Haven't gotten that far in the planning. I've read mixed reviews of Time Machine and backing up multiple partitions and that would be my primary concern. The goal is separate bootable partitions that I can also run in a VM. For the separate partitions I'm really looking for just a snap shot. Any thoughts or suggestions about using Time Machine?
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Mac Pro - Bootable RAID Cards
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Haven't gotten that far in the planning. I've read mixed reviews of Time Machine and backing up multiple partitions and that would be my primary concern. The goal is separate bootable partitions that I can also run in a VM. For the separate partitions I'm really looking for just a snap shot. Any thoughts or suggestions about using Time Machine?
Yes.
For the others, the separate OS drive on the logic board solves that issue anyway. Saves a little $$ too. But the ARC-1231ML will absolutely haul @...
Thanks for the link.
I'm taking the spec with a grain of salt, as they're consumer drives. I was quoting 100k as best case (SLC). MLC is worse, as the article indicated, at 10k write cycles. Hopefully, it will work, but I do have some concerns. Namely with how the drives are stripped, and particularly with (small)temp files/directories. Which translates to cells constantly being rewritten by an OS that is designed for electromechanical drives. I would like to see more data on any test results first before I commit just yet for RAID use. Or if a driver has gotten around this issue, and I don't have to wait afterall.
I know, I could move the temp files to another drive, but I'm too lazy.
I'm also cautious with drive bays. When I've just gone with a single drive to solve a need, particularly in a 5.25" bay, I seem to end up short for a backplane for some reason. As mentioned in the article, there are some techniques for improving reliability in the design, but the rest will fall on the OS. Granted, this will happen, likely in some update to OS X, and Vista. It may be included in Snow Leopard, if they've already been working on it. Linux may borrow the solution from Solaris. (I wasn't aware Sun had actually implemented it in a shipping product yet).
As an OS drive, given the ability to go for 3-5 years, they would be fine.
Now I wish I had one for that purpose. Even though I don't reboot a gazillion times a day, I tend to be impatient. That kind of read speed would be around what can be done with some SAS drives, namely the Cheetah 15K.6's. Not bad. I'd need to check current pricing, but last I looked, the cost/GB was worse with SSD's. Not a big deal with a few drives, but may be a problem in a larger array. Of course, SAS isn't much better.
Might I ask what you will be doing, specifically?
Code development?
Yes.
But the ARC-1231ML will absolutely haul @...
I can't tell you how happy that makes me. The Areca cards were the ones that I had my heart set on. I love the upgradeable cache, I was just discouraged by the information on their website.
Database development and architecture mostly. I do consulting work for clients with very large data structures and modeling some of the usage patterns is just painful on a slow disc setup. This machine will be my gift to myself and my company
! The reason I wanted to go with the SSD RAID 0 boot drives is for the VM's. I'd like to spend as much time as I can in OS X but the jobs require Server 2008 and a windows environment. I'm actually hoping that I can get away with living inside of VM's so I'm trying to narrow as many bottle necks as possible.Oh absolutely, I've got a NAS setup but wasn't sure if Time Machine played well with backing up other partitions. I've read a few conflicting thoughts online about it so I didn't know if there was a good third party solution (Symantec makes a Backup Exec Mac client I think...). I also didn't know if Fusion has a built in backup system that I could use. OS X will be, for the most part, my home OS and I'll use the VM partitions to work in. So I need a solution that will backup the multiple OS partitions that I have as well as the workspace partitions out on the RAID 5 array.I figured you'd go NAS or SAN, given what you're looking to do.
The upgradeable cache, as well as other features such as the backup of the Partition Tables, made it my first choice as well.
The fact it was cheaper than Atto certainly didn't hurt either. What information are you referring to?
Why VM and not native?Database development and architecture mostly. I do consulting work for clients with very large data structures and modeling some of the usage patterns is just painful on a slow disc setup. This machine will be my gift to myself and my company
I can't help much with backup software that works with multiple OS's. I just stick to native operation, and have to get something that will work with each. Usually what comes bundled with the OS, if possible.
The upgradeable cache, as well as other features such as the backup of the Partition Tables, made it my first choice as well.
What information are you referring to?
That "no_bootable" thing on the website. It's good to get confirmation that you can boot off the array with the card.
It will be a mix of both. Most of the time I'll leave the machine booted up in OS X because it's a much more comfortable environment for me to play around in. It's handy to be able to fire up the VM to do a few hours of light work if needed. If it's going to be a long day I'll just boot into the native environment for the day. I had debated on setting up a headless ESXi host to house the VM's, but I think I can accomplish the same and get a nice workstation that I can keep for a few years by going with the Mac Pro.
