Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: BernardLanguillier on June 24, 2009, 08:15:48 am
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Anyone familiar with this solution? I am starting to look at my next generation storage solution.
http://www.sansdigital.com/accuraid/ar212s.html (http://www.sansdigital.com/accuraid/ar212s.html)
What are the other interesting offerings with Raid 6 capability and a SCSI320 interface?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Does your Drobo not meet your needs any more, or is this in addition to?
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Does your Drobo not meet your needs any more, or is this in addition to?
Tim,
I do not own a Drobo in fact, my current setup is a combination of a 6TB Wiebetech TRX-600 and 4GB Buffalo NAS.
The RTX is slowly getting full and I need to start planning...
Cheers,
Bernard
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Giving away my age, but 25 years ago 1GB was considered a mass storage device - something only large corporations would have!
I've no experience with the setup you asked about Bernard, but after reading their specs it certainly looks impressive.
Mike.
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Anyone familiar with this solution? I am starting to look at my next generation storage solution.
http://www.sansdigital.com/accuraid/ar212s.html (http://www.sansdigital.com/accuraid/ar212s.html)
What are the other interesting offerings with Raid 6 capability and a SCSI320 interface?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Bernard
Hello Bernard,
in case you need a backup solution for your "next generation stoarge solution" have a look at the Drobo Pro. I have a normal Drobo as I do not need more but a friend of mine who is a professional photographer has 2 Drobo Pros (one onsite, one offsite) and is very happy for backup.
This is of course for backup only where speed doesn't matter that much.
Sigi
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Hello Bernard,
in case you need a backup solution for your "next generation stoarge solution" have a look at the Drobo Pro. I have a normal Drobo as I do not need more but a friend of mine who is a professional photographer has 2 Drobo Pros (one onsite, one offsite) and is very happy for backup.
This is of course for backup only where speed doesn't matter that much.
Sigi
Drobo Pro seems to be the goods from my perspective as well.
I have pretty much outgrown my existing NAS back-up so am moving to Drobo Pro as my back-up and relegating my NAS to be the archiving solution. I think Drobo is a good stop gap before something as dramatic (and costly) as a fully fibre channel X-Serve or equivalent.
I am talking purely from a back up and archive perspective here - I use RAID 5 array for my my main library - I just back-up to the NAS (soon to be drobo).
A lot of course depends on the size of your image library.
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Hi Bernard,
I would stay far far away from the Drobo, what a DOG! Slow as a three legged dog.
Ok, on a more serious note, what are you wanting to do? obvious store your data, and given you are wanting RAID 6 I am assuming you are in the back of your mind thinking of this as a safer backup solution :-) while still being online and available.
Knowing that you are a Mac user, we have here an Xserve, with 14 disks and it is reasonable fast, but we should have used Optical Fiber links from the server to the work stations instead of Cat6 cables, but as a long term storage solution it isn't bad. Though it is on the expensive side.
We have reached the limit of the amount of storage we can fill this beast with, and bought a DROBO as a secondary storage solution with the network unit, but it is slow, so slow....If I have something online on the network, I don't want to wait till lunch time to access something, it has to be available within less then a minute tops.
So we have the Xserver, a Drobo and we will soon be running out of space. Some of the data we have is getting old and we are getting less and less request for it, so I am looking at keeping this data on hard drives that are off line, but with the use of an eSATA cradle, I think Jack Fletcher is using this solution, but i could be wrong, if so, my apologies! This idea will work with a good DAM setup, where the DAM application will remember on which disk the data is located. So the idea is to label the disks clearly :-) and insert the one into the cradle when you need. So what if the hard drive breaks down!? well, It would probably be a good idea to have this data on two disks one in the studio and one off site.
This way, I can keep what is current on my faster storage solution, and with my DAM application go and collect the disk with the old clients photos on and access them at the same speed as a normal hard drive.
What is needed,
1) Hard drives in pairs
2) eSATA card in your Macpro and/or Macbook Pro
3) eSATA cradle (usually also have USB, but slower), its small so you can take if with you on location, it supports 2.5" and 3.5" disks SATA and SSD, but limited to the eSATA port
4) DAM application of your choice
think about it, you already have about 10TB of storage, that is online and available immediately...how much of this is current data? I know giga-pano's will consume lots of space, but still...
just my $.02
Henrik
PS: I also have an HP U2 server with a MSA (Mass storage Array) using SCSI U320, 14 disks but as we both know it may be good and solid, but its old technology and considering the cost 300GB SCSI disks I think i'll stick with SATA, but it does support RAID6
its forsale :-)
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Henrik,
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response.
Only keeping live the essential data is of course a valid option that would help extending the lifespan of my current setup. I can probably also delete some useless files like those used to compute the giga panos.
I must currently have just short of 4TB of live data and at the current pace will need to either delete, move offline or expand withing 6 months to one year...
