Pages: 1 [2] 3   Go Down

Author Topic: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8  (Read 22994 times)

Christopher Sanderson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2693
    • photopxl.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #20 on: March 07, 2014, 05:42:11 pm »

And to add insult to injury, my brand new 18 TB Promise Pegasus 2 R6 just reported a DEAD disk after 5 hours of use.

This required a ten hour re-build of Disk 1 in the 0 slot of a RAID 5 setup

The drive seems to be working fine again but one's confidence in the system is seriously rocked but that sort of ocurrence.

Promise Tech support is by emailed reports generated out of the machine. Response time is 24 hours.... ::)

(I think a 10-12 hour time difference from EST accounts for half of that)

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #21 on: March 07, 2014, 06:25:49 pm »

:(
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

BJL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6600
High res. display support: Mac OS 10.9.3 should help
« Reply #22 on: March 07, 2014, 06:30:29 pm »

However I am running into problems under 10.9.2 with my 2 screens set up, cannot get OSX to set the Dell 30 inch at full resolution... :-(
Hopefully 10.9.3 (now in beta) will help: high resolution graphics output and audio are the focus areas.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 06:33:46 pm by BJL »
Logged

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #23 on: March 07, 2014, 09:19:44 pm »

And to add insult to injury, my brand new 18 TB Promise Pegasus 2 R6 just reported a DEAD disk after 5 hours of use.

This required a ten hour re-build of Disk 1 in the 0 slot of a RAID 5 setup

The drive seems to be working fine again but one's confidence in the system is seriously rocked but that sort of ocurrence.

Promise Tech support is by emailed reports generated out of the machine. Response time is 24 hours.... ::)

Really sorry to hear this. It is true that once you start to have problems with a unit just after arrival, it may be better to return it right away before committing data to it...

Cheers,
Bernard

Christopher Sanderson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2693
    • photopxl.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #24 on: March 07, 2014, 10:23:26 pm »

Bernard you are likely correct.

However, there is a two year warranty and the reporting feature of the drive shows only one unrepeated anomaly.

Interestingly, there was also a coincidental firmware update that the tech support folk seem to suggest may have cured the problem...

Vamos a ver. I have been using the drive in a non-critical mirror situation to my old MacPro - since I still have to wait a few weeks for the new BlackMac.

If it happens again, the individual drive will go back and I have also ordered two identical drives as potential replacements. I actually rather regret not having ordered the eight drive R8 model since it is easier to set aside one or two drives as 'spares'.

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #25 on: March 08, 2014, 06:57:32 am »

If it happens again, the individual drive will go back and I have also ordered two identical drives as potential replacements. I actually rather regret not having ordered the eight drive R8 model since it is easier to set aside one or two drives as 'spares'.

Indeed. I am fully using the 8 drives of the R8 in Raid6 but also have 2 spare drives.

My backup unit is a 10 bay NAS also in raid6 with 2 hot spares and 2 additional spare disks.

I find it convenient to have live storage and back with the exact same available capacity.

Cheers,
Bernard

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #26 on: March 08, 2014, 12:05:24 pm »

Sounds like a sensible arrangement Bernard, though what's the physical separation of the storage?
I'm thinking of placing backup in our outhouse as it's separate enough from rest of house to be safe in case of a fire.
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

bcooter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1520
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #27 on: March 08, 2014, 02:32:10 pm »

Sounds like a sensible arrangement Bernard, though what's the physical separation of the storage?
I'm thinking of placing backup in our outhouse as it's separate enough from rest of house to be safe in case of a fire.

I envy you guys that do post in one location.

With thunderbolt,  fw 800 machines in each of our facilities and of course working on location, choosing the correct interface for drives is somewhat of a nightmare.

The large 8 tb G drives I travel with don't have any connection but thunderbolt, which obviously won't work on a previous generation mac pro, which is a shame because we had promax trick out the lastest silver macpro for fcp 7 and divinci 8, along with a breakout box for hdmi monitors.  

So to move to the older macpros from the new Imac thunderbolt machines we use requires a the ability to clone a drive to fw 800 for working, then back to a thunderbolt machine for backup.

Given the fact that the project we're wrapping up takes about 12 terbytes of video and still data, edits, transcodes and effects makes moving around a nightmare.

If I didn't have hundreds of terabytes of fw800 drives in data, I guess I would just jump to the future and write a huge check and start duplicating, but that's a nightmarish way to work and would take weeks of a single person just copying and cataloging and carrying a NAS server on a plane every month really isn't an option.

Anyway, for backup I also use identical drives, set up with syncro x and every bit of downtime, (when there is a slight amount of downtime) we sync the drives to have working clones that are then put off site.

Problem is with the different interfaces and the multiple locations I can easily have a 12 terabyte project that baloons to 60 or more terabytes to have safe backups.

___________________________________


Because of this my question on the new macpro.  Has everyone just copied and discarded their older fw 800 drives and moved them to thunderbolt or usb 3 or have they found a way to make fw 800 drives work reliably on the black macpro?

