64bit kernel issue with Drobo, Recommendation for high capacity external storage

[androsyyz]

Awesome, thanks for the suggestion and overview of the benefits of going with this option with the items to get. Do you know if the units are relatively quiet?

I use two graphics cards in my MacPro that use double slots and as a result, I only have a single expansion slot left. With the configuration that you're suggesting, I'd be limited to 4 drives on each Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 and a maximum of 4 of these boxes. If I use the controller card that you referenced, is there an option to split one of the four ports into more ports? I realize this would likely degrade the performance on the slot that would be multiplied. Do you have any advice or recommendation for what I should look at to split one of the eSATA ports so that I can plug in more than 4 boxes?

Right now, I'm backup up from one DroboPro to another DroboPro. I'm considering either using the DroboPro's to do backups with or buying enough external JBODs boxes to do the backups that way instead, perhaps then I wouldn't have to deal with any Drobo issues anymore.



What would you do for backing up 15TB to 20TB of data? I want to ensure that I can have secure backups and with the data relatively easy to recover from without any confusion nor complexity.

 

[nerdo]

Ran into this problem about a year and a half ago: 14 TB of video projects to store, so what to do. Got two solutions both from QNAP.

first I got two QNAP 809's on iSCSI, filled them up with 16X 1.5 TB WD drives in RAID6 giving me 9TB for each box = 18TB protected storage.

BUT because everything fails I got two more QNAP's: 539's filled them both with 5x 2TB drives as backup and got a backup online service. (yes it took about a week or 5 to get all the data uploaded, thank god it is an unlimited plan.) these are just the seperate drives, not in RAID and still pretty fast.

Both 809 boxes are fast enough to edit XDCAM EX from (multiple streams) average read / write is about 90megabyte / second, faster then my internal SATA on my old Mac pro 1,1. (using iSCSI or just a NAS) All the stuff sits in my equipment room and connects to the lan. So any mac connected can use the boxes to edit from although I usually just edit on local disc and drop the end result on the QNAP 809 with an automated back to the other two boxes.

tried drobo before the QNAPS and hated them, these qnaps have great support but they have worked without a single problem, the first set I turned on over a year and a half ago, still running fine, never got hot, never got noisy. Al I had to do was clean the dust from the air intakes on the front.

It is not a cheap solution, each QNAP with drives was about 3K and you still end up with something local and just a much a point of failure as anything if the place burns down....

If you can, do a triple: two local sources, one online. The other route is a tapestreamer I guess, probably easier because you can backup and drop the tape in a safe off-site.

But so far these QNAP 809's are the man for me, simple connection with LAN cable, no cards. This means easy upgrading to new Mac or system. On a gigabit lan you get nice speeds. And it made searching my archive dead easy too. Sadly 18TB is almost full.

OH forgot to mention: 3TB drives are available now, making one 809 with 8X3TB possible, yes I will upgrade them both (hey 2 years for a hardrive is long enough) ooh and don't do JBOD without checking, because all the JBOD setups I tried KILLED any archive the minute one drive failed. I do either RAID6 or single drives these days.

 

[nanofrog]

Isn't JBOD supposed to show each single harddrive as one logical volume, as opposed to Spanning ?

It can be (I just see this as single disk usage this way <aka Pass Through mode on a RAID card>).

But it can also string them together as a single volume = Spanning (aka concatenation), and what's usually meant when you see the term JBOD.

 

[barmann]

It can be (I just see this as single disk usage this way <aka Pass Through mode on a RAID card>).

But it can also string them together as a single volume = Spanning (aka concatenation), and what's usually meant when you see the term JBOD.

Mean, isn't it ?

It should be called JOD (just one disk) then.

I just ordered this enclosure by datoptic, it's supposed to be true JBOD with all connections .

 

[nanofrog]

Mean, isn't it ?

Mean?!?!? I figured confusing as heck is more like it.

It should be called JOD (just one disk) then.

Might make the confusion even worse.

I just ordered this enclosure by datoptic, it's supposed to be true JBOD with all connections .

Let us know how it goes with that unit (never used it, as there's no eSATA port or MiniSAS port). But looks like it could make a nice low duty primary system or a redundant backup system (RAID 5 via a RAID on a Chip <RoC>).

 

[barmann]

Let us know how it goes with that unit (never used it, as there's no eSATA port or MiniSAS port). But looks like it could make a nice low duty primary system or a redundant backup system (RAID 5 via a RAID on a Chip <RoC>).

Will do; I've been chatting with datoptic customer service, and there is an eSATA module in the works for this enclosure, that also will allow proper JBOD in addition to the Raid functions.

Obviously I have no idea how this will actually pan out, but at least it sounds promising.
Datoptic is doing a horrible job advertising their stuff, but are very responsive to questions on their online chat .