I will never use a NAS again for live data, way too slow for all these applications enabling live selection of large selections of images.
SCSI drives are definitely not an option I'd consider, but most SAS enclosures accept SATA drives that are now dirt cheap. It is tempting to spend a bit and be done with worries about storage for a few years and that seems very possible with these 12-16 drives SAS enclosures.
Now one question among those is whether to go for a unit with built-in RAID, or with a JOBD enclosure connected to a Raid card in the Mac...
I am not sure about the respective advantages of both solutions, but the JODB enclosures are much cheaper.
This is why I am asking around for the best options.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Giving away my age, but 25 years ago 1GB was considered a mass storage device - something only large corporations would have!
Mike,
I haven't forgotten my CBM64 either! My current mac Pro has one million times more memory... I am not sure to have one million times more fun with it though.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Bernard:
Sounds like you need a fast array for rapid access to working files, then a large array for safe storage of all current and historical images?
Perhaps your existing 6TB TRX can be reconfigured to a RAID-0 or 0-1 array for availability and something like the DROBO added for automated safe, but slower, storage? One pretty large advantage to the DROBO is the ability to mix and match drives at some future point in time when the drives you originally filled it with are no longer available. Heck, you could even use the drives in your TRX to fill the DROBO and add newer drives to the TRX... But of course the onboard logic required to make the mixed sizes work together in RAID, definitely slows down rebuild times when you need to do it. Regardless, the DROBO automated rebuild happens, it just takes a while.
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Hello Folks,
Not to steal Bernard's fire, but I have a similar choice to make. I have very nearly filled a Infrant (now Netgear) ReadyNAS NV+ 2TB (4x500GB), and need more capacity with some live access. One particular application I've invested in is SlimServer (Squeeze Center) music server for music around the house. I am eyeing up ordering a ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer 6-bay NAS just because I've been satisfied with my prior ReadyNAS experience. I figure on hawking the used 4-bay 2TB unit instead of populating it with new HDDs. I have a simple XPx64 workstation with a single 15k SAS HDD and controller, and will add another internal 2TB SATA for live access to current projects. I also use an external HDD cradle for archive backup.
http://www.readynas.com/?cat=27 (http://www.readynas.com/?cat=27) (they have announced a pricey 12-bay unit comparible to the SansDigital unit Bernard queries). I am eyeing the new enterprise 2TB HDD (WD2002FYPS) (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=610), so face the hurdles of being an early adopter. The whole expense is not one I can get terribly excited about. I haven't yet looked beyond ReadyNAS because of positive past experience and my Squeeze Center use (plus a rebate ends 6/30).
Edit: Folks get 100 MB/s transfer on the ReadyNAS Pro, and (unless y'all advise me otherwise) I ordered one but will not open the box until the techs email me that the 2TB HDD's work okay. That transfer rate matches or exceeds the capture rate of my workstation.
Bernard, your web images are inspirational!
Thank you, Ralph
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I have 4 of the 2 bay SansDigital carriers. They are OK, to down right scary. There was a couple instances where it formated the drives without intention. They ship in RAID mode, and if you have drives in it, it starts to format. This happened to me 2x when reorganizing my drives. Put something in that it doesnt recognize and there is a chance it will start to format. Purchased a rescue data recovery tool, and all was recovered, BUT with new dates to the files. Screwed up my file org. This is on one of the silver LED readout eSATA RAID 2Bay models. The one you posted looks more serious. SansDigital tech support was wanting to be helpful, but, not really. They basically stepped through the settings with me, and said if you'd like we can exchange it, etc. But no reason or understanding why it starts to format.
A inexpensive way to do this is use an old PC, download FREENAS(on unix) software to manage it, and you got yourself a NAS that is potentially faster setup than entry level NAS.
This is actually much easier to setup than one might expect.
but if you are not up for it...
There is Netgear RND2000, and Thecus in the upper lines. As soon as it has a built in server with a processor, it is going to be a more active server (likely running Win home server or ?).
If at all possible I would get a empty setup and fill it with my own drivers. I would also try to get one that is TRAYLESS design. I have an internal 4bay and it is so nice to be able to remove and swap drives without ANY tray or carrier for the drives. It just slides in bare.
Looks like anything decent is about $1k and up.
Jack Flesher's rec on having it setup as JBOD(Just bunch of Drives), iis faster than RAID, and having another setup to back it up regularly would do the trick. I would avoid the Drobo, as it is super slow.
ReadyNas as mentioned looks like a good unit.
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Bernard,
just came across this when looking for high speed raid http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-es-pro-xl.cfm (http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-es-pro-xl.cfm) 24 TB storage or this one http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-fc-xl.cfm (http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-fc-xl.cfm) you can hook up with Fibre Channel :-)
cheers
Henrik
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Bernard,
just came across this when looking for high speed raid http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-es-pro-xl.cfm (http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-es-pro-xl.cfm) 24 TB storage or this one http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-fc-xl.cfm (http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-speed-fc-xl.cfm) you can hook up with Fibre Channel :-)
Henrik,
Thanks, I was aware of this entry, but could not manage to find any pricing information on their website... which leads me to think that it is expensive.
