Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
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Don’t think that in itself, “object storage” has anything to do with performance. Its implementations – sure. It’s entirely plausible for high end (and very high performance) boxes from Isilon and EMC to already have “objectified” storage to some extent.
Aren’t Storage Spaces, ZFS’s virtual devices, Drive Pool – all attempts at “objectifying” storage? Sure, some have atrocious performance penalties (and some don’t). Yet performance penalties aren’t inherent to object storage, only its implementations – which is something you could say about any storage.
It’s like saying that virtualization is inherently bad for performance. Sure it was initially, yet now that the IT world is mostly virtualized, desktop OSs having built-in very efficient and silky smooth hypervisors, and Adobe and NVidia jumping on the bandwagon, we know that virtualization is actually a boon to high performance because of its efficiency and scalability.
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[Gautam Pinto] “The ARC-4036 can be had online for less than 1K, currently and it’s the smallest, lightest, well-built, least expensive 8bay expander chassis I can find.”
Agreed, it seems to be a better choice than either the 12- or the 8-bay expander from CineRAID. The only things I’d wish for, in your environment, are redundant power supplies, but I understand that you can’t have everything. ProAvio 16-bay 3U expander will likely take less space than two ARC-4036 units, and does have redundant PSUs, but is some $700 more expensive than two ARC-4036 units combined. At 78 lbs. (per their specs… diskless… really?), it seems to also be quite a bit heavier.
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[Gautam Pinto] “One thing I don’t know is if either of those cards can use one channel for Raid and the other for standard SAS to E-sata fan-out cables to mount single drives in OSX.”
Technically it’s possible – the controllers support JBOD (individual drives), and support SATA. Not sure about removable devices (a must with eSATA). I’d be nervous connecting eSATA shuttles to a controller which has my precious RAID6 humming. I know space and money are tight, but like sensei BZ says, this is asking for trouble. I’d look at a separate el-cheapo machine just for that purpose.
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[Gautam Pinto] “Alex, looks like a good option. What is the MSRP? Also do you know if the weight is really 25lbs without drives? Does this chassis work the same with the Atto and the Areca? Have you been able to stress test with both cards, or benchmark with both cards?
Is there an 8bay option?”
MSRP $1899. You can order it from me unless you already have a reseller you work with, who sells Areca/CineRAID products.
Not sure what the exact weight is. The 8-bay SAS expander (CR-T08E) is also 25 lbs according to specs – but not as quiet as the 12-bay one.
Yes works the same with Areca and ATTO. I haven’t personally stress-tested them – my clients have. One of them reported getting around 1GB/s on 12 4TB WD enterprise drives in RAID6 with Areca 1882x.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
[Gautam Pinto] “I have no clue as to which chassis to select. I want an 8-12 bay chassis for 3.5″ drives 6G SAS and 4TB drive support. I need small, fast, quiet and not too expensive.”
Will a tower work? CineRAID CR-T12E is quiet, fairly inexpensive as far as SAS expanders go.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
It’s an attempt to standardize and virtualize how OS and applications deal with storage, make it more intelligent and universal across multiple types of devices. Kind of like what SCSI and SATA did for block storage, and TCP/IP did for networking, except going even further. It doesn’t seem to be here yet as this Register article illustrates, and certainly not yet for desktop or SMB storage.
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Thanks Eric,
[EricBowen] “I have tested Qnap but not Synology. I was not impressed with Qnap considering the cost.”
When I was researching this, Synology seemed to have very limited 10GbE options, while with QNAP it was, like, just put a 10GbE card, and you’re all set, and indeed I was. QNAP was also less expensive than Synology for an 8-bay 2U 10GbE-ready unit. That said, I’d have likely chosen Thecus over QNAP if I had a chance to research it more or heard your comments sooner.
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SAS expansion is nice, don’t think either Synology or QNAP allow that kind of expansion. Eric, have you worked with any of their rack boxes (N12000/N12K Pro)? How quiet are they?
(Just shipped an 8-bay 2U 10GbE QNAP box to a client – while really well engineered, it’s fairly loud even with fans in “low” mode; CPU usage is 30-50% during array rebuilds – a little high for my taste; makes me wonder what the loads will be with lots of random I/Os over 10GbE and SMB/AFS. iSCSI should be fine. Support is good so far – but not on their forums. Same with Synology. Features and value-wise, I like Thecus boxes the best – thanks for the tip.)
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9 hours on RAID10 “rebuild” means a drive clone taking 9 hours. Either one drive (or both) are faulty, or something’s really wrong with the RAID controller. I haven’t done a RAID10 “rebuild” but have done many RAID1 ones, and they take what a drive clone usually does – about two hours per TB.
Same goes for software mirrors (Win 7, 8, storage spaces, Linux).
Also a software RAIDs (Linux mdm based) without any “real” chips does a RAID6 rebuild on an 8x3TB set in 7 hours. With RAID bitmap enabled and same drive re-insertion – in seconds. Bottom line – no need for “real” chips for performance, resiliency or reliability reasons. If only Storage Spaces supported dual parity…
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[EricBowen] “A real SAS controller with an LSI chip, good drivers, and firmware like LSI or Intel cards take 3 to 6 hours to rebuild a Raid 5 or 6 volume. Those same controllers take 9 hours to rebuild a raid 10.”
Eric, any independent sources on those numbers? They’re quite strange given no relation to drive count and capacity, and are contrary to my experience. Also, 10 never rebuilds the whole array, just like 0 doesn’t: only a specific mirror is rebuilt on drive failure. Never heard of it taking 9 hours.