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First 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 RAID Arrays Now Shipping Ahead of Mac Pro Release

MikhailT said:
You're paying for a better RAID controller that scales well with more hard drives, plus the known reliability from the brand name. You're not the intended market if you're confused.

Creative Pros are streaming huge 4K videos/images for editing in real time via those RAID systems. Those pros tend to pay the big bucks, same pros who pays for Mac Pros.
Drobo are for regular customers who don't need faster speed that'll decline the more hard drive you add to the same RAID system.
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I was confused because I didn't know WHY the Promise's Pegasus is more expensive. BTW, I am their intended market as I own a film production company and am heavily involved in cinematography, film editing, and motion graphic design and I'm upgrading my late '12 max'd out 27" iMac for the new MacPro when it's available for pre-order…my files are massive and in a year, I'm already down to 6TB of free space in it (which BTW, I'm consistently getting 400MB/s+ writes). I need speed for my work…however, I wasn't aware of Pegasus' better RAID controller.

beaker7 said:
If you want it to perform well you'd go with the Promise.
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Performing in terms of speed? I'm genuinely curious how the Pegasus performs better.
 
WestonHarvey1 said:
This a lazy response that reeks of elitist snobbery and does nothing to answer the question asked.
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Do we really have to post a 5-page explanation of the technology and the difference between a Raid-0 system and an NAS everytime one of these stories comes out?

This isn't your basic external HD, or a NAS. Enough said.
 
BreuerEditor said:
And why would I want to pay $4,600 for a 20TB Thunderbolt system when I paid $1,700 for a 20TB Drobo 5D over a year ago……and I can put whatever drives I want in it… :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:
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Well these are Black and sexy looking, but Jony didn't design them, and we all know how important that is to all Apple users. I would gladly pay $7,000 for a 20TB Thunderbolt system if Jony would design a gorgeous, delicious, and magical one (maybe Black with gold trim!!!!). Come on Apple, take my money!!

GOOOOO TIM & JONY!!!
 
djphat2000 said:
Then there must be some more cache on these drives (64mb+?). In either event I've only noticed (at least easily noticed) a jump from 5400/5900 to 10k+.
I'm sure it can do it or at the least merits TB2 over TB1. Not to mention its made to support the new Mac Pro. So you will need the TB2 anyway (in case you wanted to daisy chain a few of these things).

I also remember hearing Phill talk about teaming these TB2 connections... :D
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Not only cache (that only helps you for short buffering cases, anyway), but also higher data density on the platters themselves. But 7200 rpm drives would be even faster of course.
 
djphat2000 said:
Then there must be some more cache on these drives (64mb+?). In either event I've only noticed (at least easily noticed) a jump from 5400/5900 to 10k+.
I'm sure it can do it or at the least merits TB2 over TB1. Not to mention its made to support the new Mac Pro. So you will need the TB2 anyway (in case you wanted to daisy chain a few of these things).

I also remember hearing Phill talk about teaming these TB2 connections... :D
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I'm not sure about the cache on these drives (may be enterprise class), but the ones I have do indeed have a 64MB cache.

Also, the biggest difference you'll see jumping from 5400 or 5900 RPM is on random reads and writes, when you're having to jump all over the drive. In this case, there is a noticeable difference.

But that is largely defunct now, with the advent of SSDs. Anything that requires a lot of random IO (mostly OS and app related files, or databases in a commercial setting) are put on SSDs, and large media files that are mainly transferred to and from a scratch drive to work on (largely sequential operations) are unaffected.

I was concerned at first with the rotational speed of these new 4TB drives, but I think its actually a plus -- they don't lose much speed for what they are used for, and they use less power to boot.

Finally ... TB is backwards compatable, so you wouldn't *need* TB2 drives to connect to the new Mac Pro.
 