Cheers,
Bernard
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I use Addonics products for video and photography storage. (http://addonics.com/)
1. For video I use their PCIe 8x card attatched to their external storage box (4 x 1TB drives) via an Infiniband cable in a RAID 5 array. Good consistent 125MB/sec transfer.
2. For photography work I use their eSATA JBOB PCI card to their external storage box with 4 x 1.5TB drives. This system is duplicated, so I am running 2 of these sets (PCI card and external storage box) of drives in a large JBOB configuration.
This is for a Windows system.
They have lots of other options so check out their site. They were a cheaper solution for me than many other "prepackeaged" solutions.
BTW in video work I would need a fiber channel only if I were capturing and editing uncompressed HD; I'm not there yet.
One more thought in the pack...
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Henrik,
Thanks, I was aware of this entry, but could not manage to find any pricing information on their website... which leads me to think that it is expensive.
Cheers,
Bernard
If you click on "BUY NOW" on the right it opens up a page with all the pricing. But you should be sitting down when you do :-)
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One very useful feature I forget to consider when looking for these things, is the ability to "SLEEP" when the drives are not in use, or a set time they might go into use.
None of the SansDigital drive bays have a Sleep function. I think for long life, and heat reasons, it would be important to have them Sleep when not in use...Specially when one of "racks" is used solely for daily, or weekly backups.
Any ideas if this is taken into account?
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If you click on "BUY NOW" on the right it opens up a page with all the pricing. But you should be sitting down when you do :-)
this one is not too bad in price, and it is Trayless (feature I like)! I never tried or have heard of them
http://www.datoptic.com/cgi-bin/web.cgi?pr...&detail=yes (http://www.datoptic.com/cgi-bin/web.cgi?product=RM15_S2P_TL&detail=yes)
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If you click on "BUY NOW" on the right it opens up a page with all the pricing. But you should be sitting down when you do :-)
Actually there is a buy now for the fiber version, but not for the other one.
The fiber version is at least 30% too expensive to interest me, and I would want to have a diskless version anyway. They are charging way too much for their drives.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Bernard,
I'm wondering what HDD you plan to use in your next storage array. I've watched the HDD market some in past months and have seen a few larger drives:
A. 1.5TB Seagate ST31500341AS Barracuda 7200.11 ($130USD)
B. 2.0TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS ($240USD)
C. 2.0TB Western Digital Enterprise RE4-GP WD2002FYPS ($330USD)
I have chosen to order a diskless 6-bay 100MB/s ReadyNas Pro Pioneer expandable "X" RAID as the price was right ($975USD), and here's the murky datapoints on HDD choice:
A. Early adopters experienced a very high number of failures using the Seagate 1.5TB. Now after multiple firmware updates, this drive is approved for use by many NAS manufacturers. The online consumer rating of this HDD is very low. My buddy is the 3rd party chip programmer for the major HDD companies and told me that Seagate made development workflow changes that required them to rework all the old previously solved bugs. So the price is right, but I'm afraid that you'll get what you pay for.
B. Using the desktop-grade 2.0TB WD20EADS drive, many early adopters using RAID systems were successful, still some were not. ReadNAS tech has emailed me that these tested well in some model NASs, but not older systems with SPARC CPUs. They are testing these now in the NAS model I ordered.
C. Western Digital recommends using the newest RE4-GP drive in RAID setups due to reduced vibration. However this is the newest HDD on the market, and besides being very expensive and out of stock everywhere, I would expect some firmware updates as is often the case with new models. The ReadyNAS tech has told me that out of his sample of 14 HDD's, he had 4 fail in an older model NAS (the model I'm replacing). They will test the drives next week in the newer 6-bay model.
Hence the HDD choice is very murky and a vote for RAID if using these high-density drives. It's my tendency to get the latest & greatest in computing devices because I hate the overhead of making the switch. My hope is that the latest and greatest will service me the longest before it's rendered obsolete, so find some justification for the new model prices.
Cheerio, Ralph
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Bernard,
I'm wondering what HDD you plan to use in your next storage array. I've watched the HDD market some in past months and have seen a few larger drives:
B. 2.0TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS ($240USD)
Cheerio, Ralph
I have read that these have a wakeup issue, and run slower than other 7200rpm drives.(?)
In my experience, no brand is bulletproof...BUT, I have had Maxtor drives fail me more often, and now Seagate. Out of maybe 10 failures, I have had 1 WD fail. I have also had good experience With old IBM drives. Samsungs also have tested to fail more often in large archiving arrays (HP uses them). So far I like the Black caviar drives from WD. They are very fast for 7200rpm. But only time will tell. HEAT is often the cause of short life to drives. That is why it is also important to get a bay that supports "Sleep".
