Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
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[Neil Sadwelkar] “If 12, 16 or 24-bay boxes would have cost less than the sum of 8-bay boxes, I’d rather go with more bays. But more bays for some reason runs up the per GB cost.”
Expander boxes have been less expensive (per bay or per GB) for me with more bays. What boxes have you been looking at, that are more expensive with higher bay count?
[Neil Sadwelkar] “And rack-mount boxes are noisier than non-rack-mount ones.”
Not the case with that ProAvio box I mentioned above. Certainly the case with some older 1u and 2U boxes, and with most CineRAID EditPro rackmounts, unfortunately.
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[Neil Sadwelkar] “No I’m not trying to avoid rack-mount arrays though I haven’t come across any which cost less than non rack mount.”
Hi Neil,
A decent 16-bay rackmount MiniSAS expander with redundant PSUs (ProAvio IS316JS, for instance) is around $2700. An 8-bay MiniSAS expander tower – $1.5K. Purely among MiniSAS expanders, cost per GB is lower with rackount boxes – and you get extra benefits in terms of resiliency.
What makes the Thunderbolt 8-bay box possibly cheaper (and of course, more portable), is the inclusion of a RAID controller in that price – an extra $800 for MiniSAS expanders. Indeed, can’t beat that, and like Eric said, the price point is amazing. The only thing against it is non-expansion (can’t make a RAID set larger than 8 drives) and lack of battery or NVRAM backup, a potential “write hole” and data loss issue.
The former also may make the Thunderbolt box more expensive per GB: with dual parity RAID6 and a hot spare, your space utilization is 5/8th or 62.5%. The same on a 16-bay box – 13/16th or 81.25%. Hot spares can also be shared between boxes with MiniSAS expanders, not something you could do with Thunderbolt boxes.
HTH.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
[Scott Green] “Can anyone confirm that the Nvidia Quadro 4000 for Mac will support the 27″ LED Cinema Display that I’m using with my MacPro?”
It does with an adapter, a “DisplayPort to mini-DisplayPort cable” that is included with the PNY version (which I think is the only version out there).
See also this related discussion.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
Here is a year-old thread about desktops:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/322/423#428
See also:
Videoguys DIY X Ivy Bridge Budget Build – First Look
Recent discussion on Adobe forum.
My personal favs (among laptops) are Lenovo Y500, W530; HP Z820 and Z420 for desktops.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
[Michael Angeletti] “I’m looking for an experienced group of video professionals that can provide examples of past work and some references.”
VTP and Band Pro come to mind in SouthCal; some people working day jobs for the big four (Sony, Pana, JVC, Canon) also do this type of work in their spare time; have you tried contacting local broadcast dealerships? If so, what were their responses?
You could also contact vendors of the equipment you need help installing and configuring and ask for their recommendations – oftentime engineers and even sales people working there are well connected. Jan Crittenden of Pana certainly is and while she is in NY, she might know the right people in SF.
Good luck.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
Media storage is a weak spot on all these systems. Consider a RAID0 on 2+ drivers or a RAID5/6 on 4+ drives.
Check our Harm Millaard’s guides on Adobe forums – even though he mostly addresses Pr needs (not as much AE or Ps).
Do you really need dual graphics? (How many hours a day do your encode / export, what file formats, what is the complexity of your timeline – how many video layers, what effects.) In other words, what you think you need the horsepower for?
If you work in AE a lot (which mostly uses CPUs for rendering, and is very hungry for RAM), consider a dual Xeon system.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
[John Straus] ” read speed varying from 2200-2800MB/s … maxes at about 750MB/s throughout playback”
Perhaps an application issue then? What application is used for playback? What OS?
I’d try a few things:
– RAM drive (which will perhaps need a Xeon system with 64GB+ memory) – test playback. If still 14fps, then it’s not a disk I/O issue.
– increase stripe and file system block size
– stripe using OS and not Areca (may need a system with more cores – i.e. dual Xeons)Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
Health monitoring and sufficient protection against UREs and multiple failures is something to rely on, not MTBF. In that, you’re right. Replacing all drives after five years without any other indications of impending failure? I’d have to see a more robust study to sign up for something like that.
(This Schroeder/Gibson paper admits to a rather dramatic lack of consistency in data collection and fault reporting, making it a questionable source for MTTF assessments. Add to that wildly ranging sample sizes, definitions of “fault”, data collection periods, and I am not sure how you could make any conclusions from that paper.)
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[Brett Sherman] “Statistically, you can’t do that sort of multiplication with MTBF. If it were “Average Time Before Failure” maybe. But MTBF simply means half fail before, half fail after with no indication of the distribution of when they fail. So 50% could fail within 1 minute of plugging in and 50% could fail after 300,000 hours with the same MTBF. Theoretically of course.”
Agreed, if the distribution of failures over time was unknown. Assuming it’s spread relatively evenly over time, with no correlation between failures on different disks (which is an iffy assumption, I know), can we then do that kind of multiplication?
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[Brett Sherman] “A lot to be skeptical about.”
If you have a component with an MTBF of five years, a system with two such components working side-by-side will have an MTBF of 2.5 years. When you have racks with hundreds of drives, those MTBF numbers quickly become quite meaningful.
That doesn’t mean MTBF numbers are real though. Google didn’t find them so, for instance. It could be a very nice and real conspiracy and there could be a slew of class action suits brewing. Or, it could be just the reality of the industry where reliability is such a complex issue, that it can’t be reliably (pun intended) measured.
For single drives, AFR numbers are easier to digest though.