Thanks! (and a note regarding new port multiplier SATA array)

[Justin Tan]

thx for the info Adam, any reason why you went the way of byrly instead of Sonnet’s offering?

I can’t believe you get so much IO with just 8x200GB – makes me wonder why the Xserve Raid requires 14 stripped drives to get only 235MB…

[Jeremy Garchow]

One reason is that it’s protected. If you lose a drive the XRAID keeps running. If you lose a drive in an 8 drive SATA setup, your data is toast. The XRAID is an overpriced solution anyway.

Jeremy

[Justin Tan]

is it? Funny as it was touted as a valued solution for us… I haven’t really done any research into raids and such – is there any particular “premade” device you would recommend?

BTW in our tests the Xserve raid is set to raid 0 so it’s 14 disks runnint as one big one – no redundentcy and the best it could do was 235ish MB…

[Jeremy Garchow]

I, personally, use Huge products and love them. I’d also look at Medea as well. There are countless others out there that make a faster and more secure array than apple.

Huge’s performance map:

https://www.hugesystems.com/support/knowbase/search.cfm?N=101&Detail=1

Jeremy

[Adam Levine]

Sorry, typo there: they are 300 GB drives. For a total of 2.4 (2.2 formatted) TB

Actually, I’ve even found that the drive speeds seem to INCREASE about 10% as the drives are about half full. Will perform full tests this week once I clear current projects on Tuesday.

AFA Burly vs. Sonnet goes, I chose Burly b/c Rick at MacGurus had them in stock and he said they had done extensive testing with this combo and everything ran smoothly. Look into it at MacGurus.com, you can get what I got for about $2k, with minimal installation (pop in a PCIe card, connect 2 cables and a power cord.)

AFA the speeds go, you can do much better with RAIDing each drive on its own channel. 8 drives over 8 SATA channels will get you over 400 MB/sec easily. I was even thinking of getting 2 SATA cards, and running each channel individually to a single drive, but I opted for expandability over speed (about the same price, when you add in the cost of port mulltipliers)

[Bob Zelin]

I think you have made a great choice in hardware, and I am sure that the sonnet Fusion 500P is a great choice too. I simply do not understand the Apple XServe RAID as a choice for anyone. It’s expensive, it breaks, Apple support is terrible, and there are better choices out there (as mentioned here – HUGE, Medea, and the SATA solutions). I have been using SATA from Firmtek and Sonnet since April 2005, and I have NEVER EVER seen a SATA drive die, yet I have seen the “same” “hand picked” Hitachi SATA drives in XServe RAID’s die all the time. I have seen XServe RAID controllers fail, I have seen the “RAID 5 Protection” go haywire, and the entire array gets lost. I don’t care what the problem was at this point – I have never seen the cheapest Firmtek RAID 0 2 bay fail with the “same” Hitachi SATA drives, and it costs a fraction of the XServe RAID. Look at Creative Cow’s XServe forum, and look at all the issues you see posted on it. I just don’t get it. And as you pointed out, the performance at 235mb/sec, is nothing special today, compared to what you can get for a fraction of the price.

You have made a great decision, and I greatly value your posting this info.

Bob Zelin

[Adam Levine]

[Bob Zelin] “You have made a great decision, and I greatly value your posting this info.”

As we value all your input, Bob. I’ll get more complete and vigorous results up on a web page later in the week.

PS. I love this freaking MBE

[Neil Sadwelkar]

[Bob Zelin] “yet I have seen the “same” “hand picked” Hitachi SATA drives in XServe RAID’s die all the time”

How is that possible. The XRAID uses Ultra ATA drives. Not SATA.

I have 2 XRAIDs and have not seen the problems that you report. And I’m running since Nov 2004. Not to say that the Sonnet and Burly is not a good choice, but I have not found anything as wrong with XRAID as you’ve experienced.

In fact, another installation I was consulting for had 4 XRAIDs in an XSan and they used it for direct camera recording for a reality show which ran 6 months and there too we didn’t see the failures you refer to.

Also, the original poster hasn’t said (or I missed it) if his RAID was RAID 0 or RAID 5. XRAID is RAID 5 as installed so you are protected agains a single drive failure. Even if you choose to make one XRAID as 5,0. And there are two controllers and two PSUs so you really are protected against some single point failures.

Can you say which XRAID uses Hitachi SATA drives Bob? I thought all XRAIDs ever built used ATA or PATA drives.

Neil

[Adam Levine]

RAID 0. I believe the earlier poster was talking about an XRAID with a stripe as well.

[Justin Tan]

hey all, really good read, thx for the info.

The Xraid is RAID 0 and I’m pretty sure it uses SATA drives…

Looking at the other offerings in more detail.

Thx guys.