20TB eSATA disk array, flexible, cheap, expandable - But will it work?

	Re: 20TB eSATA disk array, flexible, cheap, expandable - But will it work? by David Roth Weiss on Jun 10, 2008 at 2:59:33 am Peter, According to Bob Zelin, port multiplier technology is not terribly reliable. Bob has written about it saying that it always tends to go haywire eventually. I can't tell you if the Addonics solution is a keeper or not, but I'd be very wary if I were you. David Roth Weiss Director/Editor David Weiss Productions, Inc. Los Angeles POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™ A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums. Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: 20TB eSATA disk array, flexible, cheap, expandable - But will it work? by Jeremy Garchow on Jun 10, 2008 at 4:52:35 am I'm with David. That setup looks like a disaster. Check out the solutions from Sonnet and Dulce. They have pci express expanders that allow you to connect multiple raid protected arrays for relatively "cheap": http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusionraidexpander.html A shared solution is never cheap. The cheapest way is sneaker net. Jeremy Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: 20TB eSATA disk array, flexible, cheap, expandable - But will it work? by Sean ONeil on Jun 10, 2008 at 4:54:54 am [Peter Bobrow] " (5 drives to a 5X1 External Port Multiplier - then 4 External Port Multipliers into a 4-port eSATA controller - see link for diagram and more info) " Don't assume port multipliers will work in a Mac using that card. I know for a fact that was a Windows-only feature a year ago. PM is controlled by the OS driver - it's not plug and play like you would think. Call Addonics and confirm. If it doesn't work in a Mac, you can still probably use a Sonnet card with the Addonics PM device. And heed David's warning and read what Bob had to say about it. [Peter Bobrow] "Also has anyone tried to send this type of compressed HD footage over gigabit ethernet and what was the result? " It depends on your expectations. It can work okay, but scrubbing around in Final Cut will feel sluggish compared to FC or DAS. Bandwidth isn't the issue - it's latency. Many factors will determine the severity of this problem. The beauty is that you can test it before you buy anything. Share a disk on another Mac and try editing off it. [Peter Bobrow] "eSATA runs at 300 MB/s, but bottlenecking it like this might cut down on data speed. However XDCAM EX is 35Mbit/s which leaves plenty of room to accomodate some bottleneck. " SATA is actually 300MB/s per port. Your setup would be using four of them. So that 1200MB/s. You won't get that of course. But not because of a SATA bus limitation. [Peter Bobrow] "Anyone got a good cheap solution for 20-30TB of storage shared w/ 3-4 editors?" There are tons of great, cheap options. Unfortunately not on the Mac. I wouldn't punish anyone by recommending iSCSI on a Mac (at least not until the Small Tree driver comes out). There's no Infiniband drivers for Mac. And while you can get very expensive 10gbe ethernet, OSX does not provide TCP Offloading, so it wouldn't work very well - at least not on the client end. Not to mention 10gbe is probably more expensive than FC. You should check out this product here: http://www.areca.com.tw/products/fiber_to_sata_ll.htm You'll still need FC equipment and MetaSAN, so it's not a cheap solution. And I don't know anyone using it so it's a shot in the dark. If you can live with AFP filesharing, I would just get some Small Tree cards and use that until a better solution comes along. Projects like FreeNAS and Openfiler are improving every day. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index