SATA RAID over GB Ethernet

[Shane Sokolosky]

This is an interesting setup, it will not support DV in Highpoints RAID protection mode, but without it, it might. I’ve seen some wierd issues with SATA HBA’s in the Mac Pro’s although I haven’t seen any experimenting with the highpoint Rocket RAID card.

Shane Sokolosky

SAN Product Manager
ProMax Systems inc.
16 Technology Dr. Ste.106
Irvine, CA. 92618

Office (949) 727-3977 x108
Toll free (877) 776-6292
Fax (949) 727-7002
Website-https://www.Promax.com
shane.sokolosky@promax.com

[Jacob Altman]

Shane,

Thanks for your response.
Could you clarify exactly what you mean, when you say it won’t support DV in RAID Protection mode (I presume you mean RAID 5).

Cheers

[Lance Bachelder]

I’m setting up a similar network with 4 edit bays cutting 720p DVCPRO using MetaLan. I opted for the Sonnet 5 bay eSATA cases – doing 2 2.5 TB raids mirrored and 1 RAID 0 for uncompressed finishing (local of course). I’m going to use the Small Tree 4 port card and trunk the lines to the Mac from the switch for max access to the raid’s for all users. Using the Mac’s built-in ethernet ports to start – if there is a performance problem will add Small Tree cards to all the machines.

Because of so many MacPro/third party issues – we were forced to go all G5’s (Quads) – couldn’t deal with MacPro problems on a TV series delivery schedule. Next season maybe will add some Intel Mac’s to the mix.

Thanks to Shane for the MetaSan info – sorry we couldn’t buy it direct from Promax.

Lance Bachelder
Southern California

[Shane Sokolosky]

Hey Lance good to hear from you, no worries, I’d rather help someone get setup right over just making a “sale” for promax.

In response to Davids post, I’ve seen really slow speeds when you have it in RAID 5 or 3 in the past, I don’t think it will have enough bandwidth for multiple people when it’s RAID protected.

Shane Sokolosky

SAN Product Manager
ProMax Systems inc.
16 Technology Dr. Ste.106
Irvine, CA. 92618

Office (949) 727-3977 x108
Toll free (877) 776-6292
Fax (949) 727-7002
Website-https://www.Promax.com
shane.sokolosky@promax.com

[Jacob Altman]

Hi there Lance (and thanks to Shane for your answers),

Good to know I’m not alone on this one. I opted for Highpoint because they offer RAID 5, but if it’s not fast enough to sustain multiple stream of DV, I’ll have to go for your solution of 2 mirrored RAIDs.
A few important questions:

-What Switch have you decided to use ? As mentioned, I’d planned to use a Netgear Smart Switch (GS716T) which seemed to be a good balance between features and price. The peeps at Small Tree have told me the main concern here is latency, not bandwidth, but I just don’t have the money for their suggestion of a Foundry switch…

-Is there any speed/bandwidtth advantage in ‘trunking’ the built-in Ethernet card with a cheap third party single port card (Netgear GA311 for example), on the user’s workstations ?

Thanks in advance,
David

[Lance Bachelder]

According to the Small Tree guys – you can’t trunk a 2 port card in the Mac’s because they see each line coming to the switch as a seperate IP (or something like that?) – so no speed benefit – I was going to put their 2-port card in each machine but they said no, so I’m using the G5 built-in port since the newer ones support jumbo frames etc. If the built-in port doesn’t vut it I’ll buy the single port cards from Small Tree.

You can trunk from your switch to the server so I’m using their 4 port card in the G5 for max speed to everyone on the switch.

I almost bought the Foundry switch but opted for the Asante Intracore 36524 – similar spec’s as the Fast Iron but almost half the price (around 2 grand vs. 4). Will post my results once we’re acually editng. Really tight budget here too…

Lance Bachelder
Southern California

[Sean Oneil]

I don’t why they told you that the 2-port cards can’t do Link Aggregation. I’ve done it before. The guys at Small Tree are the ones who helped me out with it actually. Look here:

https://www.small-tree.com/solutions/linkaggregation.htm

RAID5 from a Highpoint actually works pretty well. Remember that RAID5 only slows down from write speeds, not so much from read speeds.

