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Author Topic: RAID 5 NAS for Mac OS X for photos  (Read 37413 times)

BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #20 on: November 28, 2006, 09:44:26 am »

Quote
Yeah thats correct.

Gigabit Ethernet is about 125 MB/s (theoretical) and the fastest
FireWire I know of is FW 800 and this is "just" 100 MB/s. USB
is much slower and more cumbersome.

However for striping fast SCSI drives it may be too slow, one
can use multiple GB Ethernet ports or use fibre channel.

ciao,

Concorde-SST
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I happen to have one of these buffalo Terastations myself (TS-1), and never get even close to these theoretical transfer rates although all the components in my set up are compatible with 1 GB ethernet. It takes typically about 4-6 seconds to open a 70 MB tiff file in PS.

Buffalo themselves assess the actual transfer rate as being 13 MB/s with the older units and about 33 MB/s with the newer Gigabyte ethernet ones.

[a href=\"http://buffalo.jp/products/catalog/item/t/ts-htgl_r5/index.html]http://buffalo.jp/products/catalog/item/t/...l_r5/index.html[/url]

One the other hand, they claim to achieve about 100 MB/s with their latest eSATA offerings.

http://buffalo.jp/products/catalog/item/h/...2_r5/index.html

Regards,
Bernard

Jonathan Wienke

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« Reply #21 on: November 28, 2006, 10:00:46 am »

Read or write?
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #22 on: November 28, 2006, 05:18:40 pm »

Quote
Read or write?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87538\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Jonathan,

If you check the links, you'll see that both read and write figures are included, and within 15% of each others.

Regards,
Bernard

Jonathan Wienke

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« Reply #23 on: November 28, 2006, 05:32:16 pm »

My comprehension of Japanese is very poor, but it looks like the maximum speed is only achievable with the eSATA connection, not USB, which is only about 1/3 as fast. Throughput with a gigabit ethernet connection should be similar to eSATA; perhaps a bit slower, but not too much, and significantly faster than USB or Firewire. I don't know why it isn't, unless the eSATA model has some faster internal components (drive controller, etc) than the gigabit ethernet model(s), or they've been using a cheap gigabit ethernet controller.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2006, 05:35:33 pm by Jonathan Wienke »
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #24 on: November 28, 2006, 06:12:51 pm »

Quote
My comprehension of Japanese is very poor, but it looks like the maximum speed is only achievable with the eSATA connection, not USB, which is only about 1/3 as fast.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87599\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Your understanding is correct Jonathan. I am not sure what the reason is.

Other ethernet enclosures from different vendors could perform better than the ethernet Buffalo offerings, but I don't remember even seeing test results of an ethernet RAID enclosure that showed figures even remotely close to 125 MB/s transfer rates.

If you know of some that do actually perfom this fast, I'd be very interested in getting some pointers to these.

Thank you in advance,

Regards,
Bernard

jani

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« Reply #25 on: November 29, 2006, 05:54:46 am »

Quote
Your understanding is correct Jonathan. I am not sure what the reason is.
USB isn't really well suited to these kinds of loads, because other devices on the same bus can degrade performance in a way that seems random to the casual observer.

If you mix USB 1.1 and 2.0 high speed devices, you're also asking for trouble.

Also, the max theoretical speed of USB 2.0 high speed is 480 Mbps, or roughly 50 MB/s, while SATA I is 1500 Mbps (150 MB/s) and SATA II is 3000 Mbps (300 MB/s).

Quote
Other ethernet enclosures from different vendors could perform better than the ethernet Buffalo offerings, but I don't remember even seeing test results of an ethernet RAID enclosure that showed figures even remotely close to 125 MB/s transfer rates.
125 MB/s over single 1 Gb ethernet is guaranteed to be a blatant lie.

It's just 1 Gb divided by 8. Even at optimal performance, a typical storage protocol over ethernet would not use 8 bits per byte for transfer, but at least 10. So the theoretical best you should get, would be 100 MB/s. Then there may be additional overhead.

Add in file system characteristics, and you'll never see the theoretical performance of these external drives, just like you never see the theoretical performance of your internal drives.
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #26 on: December 05, 2006, 07:34:06 pm »

Some facts about Raid 5 actual performance:

http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2881&p=12

Read speed is always far below the theoretical 125 MB/s in their test as well, typically around 25 MB/s.

Regards,
Bernard

larryg

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« Reply #27 on: December 05, 2006, 08:10:21 pm »

received an email for the Buffalo 2 tera   for about $1050

Does this fit in with this discussion.