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Actually there is a buy now for the fiber version, but not for the other one.
The fiber version is at least 30% too expensive to interest me, and I would want to have a diskless version anyway. They are charging way too much for their drives.
Cheers,
Bernard
Sorry Bernard,
Yes. I did forget to mention the price :-) ...i think our Xserver was AUD$20k when we got ours some years ago
Henrik
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I would think posting a budget would help greatly reduce your options.
I have a $600-1400 budget for this.
I already have most of my NAS that I put together myself up and running. So far it only cost me the hard drives, and a eSata pc card... and the old computer that I had use for.
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Bernard,
I'm wondering what HDD you plan to use in your next storage array. I've watched the HDD market some in past months and have seen a few larger drives:
A. 1.5TB Seagate ST31500341AS Barracuda 7200.11 ($130USD)
B. 2.0TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS ($240USD)
C. 2.0TB Western Digital Enterprise RE4-GP WD2002FYPS ($330USD)
Ralph,
No decision yet on that. I am currently using 1TB enterprise drives from Seagate and (touch wood) have not had problems so far although the room I work in is often above 30 C.
For me reliability is an order of magnitude more important that any other factor, follow by performance, capacity and then price. If you think about the time you waste when a failure occurs, 10% less performance on every access is little price to pay and a few hunderds more $ also not that big an issue.
From that standpoint I would personnally avoid buying a high performance storage product that has been on the market for less than 6 months.
Cheers,
Bernard
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After making ill comments on SansDigital, as I own a few of their 2bay enclosures, I just took delivery of the 8BAY TR8M, which is the same as the Rosewill RSV. I will post more once I setup complete. I am intending on using this in JBOD mode, as I will have this doing backups of another 8TB. We'll see how it goes.
Fyi: If I was to use RAID5 or something I would SURELY get a RAID controller. If you are "serving only yourself or maybe a couple other units, I don't think it would strain a system much by having the controller on the workstation.
So far this thing is rather good. I ended up having to use the eSATA card it came with to recognize all the drives. The software that comes with it is limited and for some reason always shows 10 drives, so I always have 2 blanks. It is FAST, but thats all due to the drives the Sata connection and controller.
It would be nice if it had locks on the drives. The case is fine. It has LED's to indicate the 2 channels, the drives being live, and active.. It is quiet, and as long as the area you have it is properly cooled (75-77 degrees F), the unit is ok. But I had the drive on without the AC at about 80F, and the drives were rather hot. I think 110 is somewhat normal for drives, but I know that the cooler you keep them, the less likely to fail. For $299, I think it is rather a simple solution for storing drives or creating a backup system. I didn't need all 8bays, but I know it will fill quick. If you have 3 or 4 drives and would want a drive storage and backup, this is great as it would be in one unit....surely plug to a battery backup/surge protected outlet.
Hope this helps Bernard and others.
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Some advice:
- Devices such as the AccuRAID AR212S (you get similar devices from DELL, HP, IBM and other, smaller server manufacturers) are meant as live storage. Usually file or database servers use these devices for storing their data. The RAID is only meant for reliability and thus availability. These devices are usually loud. Very loud. Small fans running at high speeds often without any temperature management (i. e. almost running at top speed regardless of envirinment temperature) safe warning messages if the temperature rises above given levels. So you would want to place one not in your office. Believe me, it's not nice working in the same room with such devices The basement would be the place to put such a thing.
- I'm not fond of bridging solutions. The mentioned NAS seems to use a SCSI controller and uses adaptors for SATA drives. You should be able to get pure SATA solutions where the translation between the two buses is ommitted.
- If you're going to buy the HDDs separately buy from different dealers thus reducing the risk of getting only drives from one production run which might have had production failures. I've had good experience with WD's RE2 and RE3 drives. But as was mentioned every manufacturer seems to have problems now and again with some batches. I'd choose between WD and Seagate. Those brands have given me less bad drives than others.
- Buy raid edition drives. They're somewhat more expensive but tested for 24/7 usage and often have better (longer) guarantees. As far as I know all major manufacturers offer them.
- Use gigabit ethernet to connect to these devices. It's the most practical solution. Of course connecting them via SAS would give you higher throuput but also more cost. And again keep in mind that you most probably want to get such a device only with some walls between you and it.
- Use a different backup device.
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Some advice:
- Devices such as the AccuRAID AR212S (you get similar devices from DELL, HP, IBM and other, smaller server manufacturers) are meant as live storage. Usually file or database servers use these devices for storing their data. The RAID is only meant for reliability and thus availability. These devices are usually loud. Very loud. Small fans running at high speeds often without any temperature management (i. e. almost running at top speed regardless of envirinment temperature) safe warning messages if the temperature rises above given levels. So you would want to place one not in your office. Believe me, it's not nice working in the same room with such devices The basement would be the place to put such a thing.