BreuerEditor said:
I was confused because I didn't know WHY the Promise's Pegasus is more expensive. BTW, I am their intended market as I own a film production company and am heavily involved in cinematography, film editing, and motion graphic design and I'm upgrading my late '12 max'd out 27" iMac for the new MacPro when it's available for pre-order…my files are massive and in a year, I'm already down to 6TB of free space in it (which BTW, I'm consistently getting 400MB/s+ writes). I need speed for my work…however, I wasn't aware of Pegasus' better RAID controller.



Performing in terms of speed? I'm genuinely curious how the Pegasus performs better.
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From the specs (and depending on your configuration). You would just about double or a bit more then that over your current config. RAID 0 on the 8 bay version should get you there pretty easy.
 
wiz329 said:
I'm not sure about the cache on these drives (may be enterprise class), but the ones I have do indeed have a 64MB cache.

Also, the biggest difference you'll see jumping from 5400 or 5900 RPM is on random reads and writes, when you're having to jump all over the drive. In this case, there is a noticeable difference.

But that is largely defunct now, with the advent of SSDs. Anything that requires a lot of random IO (mostly OS and app related files, or databases in a commercial setting) are put on SSDs, and large media files that are mainly transferred to and from a scratch drive to work on (largely sequential operations) are unaffected.

I was concerned at first with the rotational speed of these new 4TB drives, but I think its actually a plus -- they don't lose much speed for what they are used for, and they use less power to boot.
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They better last a while too. I'd hate to rebuild an array with 4TB drives in it. A TB takes a good day as it is.
 
ChrisA said:
Actually it can. The read/write speed of these drives is well under the limit of TB 1.
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Not in RAID.

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troop231 said:
Yes I did, but thanks for the link. I skipped over the R4 because the R8 sounds better lol. Must be thinking about Audi R8 too much. :D
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Yeah ... it's a bummer they don't offer an 8 bay diskless.

But they make a good bit of profit supplying the drives, so I understand why they do it that way. Sucks for the consumer though.
 
iSunrise said:
I am not sure why they even need 20Gbps Thunderbolt on these devices. It´s not like you can saturate that with the included drives in most of these configurations. You would need enterprise level spindles or SSDs instead. And the prices are ridiculous.
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They need 20Gbps because you can daisy chain several devices and the 20Gbps is the limit for the entire chain. So lets say you bought 4 of these RAID systems.
 
BreuerEditor said:
And why would I want to pay $4,600 for a 20TB Thunderbolt system when I paid $1,700 for a 20TB Drobo 5D over a year ago……and I can put whatever drives I want in it… :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:
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Bandwidth, do you have it? Your drobo isn't on the same level.. and everyone knows NAS companies throw a premium on their disc storage... so just get the discless option.
WestonHarvey1 said:
This a lazy response that reeks of elitist snobbery and does nothing to answer the question asked.
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The dude has a point, if this doesn't make sense to someone then any type of explanation as to why they would need it wouldn't register.

 
WestonHarvey1 said:
This a lazy response that reeks of elitist snobbery and does nothing to answer the question asked.
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not at all. the reality is quite common on here -- whiny kids want all their toys cheap because they have little earning power. they fail to comprehend the difference between business tools used by pros, and how theyre different markets than their consumer goods.

if thats elitist to you, then guess what -- the world is elitist.
 
I will wait until I see benchmarks comparing it to a Drobo. When I get my new Mac Pro I am looking for new external storage. Currently using a USB 2 Drobo, which is very damn slow and dated. I will still use it for media and crap that doesn't have to be high speed.

I imagine that 1tb of flash in the new Mac Pro is gonna be hella expensive!
 