____________________________________

I know wishing anything from apple is screaming in the middle of the ocean, but I'd give anything if when apple changes interfaces they'd continue with at least one port for some legacy drive like fw800.

IMO

BC

Logged

Christopher Sanderson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2693
    • photopxl.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #28 on: March 08, 2014, 02:40:45 pm »

I purchased a Sonnet Thunderbolt PCIe card box and tricked it out with inexpensive eSATA/FW/USB3 cards. That way I will continue to use the old drives with the new BlackMac - when it eventually arrives.  

In the meantime I have migrated all my internal MacPro drives, eSATA RAID and other old FW drives to the Pegasus using the TB port on my MacBook Pro.

bcooter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1520
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #29 on: March 09, 2014, 03:46:14 am »


In the meantime I have migrated all my internal MacPro drives, eSATA RAID and other old FW drives to the Pegasus using the TB port on my MacBook Pro.

How did you do this.  Set the older macpro as a disk drive?

Also does anyone know of a way to use a thunderbolt drive on the silver macpros?

Thanks

BC
Logged

Christopher Sanderson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2693
    • photopxl.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #30 on: March 09, 2014, 08:33:52 am »

How did you do this.  Set the older macpro as a disk drive?
Also does anyone know of a way to use a thunderbolt drive on the silver macpros?

My eSATA raid is a mirror/backup of the raid in my old MacPro - so it simply meant plugging the eSATA raid into the new Sonnet box and then in turn copying the eSATA raid onto the Pegasus. I don't believe there is a way to get TB on an old MacPro.

bcooter

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1520
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #31 on: March 09, 2014, 02:43:43 pm »

My eSATA raid is a mirror/backup of the raid in my old MacPro - so it simply meant plugging the eSATA raid into the new Sonnet box and then in turn copying the eSATA raid onto the Pegasus. I don't believe there is a way to get TB on an old MacPro.

Thanks Chris.  Yea I've tried everything but voodoo to get data from a tb to an older macpro, not possible.

The New Macpro I'll probably buy, just because of the size factor but right now I'll wait to see what shakes out.

We carry 12 to 16 tb from all of our facilities working on a this project that is now in final stages.

It's a nightmare going from a tb machine to a desktop with fw and usb, so there is a lot of copying of data, including syncro backups in each city.


BC
Logged

JimGoshorn

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 215
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #32 on: March 09, 2014, 03:05:15 pm »

since I still have to wait a few weeks for the new BlackMac.

Which config did you end up ordering?

Jim
Logged

Christopher Sanderson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2693
    • photopxl.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #33 on: March 09, 2014, 03:45:43 pm »

Which config did you end up ordering?
from the spec page:

3.0GHz 8-core with 25MB of L3 cache
•    32GB (4 x 8GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
•    512GB PCIe-based flash storage
•    Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #34 on: March 09, 2014, 04:46:20 pm »

Thanks Chris.  Yea I've tried everything but voodoo to get data from a tb to an older macpro, not possible.

It's a nightmare going from a tb machine to a desktop with fw and usb, so there is a lot of copying of data, including syncro backups in each city.
I believe you can't simply add Thunderbolt via a PCI card as it is tied up with chip/motherboard etc. Which is great for Apple/Intel as you are forced to upgrade.
Anyway have you tried gigabit ethernet as that can be pretty fast if moving stuff between machines?

There's also this, but like many Apple cables it gets very poor reviews.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2014, 04:54:14 pm by jjj »
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

Christopher Sanderson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2693
    • photopxl.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #35 on: March 09, 2014, 04:51:00 pm »

For me what makes the most sense is:

Silver MacPro > backup (eSATA or NAS) > new BlackMac Pro storage medium (thunderbolt).

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #36 on: March 09, 2014, 04:51:23 pm »

I envy you guys that do post in one location.
I'm not always at home.  ;)
On last road trip I used a MBP with an eSATA connector to an Icybox enclosure with removable mirrored drives - removable so that they can be stored apart from each other. Other times small FW drives do the trick.
I don't shoot the amount data you do and tend to travel a lot lighter.
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

Manoli

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2296
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #37 on: March 10, 2014, 08:40:29 am »

I had heard there are issues with the new MP, in particular with monitors. I can't link to the review from the UK's Mac Format magazine as it's not online yet.

Bernard / Jeremy

This came up on my rss feed - may be of interest to you
" there is something seriously unstable with multiple display support in OS X 10.9.2:"
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2014/20140307_1-2013MacPro-dual-displays.html

M
Logged

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #38 on: March 10, 2014, 11:21:37 am »

This is why I never buy v1 of any Apple product. I prefer v3+ as from experience, they actually work.
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: Quick report - New Mac Pro + Promise Pegasus2 R8
« Reply #39 on: March 10, 2014, 08:57:26 pm »

Bernard / Jeremy

This came up on my rss feed - may be of interest to you
" there is something seriously unstable with multiple display support in OS X 10.9.2:"
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2014/20140307_1-2013MacPro-dual-displays.html

Thanks, I have seen this.

I hope that 10.9.3 will fix all that.

Cheers,
Bernard
Pages: 1 [2] 3   Go Up