[Steven Grosswalder]

Hi-

I think the route we are going to take is to simply locate a Fibre Channel RAID storage system, and connect it directly to the Mac Pro. The G5 is simply going to be used for VPN, as well as archival through Ethernet.

In reply to doing the reversal, it’s not possible, because we only have an AJA card for the Mac Pro, and not the G5.

I guess my final question is, say I purchase a Fibre Channel RAID, and I plug it directly into the Mac Pro, will the drives appear in Disk Utility?

Thanks and happy new year!
Spencer

[Steven Grosswalder]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your help in this. I’ll respond to both of you respectively:

(MATT) I already see a couple of problems with the statement. Fiber Channel, Inexpensive, and Simple ….well frankly, Fiber channel never has been any of the above.

(ME) I wholeheartedly agree!

(MATT): They do know that the G5 is going to offer much less performance then the Mac Pro don’t they? — it’s a completely different hardware architecture, not to mention PCI X…..not PCI Express. Even using a Mac Pro Quad Core would be better then using a G5….Perhaps they are okay with the performance of the G5 vs the Mac Pro…

(ME): We are very aware of this. In this hypothetical context, the G5 would be acting as the link between the eSATA RAID arrays and the Mac Pro. All the video processing would be done on the Mac Pro, so in retrospect, I wasn’t worried about the capabilities of the G5 to process video. Even if PCI-X is comparatively slower than PCIe, does it really make that huge a different if all it’s doing is transferring information from one or two eSATA RAIDS by way of one or two 4-port PCI-X cards to the ATTO card and then to the Mac Pro? I guess my assumption is that a lot of processor work is being done on the HBA and eSATA cards, and that PCI-X is fast enough to accommodate 10-bit uncompressed and upwards.

Or am I wrong, horribly, wrong?

(MATT): As it is with Fibre Channel, I believe in general (and someone can correct me …) is that you are required to put a software license on every person’s machine accessing the storage…because Fibre Channel is not traditionally deployed behind a “server” as much as it’s storage, hanging of switches….

(ME): I simply wonder, though, if the HBA was in target mode, and the G5 was presumably in a position that it was only doing server things like managing VPN and web connections, processing data that primarily resides on the internal hard disks, can I get by without having to install and license both systems with SAN software?

I think my response is just getting more and more whacked out, but I do feel like there are some hypothetical questions I am looking for answers to, so let me elaborate:

When you have a SAN RAID (target) and multiple initiators (workstations) accessing the single target, it is obvious that you have to have SAN software to co-ordinate the file read/writes so that catastrophe doesn’t happen.

So I am wondering, is catastrophe (corruption of data and filesystems caused by reading and writing of the same blocks of data) caused by the user layer, by general actions in either the filesystem / system layer, or even the lower system layers? If you had four computers connected to one target, with the target mounted on all four computers, and ONLY ONE computer was actually making any filesystem reads or writes (the other three plebeians are diligently keeping their cursors away from the mounted volumes), will the RAID filesystem still break itself, or will it stay intact?

(So, you see, if I have a G5 that is able to act as a target, any recognized drives on the eSATA PCI cards are routed both to the G5’s system (and are mounted), as well as to the Celerity cards and later to the Mac Pro, would the G5 corrupt the Fibre Channel RAID naturally, or could I get by through un-mounting the RAID volumes? It’s just a hypothetical question that would help me understand the internals of this networked storage system).

(MATT): No…the Simple way, would be doing this with Ethernet, where you don’t have all the nasty overhead of san software, read / write permissions, etc….

(ME): I like your thinking, and I do admit that given how magical Ethernet is, and know what I know now, this seems very, very nacho…

(JORDAN): Buy a fibre channel RAID and a 60 meter fibre cable. Stick the RAID in your rack in the other room, run the cable to your onsite mac pro and be done.

(ME): In the words of Guy Kawasaki commenting on how he wrote emails circa 1995, “Curt but complete”. Sounds solid, simple, and straightforward!

(JORDAN): But a Geffen extender, or something like that, put a monitor and keyboard in the studio, control your MP remotely and plug the esata boxes into your MP.

(ME): I might just encounter that setup in my dreams tonight!

(JORDAN): put your G5 in the recycle bin.

(ME): Awww, now you’re being mean : ) Isn’t going to happen, because we do need a VPN server, and we wish to have hot, steamy VNC and FTP access from abroad.

Thanks a HEAP!

Spencer