1817 comes for free with a dual port 10G card. Either way, this is not the unit you want. You want the DS1817+, and then you get the Intel X550-T1 or X550-T2 (the T1 is fine if you are getting the switch). You should also look at the QNAP TVS-873e with the QXG-10G1T 10G card. The DS1817+ uses the Intel processor, not the Annapurna.

you should ABSOLUTELY get all 8 drives. If you don’t have the budget, then get smaller drives, but get all 8 drives. Your overall bandwidth will depend on this.

This will work fine. Of course, if you don’t set this up correctly, nothing will work. This is not a plug and play Promise Pegasus.

Bob Zelin

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

[Curt Goodwin]

Thanks Bob,

I will insist on getting 8 Drives. What RAID do you suggest? I terms of bare metal back up, I was thinking of just backing up the entire NAS to Backblaze (which runs constantly in the background) in order to create increased disk fault tolerance and increased striping, not having to have part of the drive space for back up. Your thoughts?

With the DS1817+ how many machines can we connect to via the 10gb connection? If we don’t get the switch (in order to save money) what 10gb card would you recommend of the ones you’ve mentioned. I’ve read the 550-T2 is pretty good.

Lastly, we have an all Mac working environment, but we use iMacs and MacBook Pros so we can not get into any of the machines in order to install a 10gb adapter. Within this ecosystem will we be able to achieve 10g speeds (or near 10gb speeds)?

Thanks man!

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Curt –
you can do RAID 5 for the ability for 1 drive to fail without losing your data, and RAID 6 for the ability to allow for 2 drives to fail before losing all your data. For large data backups, Backblaze B2 will simply send you a Synology, tell you to back it up and ship it to them. You can just buy a second unit and do this yourself.

If you have more than 2 client computers, you must get a switch. If you don’t have $589 for an 8 port QNAP 10G switch, then you should not even be doing this project.
With a 1G connection, you get 100 MB/sec. With a 10G connection, you get dramatically faster than this, but your client computers must have thunderbolt to 10G adaptors, and yes, that costs money. A Thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptor from Sonnet is under $200 and a thunderbolt 2 to 10G adaptor is under $500. If you say “we can’t afford this” – then you get 100 MB/sec over a 1G connection.

If you have backup running 24 hours a day, you will lose performance in any NAS system. You schedule your backup so you are not backing up while people are editing.

Bob Zelin

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

[Curt Goodwin]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the info and help!!

How does this sound so far:

Synology DS1817+
X550-T1 or X550-T2
QNAP 8 port Switch (optional)
2 Thunderbolt 2 10gb adapters (or do you suggest the Thunderbolt 3 adapter?)
Cat 6 or Cat7 cables, copper or fibre??

We only have 2 video editing bays that need 10gb/s connection. They are late 2015 iMacs.

Your thoughts

[Bob Zelin]

your thunderbolt 2 to 10G adaptors should be Sonnet Twin 10G. You have 2015 iMac’s – you cannot use a Sonnet Solo 10G

Bob Zelin

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

[Curt Goodwin]

Thanks Bob!

Lastly, in this set up, do you recommend the Intel X550-T1 or X550-T2, assuming we don’t get the switch (as mentioned, we only need 2 10gb/s connections at the moment)? Or the QNAP?

Thanks!