- I'm not fond of bridging solutions. The mentioned NAS seems to use a SCSI controller and uses adaptors for SATA drives. You should be able to get pure SATA solutions where the translation between the two buses is ommitted.
- If you're going to buy the HDDs separately buy from different dealers thus reducing the risk of getting only drives from one production run which might have had production failures. I've had good experience with WD's RE2 and RE3 drives. But as was mentioned every manufacturer seems to have problems now and again with some batches. I'd choose between WD and Seagate. Those brands have given me less bad drives than others.
- Buy raid edition drives. They're somewhat more expensive but tested for 24/7 usage and often have better (longer) guarantees. As far as I know all major manufacturers offer them.
- Use gigabit ethernet to connect to these devices. It's the most practical solution. Of course connecting them via SAS would give you higher throuput but also more cost. And again keep in mind that you most probably want to get such a device only with some walls between you and it.
- Use a different backup device.
Thks for the detailed feedback.
Noise is indeed often overlooked.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Thks for the detailed feedback.
Noise is indeed often overlooked.
Cheers,
Bernard
Ohh, yes, Totally agree, noise is very important or more so the lack of it, I am not using my HP MSA for that very reason, that it just makes too much noise. but the boxes do need cooling and that is what causes the noise, or you will have over-cooked images!
Henrik
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FWIW, one of the reasons I waited for the DROBO II was its greatly reduced noise signature as compared to the DROBO I. Mine is currently sitting on the floor about 1 meter away from me and I cannot hear it. I have it populated with reasonably quiet and cool-running Seagate and WD drives. To date even on heavy I/O, I have had the fan kick in maybe twice to a higher level -- and even then it remained barely audible.
Cheers,
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Anyone familiar with this solution? I am starting to look at my next generation storage solution.
http://www.sansdigital.com/accuraid/ar212s.html (http://www.sansdigital.com/accuraid/ar212s.html)
What are the other interesting offerings with Raid 6 capability and a SCSI320 interface?
There's plenty of card-based hardware RAID systems out there. They're great if you need the speed. I use a CalDigit HD Element (http://www.caldigit.com/HDElement/) for image data and video scratch. The R/W speeds are great (but there's faster stuff (http://www.dulcesystems.com/html/pro_idc.html) out there). For long term, no-speed-needed storage I use DroboPro units with 8x1TB drives.
Take a look at what the manufacturer's RAID card offers. That's a good way to "look under the hood".
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got a lacie 4big quadra 6TB not too long ago....use it in a raid 5 (one 4tb volume on my desktop)...have some other smaller mirrored raids but will get more of these lacies....looks great, according to tests is one of the fastest enclosures, hot swap (if you need)....i am currently running it off fw800, will switch to e-sata soon (much faster)...they are also the most quiet enclosure i have ever had and by far the prettiest:) no powerbrick, just the cables....simple and elegant....and btw: i bought mine refurb'd for 900$ a couple of months ago....
i know lacie somehow has a terrible reputation but i have all lacie HDs and monitors and never had a single problem and their people are a joy....i had a problem with an external dvd burner once (it died) and they gave me a 30% valued customer credit off a new one although the warranty had expired a year earlier...this was my portable one which had been banged around quite a bit.....
anyway, they also have other solutions, check them out...
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From that standpoint I would personnally avoid buying a high performance storage product that has been on the market for less than 6 months.
Bernard, here's an update to this old thread: Essentially I rode out that multi-month drive maturity period. The system I upgraded to is a ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer, which is a 6-bay RAID NAS. The drive I opted for is a Western Digital WD2002FYPS, a 2TB drive that is both enterprise and RAID rated. There was a long delay until the ReadyNAS folks put out a add-on patch to accommodate these "green" drive's spin-down to ameliorate head loading, essentially disabling it (WD has a similar utility wdidle3.exe). Anyway the NAS box is all good and is much, much quicker than my prior 4-bay ReadyNAS NV+ (for sale), and I have yet to make the smart connection to the UPS to disable journaling which gives a big speed boost. This box is noisy with fans so locating it in the office closet is essential for peace and quiet.
Meanwhile I added one of those 2TB enterprise HDDs to my desktop and it went corrupt in a few weeks. Ordered a faster WD2001FASS 2TB drive to replace it from an online retailer, but the packaging was so inadequate (cardboard box with no foam padding) that the drive arrived dinged up and DOA (even the desiccant package had ruptured). No mentioning the retailer's name but their initials are "MacMall". I'm opting for WD to ship the replacement direct to get one that is packaged properly.
With my first HDD failures ever I'm glad to have the NAS box + secondary external caddy HDD archives. The ReadyNAS Pioneer was just under $1k, and each HDD just under $300. Perhaps you'll find it worth checking out if still looking for a storage solution.