Was tempted.  I use Lacie and Maxtor up to 500 gb (maxtor at 300 gb) connected together.  not perfect but allows for storage capabilities with backup.

http://www.buy.com/prod/Buffalo_2_0_TeraSt.../202308876.html

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=...653&dcaid=17653
The above link is the sale for under $1,000
« Last Edit: December 06, 2006, 09:29:57 am by larryg »
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Jann Lipka

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« Reply #28 on: December 09, 2006, 04:18:18 am »

I'm not sure , but my guess would be eSATA
should be faster then gigabit ethernet

I have 2 SATA enclosures with inexpensive Sata drives and after some
digging on different forums I came to conclusion that for me skipping RAID 5
makes storage above all more simple and in fact IMO safer ,
as I can cheaply make Backup copies of every drive I fill ..
I can easily hot swap what ever information I need ..

( alltogether about thirty 300 Gig drives )

What I use is Sonnet SATA box ( 5 drives in it can be filled with 5 x 5oo MEgs drives )
As it is a mport multiplier enclosure you can attach like four of those to the same PCI card in my G5 .

regards
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pss

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« Reply #29 on: December 09, 2006, 05:20:53 pm »

i have a infrant ready nas (X-NAS?)...works perfectly...raid5, relatively inexpensive, gigabit ethernet....great software....also have a FW800 raid5...my next is definitely another ready nas, cheaper and much more versatile, speed is very good (not so important for backup/server anyway)....got the readynas because the buffalo is quite a bit slower (got a buffalo first and thought i was on usb 1)...google some reviews, they all say the same.....
the ready nas is limited to 4x500gb which is a little less then 1.5TB in one case (RAID5).... they also have some rack mounted solutions.....the best thing about the ready nas is the expanding raid....get the box with one drive, add a second, add a third, add a fourth, the raid expands automatically...
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A. Nonny Mouse Coward

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« Reply #30 on: January 19, 2007, 02:37:26 pm »

Take a look at http://www.2degreesfrost.com. They have an Etherenet attached NAS or, optionally, SAN fron 1 TB up to 13 TB.  JBOD, RAID 0,1 and 5.  Multiple boxes can be cascaded for larger storage sizes.

Prices are much less than XServe RAID with or w/o XSAN.  

I saw them at MacWorld2007.  The hardware and SAN software are established Linux products, recently migrated to OS X.

Speed on Gigabit E'net seem to run around 85% of theoretical since it is just Ethernet, no IP or TCP involved.  

I have an evaluation unit coming.  I'll update the post once I've had a chance to test it.
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wolfnowl

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« Reply #31 on: January 20, 2007, 01:55:27 am »

Infrant Technologies is another company you might want to look at.  No personal experience but I've heard good things...

Mike.
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Sami Kulju

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« Reply #32 on: January 22, 2007, 12:10:26 pm »

Quote
Infrant Technologies is another company you might want to look at.  No personal experience but I've heard good things...

Mike.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=96710\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
 

Just in case, anyone is interested about Infrants Ready NAS+ and Max OSX combo...

I installed one to our network to serve as archive with Portfolio software.

In the infrants userforum was some questions about transfer speeds (with different setups) so i made some tests with 100Mb files.

For me the speed is enough since we don´t use NAS for anything else than archieve.

Set:

Ready NAS NV+ (4x750 Barracuda ES)
RAID5
1 GB Ethernet (2 routers / 8 macs / 3 printers...)
G5 Quad
OS X 10.4.8

NAS config:

only AFP
Jumbo frames on
all journaling disabled


G5 Quad to NAS 100MB file 18 sec.
G5 Quad to NAS 1GB file 3 min 11 sec.

NAS to G5 Quad 100MB file 6 sec.
NAS to G5 Quad 1GB file 50 sec.


sami
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budjames

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« Reply #33 on: March 23, 2008, 08:11:34 am »

My main workstation is a MacPro 8core with 4 tb internal drives (2 in RAID 0 configuration for photo and video storage). I have an external 1.5TB Iomega UltraMax FW800 connected to back up the internal RAID.

This week, I just installed a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ on my LAN for network accessible storage and archiving. I purchased the empty box from Newegg.com and 4 separate 1TB Seagate drives. Doing it this way saved over $1,000 compared to purchasing the unit with the drives installed.

