Large Storage Solution (What do you think?)

[nanofrog]

I will not use silicon image 3132 nor 3124 solution for larger RAID.
These two chipset simply don't work, not reliable.
Yes it is cheap.
Will I use this for my clients who need large storage, NO.

In the case discussed, they're used in PC based systems, so they have a better track record than your experience with the MP and OS X.

 

[FireWire2]

DATAOPTIC, good luck with it.
SamQ does not own any factory. You are buying a pc case, with a FireWire backplane installed and adding few trys. It's like LEGO..

Here you don't even know their name
How come their product get great rating from end users?

Their site:
http://www.datoptic.com/review/product/list/id/206/category/37/

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Five-tray-les...dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Meritline:
http://www.meritline.com/raid5-five-sata-bay-hardware-raid-esata---p-36829.aspx

I happen to knowDATOptic manufacture their enclosure at their facility in S Cali.

Just sort of strange, DATOptic never advertise their product, but the company exist over 13yrs... I guess they must do something right!

 

[FireWire2]

...

Any suggestions for eSATA/port multiplier PCI cards that are 100% compatible with Snow Leopard?

BTW... thanks for your help VirtualRain

Yes there is:

eSATA_PCIe8 from DATOptic
Use this driver for SL 10.6.x 32 or 64 bit 100% guarantee

 

[deconstruct60]

You could always make a Blackblaze Pod if you want tons of storage (with some basic RAID protection) on a relative budget. It isn't EMC level, but if one needs capacity, this should do the trick.

No this is more like you want access to some slow storage. Don't mistakenly read "RAID" above and think that getting high performance. It isn't (or at least out of a single one of these pods). The RAID in this set up is more increase the storage density while keeping reliability high. Safe storage of low access bandwidth data. 60TB hidden behind a GB ethernet connection. Hopefully, you don't have to get to a significant fraction of that quickly.

However, there is no hardware redundancy here inside the pod either. One of those controllers die and you loose access to a alot of data.

In part, that's why the Dell and Sun boxes costs $1,000's more. They don't blow off speed as much (sun X4500 has six 8 port SATA cards versus 9-10 ports total here) and there are more redundant internal paths.

There are a couple of these "off the shelf" designs for storing archival data using these kinds of pods out there. That's much different problem those of getting lots of data stored that going to want to use often.

 

[deconstruct60]

You could always make a Blackblaze Pod if you want tons of storage (with some basic RAID protection) on a relative budget. It isn't EMC level, but if one needs capacity, this should do the trick.

No this is more like you want access to some slow storage. Don't mistakenly read "RAID" above and think that getting high performance. It isn't (or at least out of a single one of these pods). The RAID in this set up is more increase the storage density while keeping reliability high. Safe storage of low access bandwidth data. 60TB hidden behind a GB ethernet connection. Hopefully, you don't have to get to a significant fraction of that quickly.

However, there is no hardware redundancy here inside the pod either. One of those controllers die and you loose access to a alot of data.

In part, that's why the Dell and Sun boxes costs $1,000's more. They don't blow off speed as much (sun X4500 has six 8 port SATA cards versus 9-10 ports total here) and there are more redundant internal paths.

There are a couple of these "off the shelf" designs for storing archival data using these kinds of pods out there. That's much different problem those of getting lots of data stored that going to want to use often.

 

[nanofrog]

No this is more like you want access to some slow storage. Don't mistakenly read "RAID" above and think that getting high performance. It isn't (or at least out of a single one of these pods). The RAID in this set up is more increase the storage density while keeping reliability high. Safe storage of low access bandwidth data. 60TB hidden behind a GB ethernet connection. Hopefully, you don't have to get to a significant fraction of that quickly.

However, there is no hardware redundancy here inside the pod either. One of those controllers die and you loose access to a alot of data.

In part, that's why the Dell and Sun boxes costs $1,000's more. They don't blow off speed as much (sun X4500 has six 8 port SATA cards versus 9-10 ports total here) and there are more redundant internal paths.

There are a couple of these "off the shelf" designs for storing archival data using these kinds of pods out there. That's much different problem those of getting lots of data stored that going to want to use often.

Well, it's a software implementation of RAID 6, so it's not all that safe either, as software implementations can't deal with the write hole issue associated with parity arrays. The other thing I noticed, is that they used 1.5TB Seagates (7200.11's that were problematic). Definitely not a good combination IMO.

For such a system, they'd have been better using Z-RAID2 IMO, as it doesn't have the write hole issue at all, which is suited for software implementations (assuming the CPU load isn't an issue). Different drives would have been a good idea too, but they may have selected the drives by cost and assembled these systems before the problems were known.

As per performance, the ISP connection is definitely a bottleneck, but as it's meant for an off-site backup, speed isn't the primary concern. Inexpensive network accessible mass storage is.