- Ralph
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This could be it...
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?ci...anguage=english (http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=198&set_language=english)
Wonder how noisy it is though.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Noisy = fans = long lived cool life? Fans might be a beneficial evil.
(Bernard, ever see rampant green-magenta OOF CA using the macro on your Zeiss 100 f/2? I bought one and do.)
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This is a pretty rambling message...much like my thinking on this topic.
So far I have used external USB drives and extra hard drives on extra computers that are networked to make sure I have multiple copies.
Now I am looking at replacing some of this stuff, including a couple of older servers (I think I do not need the added complexity of servers given that my main use is just storage).
I have thought about devices from QNAP (439 or 639) and also read about Thecus but can only find it in Canada at Tigerdirect.
Wondering also about the hard drives themselves, is it worth paying the extra money for server type drives (eg. WD RE4's) or just assume that stuff is going to fail anyway and that is why you have mutlple copies.
The awful thing about USB drives is the slow speed for initial backups, eSATA might be better.
I also like the ability to have all of the pictures available.
In ideal world would have a machine with one or more large drives with main copies of everything and then back that up.
Offsite storage is a problem. I have taken USB drives to my cottage once in a while. Now I have sort of high speed internet down there but it comes with a nasty GB cap so I suspect that physical transfer is still the way to go.
In the past have used tape (ugh, nothing really ever works that well and capacity is too low) as well as CDs and DVDs (time, patience and capacity).
One option is to build a machine in a case that will take a lot of HDs. I have a server now that takes six HDs but buying a server with that many drives seems expensive now (I got it at a really good price in 2004 because I got a Dell percent off coupon).
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Well I am as well looking for a new solution. Something around 4-6TB in save storage. I'm still not sure what the right choice is. A DAS or NAS system ?
- I don't need to share the stuff on the drive.
- The main purpose is, to back up all the work on my workstation to an external device every 3-5 days.
- After each backup it will be disconnected, so that it is not on the same line as the workstation.
- I think I would prefer a simple back up solution with eSATA, but I'm open to new things.
Now what options are out there ? is it correct that all Drobo solutions don't have a eSATA connection ? Which I could't not believe.
Another one would be the LaCie 4big Quadra, which isn't to cheap, anything else out there ? The N7700PRO sounded quite nice, but some reviews of the N7700 said it is quite loud and only usable in a separate room, which would not work for me, does somebody know if they changed the fans used in the PRO version ?
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Watch www.techbargains.com for something like this expired deal:
EXPIRED Dell PowerEdge T310 Server Desktop Computer Intel Xeon 2.4GHz 4GB/250GB $420 Free Ship, Oct. 22 11 AM
Deal Expired: HOT deal! Dell Small Business has the Dell PowerEdge T310 Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Server Desktop Computer for $420.00 after Coupon Code: N2MP0V07LCL2WH (Exp after only 50 uses!). Be sure to choose FREE Next Day Delivery. Tax in most.
Intel Xeon X3430 @ 2.4GHz; quad core processor; 8 GB L3 Cache
4GB DDR3 RAM; 250GB hard drive;
dual gigabit ethernet; no operating system; 3yr warranty
1. Choose Customize it under PowerEdge T310
2. Scroll down to Primary Hard Drive and choose only 1 250GB hard drive instead of 2 for a savings of $129!
The cpu costs $204 alone retail at Newegg:
Intel Xeon X3430 Lynnfield 2.4GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Server Processor - Retail
Add Windows Home Server for $99 (I bought it for $81) not on sale. Total cost $520. Energy efficient, dual power supply capable, up to 32GB DDR3 RAM, dual gigabit NICs, RAID available. Hot swap or cabled HDD and SSD.
This HP Mediasmart with WHS server costs $525:
CPU Type: Intel Celeron Processor 2.2 Ghz 64-bit
Installed Memory Size: 2GB
Memory Type: DDR2
Hard Drive (Installed): 1TB
Then add 4 x1.5TB to 2TB drives. Backup over gigabit.
The only **real** negative is that WHS is only 32 bit. The 64 bit Windowes Swer4ver 2008 & etc. is way too expensive. So I layered WHS on top of MSFT Hyper-V so that I can run other 64 bit aps while WHS uses small time slices and RAM.
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- The main purpose is, to back up all the work on my workstation to an external device every 3-5 days.
Now what options are out there ? .........
Christopher,
Another option is backup software like "NTI Shadow" that came with the ReadyNAS box I'm using. It does real-time continuous backups.
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Christopher,
Another option is backup software like "NTI Shadow" that came with the ReadyNAS box I'm using. It does real-time continuous backups.
Yes that is an option, but I normally prefer that the main back up and the original storage are not on the same power line all the time. I had once a very strange fuse blow in London, which actually managed to take out two main computeres even though they should have been protected behind a over voltage power connection.
