RAID HBA options

[Bob Zelin]

Jim writes –
Uh-oh. At the time, the Barracudas were being touted here and there as one of the best around. I happen to have bought 8 of the “fiascoed” model of Seagate Barracudas, although my serials are outside of the range of serials published by Seagate as the problem drives. One has failed, and I got a free replacement. And it was swell how the HBA secured my data and started rebuilding the RAID the instant I installed the fresh drive.

REPLY –
I used nothing but Seagate drives since day 1 at AVID. And then something happened. Today, Seagate drives suck. Do I use them still – sure I do. I can’t get Seagate to take back years of drives, and give me replacement Hitachi drives. The “fiasco” started with SN05 firmware, which has now been “resolved” with SN06. I didnt’ believe it at the beginning either (after 20+ years of Seagate), but they ALL failed, and all the “refurb” free replacements are dying at my clients as well. So I am going to hold off for a year, before I consider them again. When a drive fails, I get yelled at (what kind of crap did you tell us to buy ?) – so I can no longer risk it. But do I have tons of clients that still have Seagate drives – you bet I do.

Is there a way of determining if I’m having an issue with latency?
REPLY – if your drive array tests fast (AJA System Test, Blackmagic Speed Test) but mysteriously stops after playing out a 60 minute show, you have latency issues.

I looked at the ATTO R380 on their site, and they do indeed say they offer a “User friendly GUI-based configuration utility,” which I’d much prefer over an EFI-boot scheme. Areca has a Web browser RAID manager as well. This is all very encouraging.

REPLY – none of it is friendly. The manuals suck for ATTO and Areca. You need to reply on TECH SUPPORT. Tech support for EVERYTHING is critical. This is why I love AJA and Small Tree so much – they have GREAT tech support. Once someone shows you the ATTO or Areca interface, it’s not hard, but you won’t figure it out by yourself.

Bob, no offense, but your tone reminds me of some of the nuns who terrorized me into excellence as a youngster. It’s something I didn’t appreciate at the time, but came to many years hence.

REPLY –
My real name is not Bob Zelin – it’s Sister Mary Iwillkickyourassuntilitturnsblue. And don’t forget it! I apologize for my tone, but I can’t take my frustrations out on my clients, so I take it out on you. Sorry ! Without great support from a company, you will continued to be frustrated. Raid arrays, and shared storage solutions are not like plugging in a TV you buy at Wal Mart (and neither are professional broadcast monitors !).

Bob Zelin

[Jim Curtis]

Sister Mary, I think I was in one of your Catechism classes. I still have sore spots on my head from your knuckles.

I do have a 58 minute Avid HDV doc on my RAID right now. That’s just a couple of minutes shy of your 60 minute test.

I just ran the sequence again last night, for the first time since I installed the new HPT HBA. It played the whole show without stopping. I don’t know if you’re implying that 60 is a magic number or not. I could add another ten or sixty minutes of out-takes to my sequence, and run it again. I think I will. I’d welcome a Sister Mary Bloodletting class Stress Test before I start another big job.

Whatever you do, Bob, don’t change. I’ve read quite a few of your posts now on the Cow, and I’m very entertained, as well as informed.

I’m an Avid Expat also. I co-opened a sales office in Dallas in ’91, and after a year, I had to get out of doing demos and get back into editing. All the MCs we sold had ATTO cards and I don’t recall any problems with them outside of SCSI termination and cabling mostly. But they weren’t even RAIDs at that point, just Ultra or Fast & Wide to support AVR27. By the time 1:1 and RAIDs became standard, I was working for places that had other people maintain them.

I’m a relatively recent convert to FCP, and built my own system after hoping beyond hope that the latest Avid DNx line would be reasonably priced viz the competition from AJA, etc. Now that I’ve been cutting mostly on FCP for about a year, I’m thrilled with it, and find that FCP trounces MC on many features.

You’re right about another thing: I’m cheap. But only in the sense that I would rather buy quality stuff, like my Lexus, because it generally works out to be the cheapest in the long run. And that factors in my time, which I do value. And I’ve lost a lot of it due to this HPT Waterloo, and learned a valuable lesson.

I’ve read here on the CC that AJA will cross ship their PCI cards in case of a defect. Does anybody know if any of your preferred HBA vendors will?

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro (Harpertown-Early 2008) 2×4 3GHz; 32G RAM all the same brand; 10.5.8; QT 7.6.4; FCS3; Kona LHi in PCI slot 3; Primary display: 30″ ACD; Secondary: HP LP2480zx DreamColor via HDMI to LHi and DVI to MacPro.

[Bob Zelin]

AJA is a very unusual company. They cross ship – most people will not do this. However, VALUE ADDED RESELLERS (like Maxx Digital) will cross ship – so if you buy an ATTO R380 from them, or an Areca 1680x, they will cross ship – however, ATTO and Areca directly will not do this.

There is no one like AJA.

I am cheap too (hey, I use Behringer mixers all the time, because they are so cheap), but once you get burned, and your clients say “we are NEVER going to hire you ever again” for recommending a bad product, you change your mind about being cheap very quickly.
I laugh when I see people swear to Lacie drives, after all the nightmares I have gone thru. And unfortunately recently with Seagate as well. AVID used Seagate exclusively thru the “glory days”, and now, Seagate is a mere shadow of what they were. Perhaps they will wake up, and become a good company again.

Bob Zelin

[Matt Geier]

Jim,

Your test —
I do have a 58 minute Avid HDV doc on my RAID right now. That’s just a couple of minutes shy of your 60 minute test.

What Bob speaks of is true. It will however, also depend on what video formats you use specifically. It has to be understood that EACH of the video formats from Final Cut Pro, have each of their own requirements when it comes to what the latency should be to pass an I/O before the next I/O needs to occur of that chosen format. (If you do not pass 1 I/O before the next is completed, you’ll likely drop a frame due to disk latency)

Although you can use a tool like AJA’s test to measure what you’re raid will read/write – I do know that it pop’s out what is usually a full bandwidth number of the raid, not a latency number of the disks. However, with that said, there’s a lot of way’s to test latency on the disks, and yes, running a video stream can certainly test it.

It would be too general to say that if you have a raid and you try to edit video on the raid and you drop a frame that your raid is truly the problem….
With that said, assuming the RAID is in fact fast enough, and you still have latency issues (completely possible). Well, then that’s when you start forking out monies and putting the combination of hardware together to give you what you are looking for in the overall profile to meet the performance (disks, raid controllers, back-planes, motherboards, network ports…etc etc..) (be prepared to go through many configurations before finding one that works for your “preferred latency” performance number) —

It should also be noted that vendors do a fair amount of “testing” prior to you purchasing their solution. This is “simulated” testing. (It’s simulating a controlled environment, not your actual “working” environment) — In simulation applications, ‘latency’ refers to the time delay, normally measured in milliseconds (1/1,000 sec), between initial input and an output clearly discernible to the simulator trainee or simulator subject.

Believe it or not — the I/O requirements vary between video formats …. So it would be a valid comment to say you could likely put 10 x DV25 Streams on a RAID, that will only support 2-3 Streams of Pro Res… I’m trying to make the point that if one RAID is able to to XYZ, the same RAID under another condition may only do X, or Y, or Z, not all three together.

I hope this helps make sense..

[Simon Blackledge]

Matts right.

All these raids that are super duper fast.

Grab the AJA test and run it on 1080 RGB at say a 4gig file. Wonderful.

change it to 720P 60.

run it again and check the spike on the graph. Ouch!

s