[Mike Masse]

Hello Tudor,

Fan noise not a problem — now. Originally, fan noise was wicked. Several ATTO flash bundle / firmware upgrades ago (end of 2011), atto made a fix. Now fan starts fairly quiet (not a bother), and escalates based on temp. My system very rarely kicks fan up a level.

See ATTO PRN (Product Release Notes) for more info. Current fw is fine though.

Michael

[Mike Masse]

Mini update — If you stumble across this post, the message of caution about being your own RAID integrator is absolutely right — even when what you are getting is all specified to work together.

My iStoragePro 6gb/sec enclosure has dismounted by surprise more than once. I am now using the brand new ATTO FW for the raid card.

If you have the parts and have not turned the thing on:

The enclosure maker is the key. I got my ATTO r680 RAID card from iStoragePro, and the only instructions were in the ATTO Box: card fw should be latest, if not update before proceeding. The only problem is that the enclosure maker (CI) had not yet certified this fw level. Later (only after first set of serious problems), was advised by CI to roll back firmware to their last certified level…

It’s important to point out that 2 lessons from this have been that ATTO and CI each are committed to customer service. They are obviously each excellent companies — and they each are very prompt with tech support.

That said, the integration piece is a problem. A reliable RAID is and the enclosure needs to share what they know about how to set up their enclosures with their preferred card (atto). A single sheet of paper in the enclosure box, with this might have spared me a huge waste of time. Or maybe not… maybe I’d still be having issues. SO… don’t assume that you have the key config info from the enclosure maker. Call them up, email, and before powering up, make sure you know the:

– FW for card
– driver level for workstation

(Assuming you are using specified compaitible drives, os, etc.)

Keep you posted.

[Mike Masse]

I expect to make another post when I close out my support tickets with the manufacturers. Bob’s help was terrific. With new, top-end equipment, I am also expecting validaton of our fix, and/or other technical input from the manufacturers.

m

[Mike Masse]

Wow, Bob. You’ve been super helpful. You’re the first person I’ve talked to who is looking at the whole system.

[Mike Masse]

Hello David,

Realize this is a free forum, but as an ATTO user in pain, little surprised to see that your only comment is on another posters post. Is just walking past the problem, and tossing an aside to another industry insider really the message that ATTO wants to send??

Michael

[Mike Masse]

Steve –

Interesting (if frightening) link to NCQ (native command queuing) – did “SMART” data show any damage?

Your case sounds a little like what happened to me:
– drive showed up as degraded.
– “off to the races” (i.e. would not longer mount / chaos and raid group loss ensued).

Hitachi has been great about replacing / checking drives for our company, but there has always been an onboard S.M.A.R.T. data confirmation of a drive problem – and that has always been a threshold for drive exchange / hitachi tech support (although I’ve never really tested the boundaries before).

Michael

[Mike Masse]

Status update:

Decided that the 18TB volume created with creating a RAID 6 volume from 8 x 3tb drives was simply too new – it hasn’t been possible to do this (for only a few thousand dollars), and OS/X (10.7.1) hasn’t had a enough time in real world. A 18 TB puts a huge number of eggs in one basket.

4 x 3tb Raid1 volumes has following benefits:
– gives me enough storage for a while (year?)
– keeps volume size completely within the typical range
– creates discs which could be pulled and (as I understand it, but need to test) could be read by the OS directly, without a raid car.
– means some juggling of data, but acceptable.
– has the advantage in FCPX (don’t laugh..) of not mounting some volumes and keeping event catalog size managable without using the steve marting “.dmg” trick.

OK… so moving a head with this, but one of the raid groups (mirrored pairs of discs), shows status onlline but gives me a persistant blinking green dot.

During the build phase this group, there was red dot (instead of the red exclamation point on the other groups during rebuild).

Current Green Dot:

Detail:

In Context:

Current plan is to wait until Monday, and call ATTO Tech Support. The tech support team as been well above average, but the “ATTO ConfigTool Help” does not have explanation for these dots.

Comments on wisdom of RAID 1 welcome.
– fewer eggs in each basket
– drives may be more recoverable without striping and parity
– forces me to keep data in 2.5tb chunks max, which means backup onto 3tb deskstars via drive dock is pretty easy way to get a backup off site.

-m

[Mike Masse]

Thanks for your perspective. When you say “test, test, test” what kind of test are you thinking of? Real world use? DiskWarrior? Apple Disk Utility?