SAN Storage Solution for Volumes larger than 8 TB

[Chad Gilmour]

If it helps at all… we just implemented a Facillis Terrablock and have run into the same issue with volumes being limited to 8TB. My understanding is that it’s a Windows limitation on the server end. Despite being told Windows 64bit can handle any size (maybe I was lied to), it seems like the server thinks it’s 64bit but behaves volume size-wise like it’s 32bit. An inconvenience for sure, but I feel like half of our job is just figuring out workarounds anyways, this was easy compared to most.

Also, I’ve been told by the installation guy that works closely with the guys up at Facillis that they are working on a Linux based version which should hopefully be rid of all these issues.

The size limit is a pain, but I do love the system regardless. It’s very fast, very easy to operate, easy to upgrade, and basically maintenance free. And their customer support is top notch.

[David Norden]

Hi Elan. This is our setup on one of our three servers:

One Supermicro 45-bay SAS 2 (6GB) chassi, with 16 Hitachi 2TB SAS drives in a RAID6 on an ATTO R680 card, in a Mac Pro. In that Mac Pro we also have a Small Tree 6-port ethernet card, link aggregated (or bonded) to a single link. That connects to our 48 port Procurve switch, 1gb ethernet.

The raided drive is about 25 TB, with reads of about 1000 MB/S

For sharing that drive over our network we use our own software, now in beta-testing as a commercial product. Have a look at xmcorebeta.wordpress.com

We don’t do uncompressed, and I suspect you need a 10 gb ethernet connection to maintain the kind of bandwidth that you need for that.. Small Tree sells those as well.. You need speed everywhere, from the RAID to the server to the switch to the workstations, so while our setup works fine for compressed HD (DNXHD) what will work for uncompressed is another story..

So setting something like this up your on your own is possible in theory, but in reality, it takes a lot of testing and time and hair pulling… But thats why you have people like Bob Zelin and others that have already done the hair pulling 😉

all the best

David