One additional reason i don't like about most NAS systems, that they are quite loud. (Yes there are quiet once, but they jump in price quite a bit)
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Noisy = fans = long lived cool life? Fans might be a beneficial evil.
Let me quote from Google's paper Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (pdf) (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf): "The figure shows that failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend."
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Let me quote from Google's paper Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (pdf) (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf): "The figure shows that failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend."
Well another fact is that there are very effective, completely noise free fans. They just cost more, which makes everything expensive.
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Thks for the detailed feedback.
Let me add one more thing: When you think about double digit TB storage: Don't forget file system you are going to use. If I would buy/build a storage solution with this capacity for myself I would make sure it runs ZFS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS) (paper (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/zfs_last.pdf)) which does end-to-end checksumming (plus many other advantages). I would not trust so much data to a last-gen file system like HFS+, NTFS, ext3/4, etc because 24 TB is an awful lot of data to lose. Too bad Apple recently decided to drop the ZFS project...
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Sorry, but no need to bother with apple on a server:
In computing, ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs. ZFS is implemented as open-source software, licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). The ZFS name is a trademark of Sun.[2]
Buy the Dell Xeon and slap it on!
Or, on the high end, we ran many Sun servers for 1 million unique visitor login per month web sites (Fortune 5 company data center.) "A" is just one certain niche, really workstations, not servers (who needs high end video, etc. on storage box).
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Christopher,
Another option is backup software like "NTI Shadow" that came with the ReadyNAS box I'm using. It does real-time continuous backups.
Does it also delete the files on the backup unit when the files on the main drive are deleted? If it does then it is not a good solution.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Does it also delete the files on the backup unit when the files on the main drive are deleted? If it does then it is not a good solution.
Cheers,
Bernard
I don't know that program, but I would expect that this feature is there, but can be customized or turned off.
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The N7700PRO sounded quite nice, but some reviews of the N7700 said it is quite loud and only usable in a separate room, which would not work for me, does somebody know if they changed the fans used in the PRO version ?
Funny how these companies just don't seem to understand how their products will be used, isn't it?
MY current Wiebetech 6TB unit is great in all accounts but the noise level, although it is still pretty decent.
Apple manages to design totally silent Mac Pros, yet few storage companies are seemingly able to design a truly quiet enclosure.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Let me quote from Google's paper Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (pdf) (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf): "The figure shows that failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend."
Can you answer this? Is there any known correlation between thermal cycling and failure? I should think that heating & cooling will be more severe than maintaining a hot temperature because the thermal expansion will cause mechanical stresses on solder joints and connections. It could be that if the average temperature is low but peak temperatures remain similar, the drive would have undergone more severe thermal cycling. Presumably the Google folks looked for that correlation and didn't find anything worth reporting. That goes into the persistant question if it's better to leave the system running 24/7 or power it down when not it use. I once asked my buddy who worked doing disk drive testing and he didn't have a clear answer; "Sleep mode vs. thermal cycling is a never ending discussion. Constantly “hot” is also a risk so I follow a middle ground. If I know I wont be on the computer for a day or more I shut it down. It’s the “green” thing to do. Some drives only do a self diagnostic after a power cycle which means if a drive is starting to have issues and it runs constantly it may die w/o any notification. Do all you can to keep the drives cool either way."
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Funny how these companies just don't seem to understand how their products will be used, isn't it?
MY current Wiebetech 6TB unit is great in all accounts but the noise level, although it is still pretty decent.
Apple manages to design totally silent Mac Pros, yet few storage companies are seemingly able to design a truly quiet enclosure.
Cheers,
Bernard
Yes I read the review, which was quite nice until I cam to the point: This unit is clearly designed to be in a separate server room. We would not want to have this noise level in our office room. I just thought, great ..........
I know that for you it is not option, because you need a LOT more space than I do, but that is one main big point for the Lacie. It has one large 120mm fan, which is really silent.
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Does it also delete the files on the backup unit when the files on the main drive are deleted? If it does then it is not a good solution.
Cheers,
Bernard
If you want me to research further, then it will benefit us both. What I do know is that you select how many prior archive copies are left on the backup before deleting. If it indeed deleted the file when you deleted the local copy then the Shadow would be completely worthless as user error is a common culprit. I admit I've only been using the new system for about one month.
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yet few storage companies are seemingly able to design a truly quiet enclosure.
The Intel SS4200-E is rock solid and whisper quiet. Also fast and cheap!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...&Tpk=ss4200 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859117003&Tpk=ss4200)
It is a core Linux 2.6 box made by Intel for OEM's. You can also buy it with Windows Home Server installed.
Celeron CPU, 512meg of RAM, dual fan, gigabit, temperature monitoring. You can upgrade to dual core and 2GB if you like. Takes 4 drives.