My plan is to reduce the clutter around my MacPro by backing up to the NAS. I use a MacBook Pro as a desktop replacement for my financial planning practice. I have created different shares on the NAS volume for photos and business related files. When the ReadyNAS starts to get filled, I can connect Mac formatted USB drives to any of the 3 USB ports on the device. That's where I plan to move my Iomega UltraMax box from my MacPro work area.

I have a wired gigabit LAN. Using iStat on my MacPro, read/write speeds to the ReadyNAS average 22-26 MB/sec. These speeds are more than twice the speed of my Apple Airport Extreme USB drive. So far so good.

Cheers.
Bud James
North Wales, PA.
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feppe

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« Reply #34 on: March 23, 2008, 08:54:53 am »

Can't believe no one has mentioned Drobo, yet. With their new DroboShare you can make into a NAS. Don't know what limitations there are to its capabilities as I'm not interested in its networking capabilities.

Drobo relatively new start-up, but reviews I've read claim that the product is already ready for primetime. Nevertheless, I'm impatiently waiting for Drobo 2.0, as I don't beta-test products.

BJNY

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« Reply #35 on: March 23, 2008, 01:10:10 pm »

NAS with its "overhead" never tops 30MB/sec in the real world.

 
Quote
Gigabit ethernet (which all of the TeraStations support) is faster than any flavor of USB or firewire, and is much more conducive to simultaneous connections to multiple machines.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87508\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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kaelaria

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« Reply #36 on: March 23, 2008, 01:10:10 pm »

Drobo is not beta by any means, it's been around about a year and works 100% perfectly!

I use one for backup and to store my movie collection, using 4 1TB drives.

It's fine for streamsing DVDs but not as fast for use as primary storage of working files for my photo work.  My primary storage is still my 2TB RAID array inside my case.

Drobo does have a $200 add on unit to link up to two drobo units and turn them into one big NAS through ethernet - however the transfer speeds are still limited to USB2 speed because that's how the ethernet unit attaches to the drobos.

If you don't mind the hit in speed, using them as a NAS is a very cheap alternative.  You can currently have a 6TB useable space NAS, fully protected, for $3000.  As larger drives come out that figure will go way up of course.  Right now only 1TB drives are out, but the 1.3's are coming out in a couple months.
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mcbroomf

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« Reply #37 on: March 24, 2008, 09:21:28 pm »

Has anyone tried one of these?
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storag...0-e/ss4000e.pdf

It does say the drive limit is 500GB but I understand there is a firmware upgrade that allows it to take 1TB drives now.

They are a little less than $500

Mike
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kaelaria

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« Reply #38 on: March 24, 2008, 09:46:29 pm »

That is simply a low power linux box running samba.

It requires all the drives to be identical, you can not change or upgrade the configuration (true of just about all RAID arrays), and if you have a drive fail but can not get the EXACT same drive to replace it later (model, and firmaware) you will suffer a performance loss using the device.

It's important that if you build a RAID array that you purchase spare drives while you can.  You also have to buy the maximum configuration you will ever use with it, at the time you build.

You can build that yourself for about $150, it's just a case, low end MB/CPU/RAM, power supply and a free OS.
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nma

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« Reply #39 on: March 24, 2008, 10:36:59 pm »

Quote
My main workstation is a MacPro 8core with 4 tb internal drives (2 in RAID 0 configuration for photo and video storage). I have an external 1.5TB Iomega UltraMax FW800 connected to back up the internal RAID.

This week, I just installed a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ on my LAN for network accessible storage and archiving. I purchased the empty box from Newegg.com and 4 separate 1TB Seagate drives. Doing it this way saved over $1,000 compared to purchasing the unit with the drives installed.

My plan is to reduce the clutter around my MacPro by backing up to the NAS. I use a MacBook Pro as a desktop replacement for my financial planning practice. I have created different shares on the NAS volume for photos and business related files. When the ReadyNAS starts to get filled, I can connect Mac formatted USB drives to any of the 3 USB ports on the device. That's where I plan to move my Iomega UltraMax box from my MacPro work area.

I have a wired gigabit LAN. Using iStat on my MacPro, read/write speeds to the ReadyNAS average 22-26 MB/sec. These speeds are more than twice the speed of my Apple Airport Extreme USB drive. So far so good.

Cheers.
Bud James
North Wales, PA.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=183699\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Be careful. Neither NAS or RAID 5 is suitable for backup. These systems are not archival. They are convenient when they work properly, but there are several failure modes the manufactures do not discuss, including failures of the redundent power supplies. Doesn't happen often, but when it does it's a real mess.
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