RAID Recommendations for DaVinci Resolve

[Margus Voll]

Have you measured speed and compared it with san ?

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Margus

https://iconstudios.eu
https://vimeo.com/iconstudioseu/videos

DaVinci 9, OSX 10.7.4
MacPro 5.1 2×2,93 24GB
GTX 470 / Quadro 4000
Multibridge 2 Pro

[Tomas Bocking]

Is not giving a simple play of 1080 dpx, there is something seriously wrong with the setup, but I cant figure it out what it is.

I’m about to try software raid next, since the have to do some work and then ocntinue testing, but it driving me nuts!

Thanks for the help,

Thomas Bocking

[Joakim Ziegler]

Linux software RAID is definitely going to be slower than the Areca card, unless something’s very strange. Can you run a Bonnie++ test with a test size of 3-4 times your physical memory size, and disabling cache, to see what kind of speeds you’re getting? It should take maybe 15-20 minutes to run at the most.

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Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Tomas Bocking]

I will do that, I know it should be better with the hardware raid, but Im running out of ideas and there is little left to try.

Look what areco support sent me:

“and it is normal that software raid is much faster than hardware raid. because software raid use system resource and system have much faster processor and more memory space.”

I don’t know if it is funny or sad. A dedicated dual-core raid card with 4gb of ram being slower than a software raid seemed wrong hehehe.

[Joakim Ziegler]

For what it’s worth, they’re wrong. Hardware RAID on these kinds of cards is far faster than software RAID.

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Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Tomas Bocking]

Here is the bonnie result

Nas@davincinas bonnie++-1.97.1]$ ./bonnie++ -d /media/237c8e42-381d-48ac-bde7-49991a35bfd6/ -c 8 -r 16000 -n 100
Writing a byte at a time…done
Writing intelligently…done
Rewriting…done
Reading a byte at a time…done
Reading intelligently…done
start ’em…done…done…done…done…done…
Create files in sequential order…done.
Stat files in sequential order…done.
Delete files in sequential order…done.
Create files in random order…done.
Stat files in random order…done.
Delete files in random order…done.
Version 1.97 ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
Concurrency 8 -Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
davincinas 32000M 374 98 42914 7 18793 6 3428 91 271023 36 564.8 42
Latency 22219us 3126ms 694ms 36794us 68341us 91289us
Version 1.97 ——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
davincinas -Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
100 13149 72 +++++ +++ 2827 3 11350 59 +++++ +++ 1968 2
Latency 422ms 766us 2925ms 656ms 19us 3881ms
1.97,1.97,davincinas,8,1376513702,32000M,,374,98,42914,7,18793,6,3428,91,271023,36,564.8,42,100,,,,,13149,72,+++++,+++,2827,3,11350,59,+++++,+++,1968,2,22219us,3126ms,694ms,36794us,68341us,91289us,422ms,766us,2925ms,656ms,19us,3881ms

[Joakim Ziegler]

There’s definitely something wrong there. It’s giving you 42 MB/sec writes and 271 MB/sec reads. First of all, those numbers should be more similar, and secondly, they should be far higher.

What does the Areca admin console say? Is the array finished initializing? Is it in a normal state? If it’s not finished initializing, what’s the priority of the background task?

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Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor

[Tomas Bocking]

Finished, operational, everything done.

I leaning either a bad ram stick on the card or a faulty card altogether.

It sucks really bad, because I bought this in the States but Im now in argentina. So I need to take it to the importer to send it back, so it might take some time, but is so frustrating.

Thanks for all your help I greatly appreciated.

Thomas

[Joakim Ziegler]

Yeah, that sucks. One bad thing about Areca also is that their warranty replacement service is very slow. We’re in Mexico and our supplier got ours from the US, but it had to be sent to Taiwan for replacement, it took a very long time, and we ended up just buying another identical card in the meantime.

I hope you get your problems resolved, best of luck.

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Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor