Sonnet tempo E4P and Fussion D500P

[Kevin Wild]

I’ve mentioned this before, but we had about 3 bad chassis’s from Sonnet this past year. We have 5 total…the first couple purchased last year have been fine. The ones we got this year ALL had to go back for repairs. 2 would just cut out on us and the disks would suddenly go offline. Then we had another with a faulty fan…nearly killed our drives before we literally smelled the heat coming out of the chassis. I wonder if there was some defects that were in a batch or something…

They now don’t sell the chasis’ separate. All of ours were purchased as empty, unpopulated. They now just sit around…we got an 10TB XRaid and MetaSAN and have LOVED it. GREAT setup.

Just my $.02. I know some people have had great experiences with these. We have with 2 of them. But in drive-land, where you need to count on things, 2 out of 5 isn’t that great a record. 🙂

Kevin

[Nick Franco]

Bob

i will take them up on their offer with the encasment and i’ll get back to you with the results. i hate flying by the seat of my pants when a job comes in. it’s not fun with deadlines.

the company i deal with are helpful and will take my calls, but i’m only a small fish in a big pond.

Kevin

thanks, i hear what you say about sonnet, i only wish i was in a position where i could justify the spend on an xsans, but i hear they come with their own inherent problems.

Thanks guys i’ll keep you posted

Nick

Nick
http://www.1185films.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Kevin –
well, this is your 2 cents. (It’s amazing how a technical question turns into a debate like this). I put in countless SATA boxes from Sonnet, Cal Digit, and Firmtek. Sure I have seen problem boxes, but that is every product. Any of the newer RAID 5 SATA products that I have installed from Dulce and Cal Digit have not failed – but these are new products – who knows what will happen 2 years from now with them.

With that said, I have NEVER seen more drive array problems than with the Apple XServe RAID. Compared with any other Fibre Channel Array from Ciprico, Rorke, ProMax, etc., ALL are more reliable than the Apple XServe RAID. And when your Apple XServe RAID develops a problem, does Apple gladly send you replacement parts, like Ciprico, Rorke, ProMax, Cal Digit, Sonnet, Dulce and Firmtek will, or do they DRIVE YOU CRAZY and tell you to bring it to the mall, so you can have a Genius look at it (for 2 weeks). Of course, if you pay thousands for an Apple Enterprise Group support contract, then you can get better support from Apple.

There are people with Sonnet 500P chassis that NEVER have problems – but ALL PRODUCTS (even AJA cards – this is the AJA forum you know) – develop problems, especially ones with moving parts. Your post reminds me of people that used to say “I don’t know, I buy AVID drives, and never have had a problem” – what kind of crap is this – AVID drives were either Seagate or Hitachi drives in a plastic box. Did AVID wave a magic wand over these drives. If you have an Apple XServe RAID, and keep it for several years, you will one day have a drive fail on you. This is not to blame Apple here – the Hitachi Deskstor drives eventually fail (and this is expected, and that is why the RAID 50 is teriffic on this product). But you may develop bizarre controller problems (launch RAID Admin right now – can you get in – you can’t half the time, and have to power cycle the XServe RAID to get it to launch).

Please don’t make it sound that if someone buys an Apple XServe RAID, that all their problems will be gone. This is simply not true.

Bob Zelin

[Kevin Wild]

No need to rant, Bob. If you take a breath and re-read my post, I think you’ll see that I gave little opinion other than just telling my recent experiences. That is what these forums are good for…real world, user experiences. I just told mine. (Yes, this is the AJA forum, but I didn’t start the thread.)

I did say that 2 of the 5 boxes we have, have worked great. 3 out of 5 had to go back for repair. You can form your own opinion on whether this is “acceptable” or not.

Yes, I have heard about XRaid problems. No, I’m not a green moron who thinks this is the holy grail of drives. I only stated the facts from our experiences…we have had no problems yet.

Sharing information is good. I was not starting any kind of silly debate.

[James Reid]

[Kevin Wild] “They now don’t sell the chasis’ separate.”

Well actually they do.
It’s the Fusion D500P E-series.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiond500p-eseries.html

This may be pertinent.
A friend of mine bought the original Fusion 500P 5-Bay last December.
He populated it with 5 Maxtor Maxline Pro 500GB Raid edition SATA2 drives.
This was configured as Raid 0 with SoftRaid.
The first problem he had appeared to be with one of the Bays.
The enclosure was replaced.
After using new firmware update, the Raid would mount (sometimes).
Running DiskTester would cause the raid to fail.
My friend blamed the problem on DIskTester.

In my search around the net I found an amended web page where Sonnet now stated that the enclosure was not rated to be used with 5 drives, only 4.
Hmmm.
On a hunch I looked up the power requirements for the Maxtors.
The total for the five was 150 watts at startup and 50 watts idle.
I contacted Sonnet support and got this reply:

“We started putting that sticker on the last batch of Fusion 500P’s we shipped as we were noticing problems. Shortly after that, we beefed up the power supply, changed the product SKU and started shipping everything with drives in them.”
(the new Fusion D500P E-series removes this restriction.)