I hope I'm not going off-topic too much, but this one might be interesting for the OP as well .
I'll know more in a week or two .

 

[bearcatrp]

I emailed OWC about the the fan noise on the Qx2 and questioned if it can be used as JBOD with no raid......

The Qx2 is quieter due to being able to use a much larger fan that can spin more slowly.

Early next year we do have a new product line that will arrive offering an alternative to the QX2 which will allow independent drive mode. In the present – we could only go to 4 drives with RAID and non-RAID span in order to support eSATA. Next year will have full independent mode available on 4+ bay solutions that offer the quad interfaces including when connecting via eSATA.

These solutions will require matched drive for RAID modes... But we expect to officially support them for non-RAID modes when using non-matched drives as well.

I'll be holding off until this is released as I don't need raid at this time.

 

[nanofrog]

I emailed OWC about the the fan noise on the Qx2 and questioned if it can be used as JBOD with no raid......

The Qx2 is quieter due to being able to use a much larger fan that can spin more slowly.

Early next year we do have a new product line that will arrive offering an alternative to the QX2 which will allow independent drive mode. In the present – we could only go to 4 drives with RAID and non-RAID span in order to support eSATA. Next year will have full independent mode available on 4+ bay solutions that offer the quad interfaces including when connecting via eSATA.

These solutions will require matched drive for RAID modes... But we expect to officially support them for non-RAID modes when using non-matched drives as well.

I'll be holding off until this is released as I don't need raid at this time.

So the complaint with the Qx2 is the lack of single disk usage, not what JBOD is actually useful for (spanning).

But it shouldn't require identical disks for RAID or JBOD either (defeats the purpose). Wonder what's going on with that?

 

[barmann]

Fwiw, some first impressions of the Datoptic enclosure .

 

[androsyyz]

You can also go with tested reliable solution from OCW: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEQX2KIT0GB/

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 - Enclosure with build in RAID, it will set you 300$. Install 4 x 2TB WD black drives. And you will have very fast very reliable RAID 5 system.(240MB/s)
In my personal opinion this is the most reliable stuff you can get.250MB/S is max what you can get on SATA II with Port Multiplier)

OCW guys have very good support, responsive and very knowledgeable, on the market for many years and providing great MAC solutions.

If you want absolutely the fastest non SSD solution, get FirmTek SeriTek/2ME4E

Wound up buying 4 * OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 with a FirmTek SeriTek/2ME4E controller. I installed 4 Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB in each of the enclosrues. Wow, I am so impressed, the enclosures are super quiet. The noise level of all 4 is about the same as what I hear from the MacPro and I have 4 drives installed in it also.

I am transferring data from 2 DroboPros to the 4 OWC enclosures. The complete transfer will have taken about 2.5 days and this is from the two DroboPros, a total of about 16TB. In the past, copying dat from one DroboPro to another DroboPro, this would have taken 6 days for a single DroboPro so about 2 weeks to do backups. Now I'm copying data 2 DroboPros to the new drive enclosures in 2.5 days.

When I called OWC sales/tech support, I was absolutely happy at the knowledge of the person I spoke with at OWC, very helpful, the kind of service that is top of the line.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and discussions.

 

[androsyyz]

Backup strategy

I need to backup the 16TB of data that I have, I want to have an on-site backup as well as an off-site backup (in case of fire, theft,....). I currently do so using the DroboPros and have 2 complete sets of backup drives, one on-site and one off-site. I alternate between the on-site and off-site drives and update the data regularly.

I'm thinking of using my older MacPro (gen 1) and connecting the 2 DroboPros to it using iSCSI. The older MacPro runs in 32bit mode and I won't have any problems there with the Drobo Dashboard and iSCSI initiator.

Once my data transfer is done to the new OWC enclosures, I will partition each of the 2 DroboPros into 2 partitions, the partition sizes on the DroboPro (6TB * 2) will therefore match with the disk space on the individual OWC enclosures (4 enclosures with 6TB of disk space on each since I configured them using RAID5).

I plan to connect the two MacPros to an Apple TimeCapsule.

The backups would therefore go over the network between the 2 MacPros.

I'd like to do automated backups/synchronization of the data from the OWC drives on the new MacPro to the DroboPros on the the old MacPro.

Two questions that I would appreciate your input:

1) Does the above sound OK and if not, what would be a better solution?

2) What backup software would you recommend to do synchronization of data between OWC drives and the DroboPro?

 

[youbetcharaid]

Stardom st8-u5

mini-sas version, read this review: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/sohotank_ross.html

It's validated by Blackmagic Design.... Recommended drives for Uncompressed Video: http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=62

 

[joaoferro37]

For those who use CalDigit, I wish you good luck.
I used to sell a lot of their products and I wish I did not.
There are a lot of better, cheaper solutions out there such as Promise, Active Storage, Stardom ST8, Promax.
Find out who has local support first.