It's nice that they offer the diskless version. Although the diskless version is 2-3 weeks instead of the 24 hours shipping time for the others. You'd think a diskless version would be easier to make than the version WITH disks. :)
 
I don't think its about "getting" why the product exists or just about its expense. The point really is that the product "premium" you are paying for is very high. I am all for companies making reasonable profit but, the margin on this one for Promise must be pretty good. As a professional who needs this type of product, I don't throw my money away. I compare and look at the best performance for the dollar. To that end the ARECA-8050 Thunderbolt enclosures win hands down. First their stand-alone RAID controllers tend to be very fast and reliable so having one in the unit is a win. The enclosure is also used quite a bit in video post production houses. In the end it provides the performance, reliability at a moderate price point, its also whisper quiet, which meet my business needs.

Just to show what I am taking about in numbers, the ARECA-8050 TB1 version (I did talk with ARECA and a TB2 version will be out 1Q 2014) runs for $1399 (with free 16GB iPad mini thrown in - Newegg). Adding 8 x 4TB 5900rpm Seagate NAS drives, totaled less than 3K with tax and shipping. That is a better and more effect use of money to me than buying the Promise at 4.6K. I also can guarantee that I have NAS or Enterprise drives in unit (not sure what Promise uses - I heard desktop drives). Yes, the Promise is now TB2, so here is the PROMISE Pegasus R PR6HD24TUS 24TB (6x4TB) TB1 unit at 3.5K it's still higher and with less drives. I can almost guarantee the ARECA TB2 enclosures will come out at a better base price.

I won't go over performance numbers for the ARECA-8050 as bearfeats did a better job of that:

http://barefeats.com/hard167.html


The one point I will agree upon is the that TB1 and TB2 performance is for the chain and so you want to be careful with the chain of devices. TB2 will give you more headroom but, the Mac Pro's have 6 TB ports! So, again its about wisely using the money to get the best performance versus, being a professional and needing it so, you won't care what it costs.....YMMV
 
linuxcooldude said:
If Apple made this, it would be SSD's
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The fact it isn't SSDs already is a waste of the bandwidth Thunderbolt 2 offers in the first place and not even offering a user expandable version with the top end model is a joke. I've read the arguments about the "theoretical peak" of certain HDDs but put SSDs in there instead and they'll always be faster, always have seek time measured in the 10,000s of IOPs instead of several ms of track to track seek time like HDDs and as a result, ludicruously faster random read/write times than HDDs.
 
wildmac said:
Do we really have to post a 5-page explanation of the technology and the difference between a Raid-0 system and an NAS everytime one of these stories comes out?

This isn't your basic external HD, or a NAS. Enough said.
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Why talk about anything at all then?

That's hardly "enough said" when someone asked for what the differences are specifically.

Sure. Just tell people to "Google it", because that's a useful answer.
 
OneBagTravel said:
The dude has a point, if this doesn't make sense to someone then any type of explanation as to why they would need it wouldn't register.
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No. For all you know, he's using his computer for something that could benefit from a faster NAS, and didn't realize he was being hampered by his Drobo.

Or hey, he'll just, you know, learn something he didn't know. Knowledge is still good for its own sake, isn't it? But no, let's keep the unwashed masses on a need-to-know basis about our elite pro tools.
 
See Flat said:
It says it will ship on dec 13th
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If you order it today, it will ship on the 13th...it's been out for awhile...it's a great device.

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Mr. Retrofire said:
I doubt that. They write:
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It's been out for awhile...the "will ship Dec 13" means if you order it today, it will ship in two. Here's a review of it from the summer:

http://www.storagereview.com/datatale_smart_4bay_thunderbolt_raid_review

and here are Amazon reviews to show that people do own it, like me:

http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B00CC0VRQC

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Mr. Retrofire said:
I doubt that. They write:
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So when Apple's site says the iPad mini ships in 3-5 days, it means nobody owns one yet. Please. I don't work for the company, but I do own one and it's great. I only mentioned it as a comparison to the Raid arrays in the article. Given that there are not so many out there, I thought it would be helpful to point out another that works very well.
 
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What would be nice is if we could get more empty enclosures for TB 1 & 2 so we could use our own (fastest) drives and not have to buy what the manufacturers throw in there at big markups.
 
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