I saw that, and I was thinking OS X would boot as well. Sorry about that.
Too many Areca models, and I'm starting to get them mixed up. (I'm used to the the ARC-1680 series; very similar (top end) of the SAS cards, and it will boot).It will boot in windows & linux. By using the separate OS drives, it doesn't matter anyway. Physical space is limited in a Mac Pro, and an OS array isn't really possible, unless you're willing to go external. Expensive.
I was thinking VM might be too slow, particularly with multiples open.
I saw that, and I was thinking OS X would boot as well. Sorry about that.
It will boot in windows & linux. By using the separate OS drives, it doesn't matter anyway. Physical space is limited in a Mac Pro, and an OS array isn't really possible, unless you're willing to go external. Expensive.
Ahhh, so then my dream of one RAID 0 array for all the bootable partitions won't be with this drive? Are there any bootable SATA controllers out there that will work with the 3 OS's (OS X, Windows, Linux)?
I was thinking VM might be too slow, particularly with multiples open.
They can be surprisingly snappy given the right conditions. I want the RAID 0 array with partitions (instead of individual drives for each OS) to help cut out any I/O bottleneck from the disks. RAM will be maxed out in the machine as well, so I'll devote at least 4 Gigs to each VM (up to 8 should be possible).
I first got turned onto VM's when I was working on-site with a client that was a full fledged VM shop. They had two hosts (quad socket, 64 gig's of RAM with a NAS attached via fiber) and their database servers were virtual. I was surprised to see that the DB server behaved on par with similarly spec'd physical hosts. Granted they were running ESX which is a bare metal hypervisor (as opposed to Fusion or Parallels), but I suspect that it will do what I need for light work. And having the option to boot into the native OS will be nice for those times when I've really gotta slam on it!
You have to be a little crazy to use RAID 0 if you care about any of the data in the array.
S-
nightly backup to NAS and the drives are SSD (failure rate very low, also they fail safe meaning you can read from them until you replace them). They're also just app/os partitions. Workspace data is on RAID 5 array
The failure rate of the Intel X25-M is not any better than that of nearline storage hard drives so don't think you are getting higher reliability with SSD's at this point in time. You will get faster boot times and application load times with SSD's, but much, and I mean MUCH, more time is spent reading and writing data. In other words, you are putting SSD's where they are least useful. If they cost and reliability were the same or better than hard drives, I can see using them for the OS and applications drive. But you should at least RAID 1/RAID 10 the OS and application drive/array.
Does everyone here think it quick and easy to reinstall the OS and applications if the OS and applications drive or array fails? Does your nightly backup to NAS allow to restore the boot drive without installing the OS first? This is a hassle you should want to avoid.
S-
[Citation Needed]
I've googled (did again after reading the post) and I can't find any DOA or failure posts. Also this fails to address that once the SSD has "failed" (MLC SSD's fail when you cannot write to them anymore) you can still read the data.
??? More time? SLC SSD's (which I do not have) beat out 15k Cheetah drive's in read speed consistently (Good one's read up to 220Mbs/sec on a single drive). According to their MARKETING PAGE (http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Cheetah%C2%AE_15K.5_SAS_3Gb/s_73-GB_Hard_Drive_-_ST373455SS&vgnextoid=43554e92987c0110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=4d02d3a0140fc010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&reqPage=Model) they're happy to tout up to 125 Mbs/sec sequential read (X25-M's by the way have 220 Mbs/Read and ~80 Write... I've got the benchmarks from my own laptop if you want them). None of this takes into account seek speed which is where SSD's really have no competition.
No, it's not easy to restore a machine from backup. However, given the failure rate that I know of (and I'm welcome to examples of X25 failure [Documented, not some dude on newegg]) and the safe failure rate, these are the only drives that I would go RAID 0 in.
frimple,
Either I was not clear or you misread what I wrote. When I said:
"You will get faster boot times and application load times with SSD's, but much, and I mean MUCH, more time is spent reading and writing data."
The point I was making is that the data drives, not the OS and application drives, would benefit the most from SSD's since much more time is spent reading and writing data than booting and loading applications.
Intel quotes the MTBF of the X25-M at 1.2 million hours. That is the same number Seagate quotes for their NS line of drives. "Failure" in MTBF means just that....not able to access. Write cycles for SSD's is a whole different measurement. In other words, using the same number of either device in a RAID 0 array has the same failure possibility. The fact you are using 4 SSD's means that array is 4 times more likely to fail than a single Seagate NS drive.
Not to mention the fact that the SSD's are so new and more likely to experience problems.
S-
Either I was not clear or you misread what I wrote. When I said:
"You will get faster boot times and application load times with SSD's, but much, and I mean MUCH, more time is spent reading and writing data."
