Jordan Woods
Forum Replies Created
-
are you still diagnosing this issue?
if so, any updates? Did you look at the switch. It’s weird you are missing various LUNs from each RAID system, but not the same per host…..
-
Just to post on this thread as well as what I posted to the Xsan thread. YES, FCPX will work with your video files on your SAN. You can import the footage and retain the footage on that location. Here is a growing FAQ list from Apple: https://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/faq/
-Jordan
-
It is important to remember who Isilon is now, EMC. The deal is done, but the two companies are still merging. I have yet to see a road map from EMC on their plans for the acquisition other than the rumors and speculation that it was bought to fight against Netapp and their “big iron” scale out NAS.
-Jordan
-
Kevin,
As with all HDDs that hit the market, it takes at least 6 months for the firmware to settle. You might want to give it at least that long.
-Jordan
-
but this is probably for the best anyway, as you will now have the chance to properly defrag your volume 🙂
-
That would be awesome, but alas… that is not the way typical RAIDs work. I mean, you can certainly do this, but you will notice your 2TB drives quickly become chopped to 1.5TB drives. Or, your system will just not accept the difference, I’m not familiar with the OWC RAID, but in general if your box is using “normal” RAID methods you will see your drives get chopped. The only other way this could work would be if your RAID employed some “virtualization” type redundancy like the Drobo. But even with that your total space will not increase.
But I could be wrong, maybe OWC has some secret sauce. It might be worth contacting them, (but I would be very very surprised if they had the ability to dynamically grow like how you want)
Oh, and even if the RAID did grow, HFS+ (if you are on a mac) does not support dynamic growth, so you’ll still be limited by your filesystem.
-jw
-
You are going to want as much space as possible, but you will need it “ruggedized” for sure. I would make sure your device of choice has an internal fan. Some cheaper units have no fans and only rely on the enclosure for its heat-sync. You can’t say for certain your power requirements and cooling on the road, and this will be your primary storage for your footage. Absolutely have a backup strategy, at least mirror these drives, and maybe create a DVD/blueray of your source cards. Workflows are always different for this, but the main point is to have something portable, cool(heat-wise), and redundant.
-jw
-
The “piecemeal” approach to SAN upgrades is tough. It is great to start fresh, but if budget is a concern you will have to take the most important sections at a time.
Your infrastructure will be the first bottle neck. If your arrays can’t handle your expectations, nothing will follow. Benchmark those, maybe add an additional RAID, bump your switch, and you might be able to hit some pretty decent numbers. Remember that cables and SFPs can wear out, so you might have to replace some of those if you are seeing issues outside of this upgrade.
-Jordan
Senior Systems Engineer
Active Storage
Los Angeles, CA -
I agree with the above. Hitachi Deskstar, though not a good as ultrastar, is not the problem. It is definitely your Sonnet. Something is either not configured correctly, or something is amiss. I would like to see how Bob’s test comes out.
-jw
-
Let me put the other side to this… Hard disks die, it is a fact. If you are working on a single drive, it will die. Make no mistake about that. If you buy a bunch of drives and wrap them together utilizing “RAID” you will save yourself the issue of at least a single dead drive.
Here are the basics:
$1200-$2000 gets you a fairly large basic RAID array that can function at good enough speeds for you (basic E-sata/FW800 4bay 8TB array). Yes that is a lot of money, but here is the alternative:
-Hard drive dies: cost that it takes you to recreate what you lost, cost of customer’s data, cost of a lost customer, etc…
-Hard drive dies: you decide the data is too difficult to recreate yourself. You look at the Drive Savers option.In any of the above scenarios I can guarantee you will be spending more than that meager $2000.
I used to be like you and just run and gun with single drives, but at some point you start to realize that the risks you are taking just aren’t worth it. At that point on your graph, it’s time to look into RAID options. Luckily you don’t have a bandwidth limitation, pretty much any RAID array works for you, which is nice.
If you do decide to purchase a pro/consumer RAID array, don’t skimp on the drives. Don’t buy some “green,” left over, off-the-shelf drive at Frys. Make sure you select a good one that will last and has a good guarantee. We like to use the enterprise or even desktop class of the current Hitachi 2TB drives.
I hope this helps make some decisions. I always keep the quote in my head, “there are those who have lost data, and there are those who will lose data.”
-Jordan