Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
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[Brian Katsis] “”It’s MacOS X issue that cannot supprot OCE,it’s not related to the card.””
They advertise OCE for Max OSX all over the place, and nowhere can I find any hint that it’s a Mac OSX issue.
Am I missing something? I always thought OCE was a feature of the RAID brain – making it completely OS-independent on hardware RAID controllers. (The OS still needs to be able to see the larger capacity and either create a new volume on it, or to expand an existing one – which Max OSX 10.x does.)
Alex (DV411)
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[Kyle Lodge] “If it’s eSATA you’re kind of stuck”
Alas, I agree with Kyle on that – I haven’t heard of a port-replicated eSATA HBA (yes, the HighPoint controller you have is one of those) that isn’t basically a POS.
Since you plan to use the box for archiving and not for editing, and probably can’t justify a $2K budget for a MiniSAS HBA and a box, then just use it to set up RAID5 volume in chunks of 4-5 drives.
Alex (DV411)
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Compressor (QMaster) supports distributed rendering while FCP does not – does this sound right? In other words in my original post, I was confusing FCP timeline rendering (no distributed rendering support) and compressor / QMaster which while offering distributed rendering support, does not help with FCP rendering (unlike, say, AME and PP relationship).
Did I get it all right? 🙂
(Thanks again)
Alex (DV411)
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[Brian Katsis] “Is their a different RAID card I could get that would allow me to expand when needed?
Should we just go ahead and buy 11 drives and fill it up?
Cost is not entirely an issue, however to buy 11 more 2TB drives in one shot would cost a bit and something to consider but not out of the question. “Not sure what the deal with HighPoint is – I thought OCE was an OS- and platform-independent function.
Is this a box with a single MiniSAS input connector and one or two output ones? How many cables are running from the controller to the box?
If it is a MiniSAS expander box (I suspect it is), I’d recommend getting an ATTO R680 HBA, a minimum of 5-6 RAID-qualified drives (not Caviars) and set them in RAID6. That would ensure optimum performance, failure resiliency, and future online expansion with additional drives.
Alex (DV411)
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There actually aren’t too many high quality diskless chassis options available with MiniSAS I/O. I’ve had experience with iStoragePro and Stardom:
– iStoragePro iTMIS 8-bay and 4-bay boxes; iTSAE 6G series;
– Sohotank ST8-U5 and others.Alex (DV411)
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[Gary Bettan] “If you think you are going to be using one of our advanced NLEs such as Avid or Adobe or Edius or Vegas with hardware I/O and /or a RAID, stick with our DIY8 Core i7 Hex core.”
There is a very interesting (and heated) discussion between Scott and Eric of ADK Systems, and Harm Millaard of the PPBM fame. Harm claims Sandy Bridge systems are mostly inferior to X58 ones for PP purposes, and specifically, that you can’t use decent I/O and RAID cards together with discrete graphics, on Z68 Sandy Bridge systems.
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/853238?tstart=0
My 2 cents:
1. Harm is definitely having a bit of grandstanding here: the vast majority of Premiere Pro usage scenarios need less than 100MB/s bandwidth to storage and I/O, which is served by Sandy Bridge systems just fine – and then some. After all, 1-lane PCIe 2.0 is 500MB/s, enough for several uncompressed HD tracks. Uncompressed HD and 20-track multicam and compositing workflows – safely land in the 5% of PP usage. Everything else – 2-5 tracks of SD, AVCHD, HDV, H264, MPEG, etc. – easily falls under 100MB/s of required bandwidth to storage.
2. On top of it, Harm makes several assumptions in his very well written (and very funny) write-up about KISS and LOVE systems. Those assumptions just fall flat on their face however:
– an assumption that you need an add-on high-speed high-power RAID controller for redundancy. The assumption is wrong: there are RAID1 and RAID10, both of which offer redundancy, and well served by onboard controllers. There are storage boxes with onboard RAID controllers that connect to the host via eSATA, USB 3.0 or even Thunderbolt – those do NOT need add-on PCIe RAID controllers.
– an assumption that decent I/O cards eat a lot of bandwidth. Well they don’t: MXO2 uses a single lane. So does Intensity Pro. Uncompressed cards such as Decklinks, Extremes, Konas, etc. – do use 4- or 8-lane slots – and may require an X58 or a 5500 series motherboard – yet maybe it’s a non-issue: MPE hardware acceleration is mostly used when I/O isn’t. So it’s entirely possible there actually isn’t much of a disadvantage to Z68 systems in real world scenarios even with a Kona 3 card.Bottom line:
Scott and Eric of ADK systems swear by Sandy Bridge (Z68 chipset) and say that in the vast majority of usage scenarios, it’s a clear winner on value and often – on performance.
Food for thought, eh?
Alex (DV411)
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Thanks Eric, I stand corrected.
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[Eric Fiegehen] “CUDA is used in Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, and a few other Autodesk applications”
By these applications directly or by 3rd party plugins? If the latter, shouldn’t there be a qualifier added to the above sentence, such as “Maya does not use Cuda directly, while some 3rd party plugins do”?
(E.g. isn’t iray technically a 3rd party product?)
Alex (DV411)
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Congrats Phil!