The point I was making is that the data drives, not the OS and application drives, would benefit the most from SSD's since much more time is spent reading and writing data than booting and loading applications.
Intel quotes the MTBF of the X25-M at 1.2 million hours. That is the same number Seagate quotes for their NS line of drives. "Failure" in MTBF means just that....not able to access. Write cycles for SSD's is a whole different measurement. In other words, using the same number of either device in a RAID 0 array has the same failure possibility. The fact you are using 4 SSD's means that array is 4 times more likely to fail than a single Seagate NS drive.
Not to mention the fact that the SSD's are so new and more likely to experience problems.
S-
Well I've tabled my research on cards & connecters for the moment and finished my research on RAID hard drives today.
It seems like RAID cards DO NOT wait on the drives like an OS will to finish an error-recovery or read/write operation. Instead they will assume them dead and start the array rebuilding process. It seems a lot of card failures/screw ups are caused by consumer drives not responding quick enough. I guess this is why the enterprise drives are worth the extra cash.
In this respect, I'm 99% sure I'm going to go with four of Western Digital's 1TB RE3's. I have no complaints about the WD 1TB Black I use for storage and the extra RAID features is worth a $70/drive premium to keep the card happy.
The intial setup will be my current Velociraptor going straight to the logic board for the bootable OS, 4x1TB RE3's connected to an undecided card in a RAID 5 with my 1TB Caviar Black as the hotspare. I figure the Black will be suitable for a hotspare its a RE3 without the fancy RAID logic. Will serve well as a backup in the event of failure until I can get another RE3.
The rising expenses of this upcoming setup is REALLY testing my philosophy of "buy once, cry once."
It seems like RAID cards DO NOT wait on the drives like an OS will to finish an error-recovery or read/write operation. Instead they will assume them dead and start the array rebuilding process. It seems a lot of card failures/screw ups are caused by consumer drives not responding quick enough. I guess this is why the enterprise drives are worth the extra cash.
In this respect, I'm 99% sure I'm going to go with four of Western Digital's 1TB RE3's. I have no complaints about the WD 1TB Black I use for storage and the extra RAID features is worth a $70/drive premium to keep the card happy.
The intial setup will be my current Velociraptor going straight to the logic board for the bootable OS, 4x1TB RE3's connected to an undecided card in a RAID 5 with my 1TB Caviar Black as the hotspare. I figure the Black will be suitable for a hotspare its a RE3 without the fancy RAID logic. Will serve well as a backup in the event of failure until I can get another RE3.
The rising expenses of this upcoming setup is REALLY testing my philosophy of "buy once, cry once."
I'm also assuming that my Mac Pro (MacPro3,1 designation) will run either of these RAID cards at full speed in slot 2?
50thVert,
Does the RAID card you have or going to buy support booting the OS? If it does, you would be much better off selling that Velociraptor and buying another WD 1TB RE3 and including it in your RAID 5 array. You will get better read performance than you would with the Velociraptor on its own and your OS and applications would have data security as well.
S-
Does the RAID card you have or going to buy support booting the OS? If it does, you would be much better off selling that Velociraptor and buying another WD 1TB RE3 and including it in your RAID 5 array. You will get better read performance than you would with the Velociraptor on its own and your OS and applications would have data security as well.
S-
Well I'm either going with the Areca ARC-1231ML or the Highpoint 3520. There are advantages and disadvantages to each that I've found...
They both use the newer & faster Intel 341 IO processor.
The Areca is $730, the Highpoint is $430.
The Areca is not bootable, the Highpoint is.
The Areca has expandable cache, the Highpoint is fixed at 256MB.
The Areca has 3 mini-SAS ports, the Highpoint has 2.
The Areca has a better track record here, but the higher end Highpoint cards seem to be reliable. It's likely that I'll go with the Highpoint because its $300 cheaper, I don't need the capacity for 12 SATA drives, and since I'll run a max of 6 drives in the array the stock 256MB cache should be fine.
Earlier in the thread I was persuaded to run a single OS drive because it's easier to recover if the card fails and that the bootup times are quicker...
That being said, it seems that if you take proper precautions (a quality card with updated firmware and enterprise drives that are supported by the card), it's reliable enough to boot from daily.
The PITA is loading the OS onto the bootable array. Apparently you can't just install it from the DVD, you have to use Carbon Copy Cloner or something similar.
I'm not worried about startup times cuz I don't reboot hardly at all.
I do want to rid myself of the Velociraptor as it's worth a pretty penny (I have the bare 2.5" version in the Maxupgrades sled) and I like to keep things simple.