The power supply in the original version was 80 watts.
Not nearly enough to safely run the 5 Maxtors at once.

The enclosure was replaced by Sonnet at no cost with the now standard 180 watt supply.

No more problems.

[Kevin Wild]

Wow, this would be big news and a bit odd to have a 5 drive enclosure that could only handle 4 drives. FWIW, I never got a sticker or warning and I’ve purchased 5 of these over the course of the past couple years.

My final thought is if they replaced the power supply when I sent back these past 3. It sure would give me more confidence if they truly knew what the problem was and fixed it. I didn’t receive any word on a power supply change out when I received them back, though.

Thanks for posting!

Kevin

[James Reid]

On july 7, 2007, the power supply issue was acknowledged to me personally by Sonnet.
My friend received his beefed up replacement Aug 21, 2007.

Note: the following relates only to the original case,
NOT the new Fusion D500P E-series.

The site with the warning sticker is still available advertising the old lower powered enclosure.
The top of the page promotes the $2,295.00 2.5 TB model (with 5 drives of course).
The rest of the page is all about the empty Fusion D500P,
(no longer being sold by Sonnet) which has been replaced by the Fusion D500P E-series.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technology/FUSD5P25TB/

The note at the bottom of the page states:

“Note: This enclosure has been
qualified for up to a 4-drive RAID
(not a 5-drive RAID), and only for
drives with capacity up to 500GB
(not 750GB and greater).”

[Nick Franco]

Hi Guys

i’m overwhelmed with your interest and help on this topic. With regards to the sonnet tempo e4p and the enclosures i have 2 old D500P enclosures which have worked perfectly for 16months 10 drives softraid zero, but recently they have been destroying my life.

i have bought a new D500P and it seems to work much better.

Bob

it does look like both enclosures have failed – smoke started to come out of one of them this morning so i’m still waiting for a replacement. as soon as i get it i’ll let you know.

JR Links

i have always had 10 seagate Baracudas 500gb raided zero in these cases and never had a problem till now. Is the Maxtor the only drives that have this 4-5 bay raid problem?
i’ve been speaking to sonnet and they have never mentioned this, but i guess that is because it doesn’t apply to the seagate barracudas.

the problem i’ve had, and what bob has rightly said, is thet there are so many variables and i’ve not been sure whether it’s one drive thats on its way out or the card or the encasments.

so after three weeks of hell!!!!! and stress levels that turned me into a monster i hope that the replacements of the cases will resolve my issues (however there may still be another drive on its way out)

it’s a shame that i cannot put the kona test data i’ve collected into this post in the form of a graph so you could see the peaks and troughs in data throughput. i could paste the text data but it would take a lot of room.

kevin

i have to say – and you probably know – xraid hasn’t had a good rep. i’d like to invest in a fibre raid but due to lack of money i’m not in a position to do that. Also, i have heard that the xsans isn’t working well with the intel chips (but what do i know i cant even get my sonnet D500p to work).

thanks again guys

your support brings a smile to my stressed out face

Nick

Nick
http://www.1185films.com

[James Reid]

[Nick Franco] “i have always had 10 seagate Baracudas 500gb raided zero in these cases and never had a problem till now. Is the Maxtor the only drives that have this 4-5 bay raid problem?
i’ve been speaking to sonnet and they have never mentioned this, but i guess that is because it doesn’t apply to the seagate barracudas.”

Nothing to do with the brand of drive.
The note from Sonnett plainly stated:

“Note: This enclosure has been
qualified for up to a 4-drive RAID
(not a 5-drive RAID), and only for
drives with capacity up to 500GB
(not 750GB and greater).”

It’s a simple matter of the power supply not being capable of supplying enough power to start 5 drives spinning up together, and maintain this power during heavy use.

If you read my post carefully, Sonnet (California office) told me on july 7, 2007:

“”We started putting that sticker on the last batch of Fusion 500P’s we shipped as we were noticing problems. Shortly after that, we beefed up the power supply, changed the product SKU and started shipping everything with drives in them.”

The new Fusion D500P E-series removes this restriction.

[Nick Franco]

[JR-Links] “f you read my post carefully, Sonnet (California office) told me on july 7, 2007:

“”We started putting that sticker on the last batch of Fusion 500P’s we shipped as we were noticing problems. Shortly after that, we beefed up the power supply, changed the product SKU and started shipping everything with drives in them.” “

i’ve only just brought a new encasment D500P in the last week with no drives in it. i’ll speak to sonnet agin tomorrow.

Cna any one recommend a better low budget option than i have already? maybe i should just by the Sonnet D800 i can not spend my life trying toget one piece of equipment to work.

Thanks

Nick

Nick
http://www.1185films.com