I bought the base box for $135 on sale. Loaded it with 4x1.5 TB in RAID 10 - the best way to use the base as-is. (4x 1.5 TB WD Caviar Green ay $100 each shipped. Total cost $535. This is 3rd line storage ...)
Boots in 1 minute, shuts down in 15 seconds. The OS comes loaded on a 512meg flash drive. Swap out to whatever you want on that drive, or via IDE - FreeNAS, ZFS, etc. WHS install directions are on teh Intel site. Just requires a RS232 cable.
Rock solid, quiet, and **fast**:
This is from Small Net Builder as of 1 year ago:
Performance
It’s fair to say that the SS4200-E turned in screaming fast performance numbers. For my comparisons, I looked at 1000 Mbps RAID 5 read and write performance for all BYOD NASes. As the radio announcer says, “hold the calls – we have a new winner”.
I **was** going to load Windows Home Server on the thing, but it is just too perfect as a Linux 2.6 box as-is. I login with SSH (via wireless n from my laptop) when the limited web interface doesn't tell me all I need to know. Mostly it just sits there and does it's job all alone ....
I have seen them as low as $95 as open box. Last sale was a little too high, about $170. I am going to buy 1-2 more just to play with.
I LOVE THIS BOX!!!!
(The top Newegg comment has a pretty good summary on hacking/using this box. $200 shipped w/o disks now, not on sale. Quote, that I agree with: "Fans are automatically spun down to be nearly inaudible after a brief blast during startup. This is the case with the standard CPU and also with an upgrade to dual core.")
Cheers!
Michael
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I've used a number of these types of storage solutions. First of all, I would never trust anything LaCie (to be fair, I've never used any of their four-drive boxes, but I've had a huge collection of failures on their dual-drive units (they sell a lot of very attractively priced mid-high capacity dual-drive systems, which I was using (and installing for others) a lot of for a while until I started to notice their elevated failure rate). A colleague has both an Apple XServe RAID (in for repair right now, but ran flawlessly for four years, and I'm pretty sure the repair won't result in data loss) and a newer Promise RAID (the unit Apple now sells), which is flawless after about a year and a half - never lost a drive on either one, and the Promise is RAID 6 (can tolerate double drive failure) PLUS hot spare (will replace a down drive automatically). The Promise is big, noisy and expensive, BUT it seems as close to foolproof as you can get - you'd have to be pretty blind not to notice a TRIPLE drive failure, and the drive you change in any failure always comes in as the hot spare, so there's no risk of detonating your data by pulling the wrong drive during a rebuild (you let the rebuild happen onto the hot spare BEFORE replacing the drive). The 16 bay Promise costs close to 15 grand fully populated, AND wants to live in the basement (noise), but it's as safe as you can get short of an offsite backup (and have you priced a T3 line lately?). One big advantage of 16 bays is that the percentage loss to parity is very low - RAID 5 always takes one drive for parity, and RAID 6 takes two, no matter how many drives there are in total, so the Promise running RAID 6 plus a hot spare actually loses less capacity than a 4-bay system running a barely adequate RAID 5!
I'm using an 8-bay EZQuest myself right now, and it works well ($3500 for 8 TB - $5000 for 16 TB). Unlike the REALLY expensive systems, the intelligence on this sucker is in the PCI-E controller board, not the RAID case. I bet a homemade version of this could be put together somewhat cheaper - the RocketRAID card they use is about $400, then any 8-bay case should work - unless the 4 eSATA to single InfiniBand connector they use is very expensive. The case connects to the card using 2 InfiniBand connectors, each of which is carrying 4 eSATA channels (it's just combining the signals, not translating). My next one will be a similar concept, but probably homemade. I'll also use RAID 6 next time - this one is RAID 5...
-Dan
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Can you answer this? Is there any known correlation between thermal cycling and failure? I should think that heating & cooling will be more severe than maintaining a hot temperature because the thermal expansion will cause mechanical stresses on solder joints and connections.
What happens 90%+ of the time is that the controller board on the drive eats itself due to heat and thermal cycling. I can't tell you how many drives I've recovered by swapping in an identical controller board from another drive. Of course, the downside is that the controller board also keeps track of bad sectors and other necessary data, so this is only recommended for yank-the-data recovery operations and not as a method to get the drive working properly again. The drive itself usually has to run for 5+ years before the bearings or controller motor itself actually dies.
Also, some designs run too hot. Maxtors, for instance, ran too hot and without air blowing over the controller board, they ate themselves almost always in a year or so. Quite a few external 3.5" drives also have this issue - like the MyBook series. No fan and too much heat equals a dead chip sooner or later.(often the SATA interface card in this example)
The advantage of 2.5 inch drives is that they suffer none of this as they don't get hot enough in the first place for it to matter. And they are quite a bit less power hungry and take up less space. This can often mean a full size smaller case as well. Oh, and you can stack a ton of them in a giant raid array if you want without exceeding the limits of your power supply or overheating the rest of your machine.