SAN advice

[Eric Jurgenson]

https://www.enhance-tech.com/solution/nas-storage/high-performanceNAS.html
These models have a built-in NAS server, but there are other models that don’t:
https://www.enhance-tech.com/products/ultrastor/ultrastor-rs-series.html

[Caspian Brand]

I would be cautious about using different drives in the same RAID set, especially different drives of different sizes. Just because an array can accommodate some of these features, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for all cases. Mixing different drives in the same RAID set can lead to poor performance of that set when trying to edit media. Not all “off the shelf” drives are equal. The reason drive manufacturers make Enterprise and RAID edition versions isn’t just to charge more money. There are firmware considerations, and additional vibrational issues that can impact drives when put in larger arrays with other disks. For example a desktop drive purchased from Fry’s is designed to handle it’s own error reporting and correction, but an Enterprise drive from the same manufacturer purchased from New Egg, may need to relinquish that responsibility to the RAID controller. This is where you then have to be thorough about controller compatibility with the drives and so on, which takes a lot of time and resources to determine, increasing the cost of these models.

Adding drives at any time and expanding the existing array isn’t something that can just magically happen in an instant. Many devices require recalculating parity in this situation, which is just like rebuilding the array after losing a drive, so this can take time and impact performance during the process, vs. bringing a separate logical disk on-line independently and adding it as another volume to the SAN. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

-Caspian Brand
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12

[Bob Zelin]

Equal Logic ? Where do you guys find brands like these ? Aren’t you in the professional video business ? Where does this crap come from ?

You want iSCSI, this means that you want STUDIO NETWORK SOLUTIONS. There are LOTS of great brands of shared storage, that use Fibre, Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gig ethernet, but you said you want iSCSI – only one answer – Studio Network Solutions.

And what kind of comment is –
“accepts drives of all different sizes
– allows you to add drives to the array any time you like (ie I can expand an already built array)”

The only thing that exists that allows you to do this is the Drobo, and it is a PIECE OF CRAP, and it is slow. Even people who love the Drobo say it’s slow. If you want shared storage, you need a RAID array that had xxx number of drives that are RAided togther – you can’t randomly pull out drives from a RAID array and pop in assorted sizes of drives – where do you get nonsense like this from ? (Oh, the Drobo ad !!!!). Any PROFESSIONAL RAID array uses identical drives that are created in a RAID Group (RAID 5, RAID 6, etc.) that protect you from failures – who makes these ? Maxx Digital, Cal Digit, Sonnet, G-Tech, Dulce System, SNS, EVEN LACIE – but that Drobo piece of crap that you can yank drives out of (hot swap) is NOT FOR SHARED STORAGE – get it ??????

All advertisers on Creative Cow make wonderful RAID arrays. Costing an “arm and a leg” is a subjective statement – some people feel that $15,000 is a fair price, others $5000 a fair price. What do you consider a good price ?

Again, if your only requirement is iSCSI, you have only one choice- Studio Network Solutions.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I looked up Equal Logic, and once again, ask the question – how does a VIDEO PROFESSIONAL wind up with a DELL SAN solution –

these are the manufacturers of professional Video SAN systems – choose from this list, and if you stray from this list, you are an idiot. And NEVER listen to your IT guy –

AVID Unity
Apple XSAN
Facilis Terrablock
Apace Systems
Maxx Digital Final Share
Studio Network Solutions
Cal Digit Super Share
Small Tree Granite Stor
EditShare
GVS
SanSystems
JMR
Sonnet Technology
ATTO Faststream
Rorke Data
Accusys
Grass Valley K2

many of these systems are based on SAN software created by
Command Soft Fibre Jet, or Tiger Technology MetaSAN.

DELL DOES NOT MAKE A VIDEO SAN
CISCO DOES NOT MAKE A VIDEO SAN
HP DOES NOT MAKE A VIDEO SAN.

Tell your IT person at your company to learn how to use google (or Creative Cow) and start every search with the word VIDEO. If the word VIDEO is not included in the search, the search is worthless. We are in the VIDEO BUSINESS – this is not an office shared storage enviornment.

Bob Zelin

[Eric Hansen]

hey rob

i saw your post yesterday, but thought i would wait a day until Bob weighed in.

you didn’t mention in your original post what you want to use your SAN for. both Bob and Caspian made the point that if you’re building a SAN for video editing, you’re not going to get everything on your wish list in one package. a Drobo fulfills most of your requirements, as long as speed is not one of them. the DroboElite can be configured with iSCSI and has 2 Gigabit ports, but i wouldn’t do much more with it than use it as an NAS for documents and other small files, and maybe an iTunes library. i’ve heard it works well for backup and use with Time Machine. but anything else will overwhelm it. it’s amazing what a Drobo can do (the first time i read about it i was blown away because it broke so many “rules” of RAID management). but that management comes at a price of complex software and speed. their marketing has made people think that they can have it all. they can’t.

so please, post back with more details on what you’re trying to do with your SAN (not what features you want) and we’ll try to point you in the right direction.

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Jake Taylor]

You forgot Active Storage.

Jake Taylor
Consultant / Systems Engineer/Apple Technician – Video, Final Cut Pro
Apple Consultants Network – Storage Area Networks

SANtech.TV
17518 Von Karman Ave.
Irvine, CA. 92614

Office: 714-639-3767
Fax: 714-783-7820

jaketaylor@santech.tv
https://www.SANtech.tv

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Jake –
with Shane at ProMax and Jerry at Apple, I did not think anyone
worked for SANtech anymore – are you the only one left ?

Bob Zelin

[Steve Modica]

Equallogic is actually high end (recently bought by DELL). They make a good box and I assume they have a good raid controller in there. Considering that they only have to handle 1Gb iSCSI, how bad can it be? 🙂
Our first iSCSI targets were equallogic and I have one in the office now we’re tweaking for our iSCSI initiator.
SNS probably has a better audio product. Protools wants really tiny IOs and I imagine equallogic may have problems with that (as will most targets). Protools *very* sensitive to this. I can tweak the driver IO size and break it. In fact, we made it tunable for this reason. (It does not help that protools prevents tracing on the app. I’d love to see how it does its IO but we haven’t bothered to hack the bits to disable that yet. It’s on the list)

Anyhow, some advice:
Do not mix drive sizes or speeds. Try not to mix firmware either.
Do not use desktop drives
You’d better have flow control on your switches and cards for iSCSI or it will be unhappy.
You’d better have a newer kernel on your linux target box.
Apple does not support MPIO via iSCSI (we can do it but we have to lie and say we’re fibrechannel which breaks the disk utility). So you can only use 1 port. So think jumbo frames or 10Gb to get better numbers

Our Mobile box does all this and supports iSCSI. Most protools guys I’ve talked to are not looking to spend SNS or Mobile dollars tho. They go off and buy direct attached stuff.

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications