[Glenn Venghaus]

Hi Jordy,

Sorry but not running the Synology in multipath anymore. Have been using it in my described setup for some time very effectively , with super performance, under the SNS beta driver, but a lot has changed in the last 2 years. Mainly that i had to move my OSX versions (clients and servers) up due to other software requirements. Lately even up to the (crappy osx vista) Yosemite for my Davinci 12 resolve workstation.
The amazing guys (best support i ever had from any software company period) at SNS explained me in detail that it was not possible anymore to keep maintaining that special version they build for me in parallel with the (not compatible) main stream. Very understandable.
So i moved on and now use the Synology’s as secondary storage (for volume and not for speed ) and have it regularly sync with a big software raid-0 (for pure speed) self build thunderbolt array on a mac mini server hosted via xtarget to the clients , which get line speed (200 mbps on 2x fast ethernet) . Still for a fraction of the cost of off the shelf systems, which is sort of my thing 😉 But even off the shelfs are getting down in price now, which is a good thing.
So not everything from one system (speed and reliability) but leveraging 2 separate systems. With a high enough sync frequency between the 2 (+ extra offline DR and cloud backups) the risk is minimal and i have been running it nonstop for more then a year now.

Almost upgraded to a trashcan based system but thank god i did not. (just lucky as a placed order on the very first model fell through). Forums are full of issue on the graphics cards (davinci resolve heavily affected), so for now holding on till i “have” to move on and something better comes around. Eyieng multi cpu hackingtoshes like Hp 840’s etc , but still not stable enough.
And so far my low cost mac mini render farm still works like a charm. (no thanks to apple as almost had to rewrite everything back to working order which they stupefyingly decommissioned, like the qmaster cluster for example and final cut server , which is still buzzing around here on 10.9.5 thanks to my hacking skills and doing all my automated workflows like nothing on the market)

Anyway i digress. So no. Sorry.

[Glenn Venghaus]

Or just dont’ upgrdade. Unless you realy miss features that turn you production machine in a large iphone, which seems the preferred direction of apple these days 🙂

[Glenn Venghaus]

You are doing nothing wrong. It is a known issue with Synology that the way they implemented iscsi and multiple network connections somehow does not work nicely together with MacOSX and multipath supporting iSCSI initiators. Did a lot of investigation on this together with SNS.
Its not only with the Globalsan driver that it gives issues. I was offered to test a SmallTrees initiator , which also did not work.
My guy feeling was after lots of test that it was down to 2 issue on the synology side.
1. bad isolation between the networks internaly , causing the 2nd network path to be reachable and advertised over the 1st path. Playing with the inbuild firewall and OS lavel hacking the synology gave mixed results on this.
2. The way a iscsi device was advertised by the target (maybe in combo with OSX as heared better stories on windows)), makes it somehow difficult for the initiator side to see that 2 devices are actualy the same device over 2 paths.

In the end the very friendly SNS guys worked with me for a long time and we got to a stable beta verions that worked for my unique combination, but this did not make it into the main release stream. For understandable reasons as they had to hack / bypass synologys issues for a very small group of their target users (look at the lack of comments on this thread or google search for mpio and you know enough) , that even could negatively effect other more widely used combinations.

For me this meant i froze my config at OSX 10.7.4 synology at DSM4.0 and Globalsan at an unreleased beta.
But its getting me stable 135-140MB/s over 2x1GB.

For my small 4 seat setup it is fast enough and I will make it till december (Mac Pro christmas time 😉

So unless now lots of synology users start using multipathing , which i do not really see happening, you are out of luck on the mpio front.

Maybe when 10G multi cards (like smalltrees) get more mainstream (and a lot cheape (maybe pushed by proper competition of thunderbold based storage networks in the future) , the whole mpio stuff gets the attention it deserves on more fronts. Its a magic bullet if used properly.

[Glenn Venghaus]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your feedback man. Yes in the end i got it to work, but it required a new beta driver from Globalsan as it was the combination of globalsan/osx10.7.4/synology that did not work as expected.

Performance is ok considering the hardware, but still tweeking to get more out of it. Just hacking with some network settings (internal on the synology) can already make a big difference of tens of megabytes/s.

[Glenn Venghaus]

p.s. If after the SNS and synology guys who are currently working on the problem can not figure it out and get it working to give me close to 200MB/s to a single workstation, i will start agreeing with you and might even spring for a macpro (as soon as a new model comes out)with xtarget.
But if it starts working even a newer macpro will not give me anything extra with 2x1Gb iscsi connections and i will happily stick with my inferior setup that gives me exactly what i need.

p.s. off topic but ssd’s rock !! Can’t have enough of those.

[Glenn Venghaus]

No problem, be as rude as you want. That is your choice. I remain polite.
And again it was not 499 . that is only the expansion cabinet so add about 600 to it 😉 . (but of course that does not change your point which is valid)

You are right at least for the part that i do not want to buy a secondhand crappy old mac pro (my current dual 480GB 6G ssd’s 16gb 2012 macbook pro runs circles around it so why should I). I am still hoping for a better specced model . Yes i could go the windows route but dont want to.