That said, I think you’re much better off going with an 8-disk SATA solution. 8 250GB drives won’t cost much more than 4 400GB drives. Highpoint makes 8-port cards. Just route the SATA cables to an external SATA enclosure(s).

I use MetaSAN too BTW, but with an iSCSI box, not MetaLAN.

Sean

[Jacob Altman]

Thanks for you input Sean, good to hear that Highpoint’s RAID 5 performance is good.

I’m actually going to go with two Highpoint X4’s (4 bay enclosures) with 400GB Western Digital RE2 drives in them.
I opted for the Small Tree 4 port card to go from the “Server” machine to the switch, and will probably go with an SMC 8024L2 switch as opposed to a Netgear one…

Two questions:

-Would I be better off trunking the built-in NIC with a cheap third party NIC, neither of which support Jumbo frames, or buying a Small Tree 1 port card that does Jumbo Frames, on the workstations ?

-Networking 101 sorta question: if I just used the built-in NIC to connect to the switch, how would I get the computers to connect to the internet… Can you have two network connections running simultaneously in OS X ?

Thanks in advance, any thoughts much appreciated.

[Sean Oneil]

[David Shallis] ”
-Would I be better off trunking the built-in NIC with a cheap third party NIC, neither of which support Jumbo frames, or buying a Small Tree 1 port card that does Jumbo Frames, on the workstations ?

-Networking 101 sorta question: if I just used the built-in NIC to connect to the switch, how would I get the computers to connect to the internet… Can you have two network connections running simultaneously in OS X ?”

Sorry I didn’t reply to this. Been outta town for the holidays.

I’m not sure it’s a good idea to use different types of NICs on the same trunk (I really don’t know though). I bought the Small Tree 2-port NICs and trunked those together.

This is how it works. My Mac has two “subnets” (I think that’s the right term). The small tree 2-port card connects to a dedicated switch which is only for the SAN. Nothing else. No router, no internet connected to this card. The IP is static (not dynamic) on it’s own separate network (which you assign a manual IP address in Network System Prefs). The IP address is 192.168.1.10. Notice the “.1” part. That is the subnet.

So that’s the SAN, but my third NIC, the built-in one (192.168.0.10), still connects to the regular office network (router and internet). I also use this for the metadata for MetaSAN. The “.0” in the address means its on a totally different network. It will not communicate with or interfere with the SAN devices (because those are all on the “.1” subnet).

I’m not sure exactly how it works, but OSX knows to use the built-in ethernet card (“.0”) for Internet and regular file sharing.

Unfortunately I’m not an IT guy. I just taught myself how to set up our ethernet SAN and it was a lot of time and work. I didn’t see the wisdom in investing in a FC solution, especially with cheap 10gbe around the corner. It works now and I think it was a good move. It also gave me more job security since nobody understands how to work it but me :). Point being, you might be better off asking someone else. For every one editor, there are 100 networking experts. So it shouldn’t be too hard.

Sean

[Mad Media]

Hey Lance,

Just came across your post as I am researching a similar scenario.
I’m building two rooms at the moment. A simple capture/off-line room that will house 4-5 G4’s. And a main room with 2 Quad G5’s full outfitted for online and color work. Like you I’m working at DVCPROHD 720P mainly. Though I’m delivering to DVD and web mostly – SDTV ocassionaly. SO – I’m looking to feed all 6-7 machines from a SAN and keep the speeds fast enough for 4-6 layers of DVCPROHD. Also want to be able to capture/process to the same RAID SAN we are editing from without hiccups or problems.

I am totally new to SAN set-up, though I do understand basic gigabit networking and the whole RAID scenario. I was wondering if you would be able to post more details about your set-up. Specifically I am wondering how the set-up has worked for you since your post. Are you digitizing to the same SAN you are editing with at the same time? When you move to the RAID 0 for finish work are you using media manager to recap your offline edit at full HD REZ? How has the Sonnette gear worked out for you guys?

THANKS VERY MUCH FOR SHARING!

<>MAD MEDIA DESIGN<>
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