So i just keep playing with my current ‘inferior’ toys if you don’t mind.

And iscsi on macpro has the same limitation on 1GB ethernet as my current setup (single connection to host still 1 or 2gb (if mpio)), so unless i go fiber or 10gb (which creates all kinds of problems with my mobile workstations not having the proper connection) there is absolutely no gain there.
So unless there is a ‘real’ gain and not an emotional , i rather spend my money on software or more ssd drives for local caches etc.
If you say fiber and only macpros as workstations yes they i fully agree with you. But thats just not my situation.

And also , i decide myself what this post is about and not you. The post is about getting a synology, in an aleade existing and proper working setup, to do mpio (as advertised ) to get the max out of the current setup and not about what is the best shared storage on the planet. Because forget about a macpro and xtarget if that is the question and budget is unlimited. I would then get some of the servers and petabyte SAN’s out of a datacenter i work.
Would be a bit overkill for the few small artmovies and docs i make , but het it would at least meat your stamp of approval 😉

Chill bro….

[Glenn Venghaus]

Well yes and no.
I am using iSANmp to be able to share with multiple workstations (as you need a special cluster aware filesystem, otherwise you corrupt it) , but in practice only a single workstation at a time will put a heavy demand on it eg editing etc. But this can be a differrent workstation every time depending on the task.

And yes mpio and mc/s talk about a single initiators connections to a single target but over more then one network connection at the same time .

[Glenn Venghaus]

Hi Alex ,

In fact we are discussing a solution wthout dedicated iscsi server. The synology device hosts the iscsi target and has therefore extra cpu power and memory compared to its smaller siblings.
Of course this solution has its limitations where it concerns multiple concurrent connections.
For that Bobs server attached storage in combination wth xtarget software sharing this storage via iscsi has much more possibilities.
Also the more professional solution could use a dedicated iscsi adapter, which takes care of the iscsi translation and saving lots of cpu on the host ( which can be signifficant).

Regarding bonding, keep in mind that that is something very different then what we are discussing and is something lots of people mix up.
In channel bonding you bind 2 network adapters together (switch has to support this ) to form a wider pipeline. The single sessions from host to target are still limited to the max speed of a single connection ( in my case 1Gb) but more connections at the same can use the wider pipe. Also this creates redundency in case one connection brakes
MPIO – multi path i/o, or MC/S – multimple connections per session, (both sligthly differrent) allow for a single connection to the target to gain more speed by using the 2 channels at the same time, limited to the theoretical maximum of (in my case ) 2Gb.
This is what i am trying to achieve here.

[Glenn Venghaus]

That would be indeed an interesting test. Did not realise you guys also had initiators. Only knew about atto and sns. Will mail you. Asumme you are iSANmp compatible ?

Regarding 10Gb no unfortunately not but would also be rediculous if it had in this pricerange.
Spindels i have 10 , running this with one expansion cabinet ( the price quoted by the sensei was for the caninet and not the main unit btw) and should easily be able to do 200 Mb , to saturate 2x1Gb.
With that feeding one workstation at the same time you can do some nice work already (considering the budget of around 2k for the 2 cabinets and 10x7200rpm).

I am from the time that you had to write code of max 64 kb to fit in memory. So believe in maxing out your hardware by some smart usage, rather they buying of the shelve expensive stuff.
Not always works out of course but love experimenting. 🙂

So far doing pretty wel with a few crammed mac mini servers , macbook pros and imacs . Packed with reder cluster nodes, happily blasting away at my nuke projects. Full automated delivery of final edits from FCP to a massively customised final cut server. And still able to do realtime grading in 2k and editing ( if i dont go grazy on the trackcount.

Wanted to add a macpro to upscale but the current hilarious price/value upgrade does not convince me . So i will wait and see what happens there, while in the mean time trying to squeeze the max out of the current setup.

P.s. I have SNS and synology developers talking together and working on getting this to work. Have good hopes.

[Glenn Venghaus]

Ok first off all, thanks for replying at all to my post you holy emperor of know it all 🙂
I would never tell anyone to screw himself on a forum but hey that is just me. I was just hoping for a serious awnser on this (i thought) professional forum of people with much more experience on this subject then myself.

I do not have a video editing shop but just a small setup for producing art videos and smal documentaries for a very small audience. Have been working with this setup for a few years and sofar have never had a hickup with the DS1511 + extension bay solid 90 MB/s on average. Am already running iSANMP ( so you probably did not read it properly) and can easily edit 2k in this setup so i wouldn’t talk it down that easy. But of course feel free to spend 40k plus on an array if you need it. On my real job (that makes the money) in IT i work daily with arrays of petabytes in ginormous datacenter, butstill see the advantage of these affordable boxes as long as they get the job done.. I also have the money to buy huge arrays, but simple do not need it so why should i?
Unless you measure profesionalisme on how much money you spend to get the job done…..
I am just asking a simple question on getting advertised functionality to work. At least the guys at SNS take the question seruously.

So for anyone else that is still happy (or not) with their synlogy 2lan equiped array and does have mpio experience please let me know.