The current plan is to get a 4-drive RAID 5 up and running, copy my OS and data onto it, and see how it works. If it works well, I'll sell the VR and pick up another RE3.
I might take the stock 320GB Apple drive and use it as a TM drive to just back up the basic OS...but what's the point of making the OS install a little quicker if all your data is gone anyway, ya know?
/longpost
Given you're use of OS X & VM only, and don't need 9-12 drives, the HighPoint should serve you well. Save the cash, and skip the Areca.
If you do decide to boot from the array, just be aware it is more complicated, and takes longer. In the case of a failure, this can be a PITA to get the system up and running again. If you're quite comfortable with this, and can spare the additional time, go for it. If not, chose accordingly.
Hello friend,
There is no way you can add disks inside Mac pro system. You just need to buy external RAID card for your MacPro.
HighPoint has series external RAID card for several HDDs, like RocketRAID 4322, RocketRAID 3522, (Enterprise SAS/SATA) RocketRAID 2684, 2644X4, 2522, 2322 ext. You can link the website of HighPoint to check the more information of external RAID card, I think its the best choose for your computer.
Let me know if you have any questtion.
Peggy
Someone I know with too much money on their hands has an Apple RAID card that they don't want anymore. What is a fair price? The EDU discount has them at $629. I was thinking $500?
Also, is anyone running an Apple RAID card with 4x 2TB drives? I currently have 4x750 that I can use, but I figure if I have to reconfigure everything, then maybe now is the time to go for it. FWIW I have two drives in the optical bay that I'll probably run as a RAID0 system drive.
Also, is anyone running an Apple RAID card with 4x 2TB drives? I currently have 4x750 that I can use, but I figure if I have to reconfigure everything, then maybe now is the time to go for it. FWIW I have two drives in the optical bay that I'll probably run as a RAID0 system drive.
He's running an '08 2x 2.8GHz model, so an internal array is possible (up to 8 HDD's, if the optical drive is removed to an external enclosure).Hello friend,
There is no way you can add disks inside Mac pro system. You just need to buy external RAID card for your MacPro.
HighPoint has series external RAID card for several HDDs, like RocketRAID 4322, RocketRAID 3522, (Enterprise SAS/SATA) RocketRAID 2684, 2644X4, 2522, 2322 ext. You can link the website of HighPoint to check the more information of external RAID card, I think its the best choose for your computer.
Let me know if you have any questtion.
Peggy
The '09 MP's are another story though. Wow - great thread
I'm a bit of a Mac noobie and have been struggling to get my Mac Pro booting with RAID. I'm also running VMWare ESXi so that just adds to the challenge (Early 2008 model doesn't have the VT-x flag locked in EFI, so can't run 64-bit OSes as a virtual machine -- hopefully an update will solve that like it did for the 2009 models, but I digress...)
I've read a bunch of threads on a bunch of forums, and am at the point that I'm saturated and don't know what I need any more. Can anyone help distill it?
I have a Mac Pro (early 2008). EFI is updated to 1.3 (didn't even know what EFI was when I started). I'd like to boot straight into ESXi, which will be hosted on two drives, RAID 1 (mirrored) together. Performance isn't much of an issue. I hadn't read nanofrog's recommendation to get enterprise drives before I went out and bought them (simple 640 GB Western Digitals)
I tried the RocketRaid 2640, but that didn't work well (was OK if I went into Bootcamp to Windows). After reading lots of posts, it looks like the HighPoint RocketRAID 3510 might be a good choice, but it's out of stock at NewEgg. The ARC-1231ML-KIT is also out of stock. The ARC-1210 looks like it might be a reasonable one ($299). Any comments?
For those that follow after and aren't sure how to locate or get to the iPass connector, these instructions from CalDigit are very helpful and clear:
http://www.caldigit.com/Support/CalDigit_RAIDCard_GettingStarted(1.01).pdf
Oh, and finally, which cable should I get? Right now I've hacked some power and sata links, but I'd really prefer to keep the drives in their original positions connected to the original back plane. I won't ever go above 4 drives, so this will be fine. I guess the cable will depend on which card though...
Hoping someone can help me.
Thanks
I'm a bit of a Mac noobie and have been struggling to get my Mac Pro booting with RAID. I'm also running VMWare ESXi so that just adds to the challenge
(Early 2008 model doesn't have the VT-x flag locked in EFI, so can't run 64-bit OSes as a virtual machine -- hopefully an update will solve that like it did for the 2009 models, but I digress...)I've read a bunch of threads on a bunch of forums, and am at the point that I'm saturated and don't know what I need any more. Can anyone help distill it?
I have a Mac Pro (early 2008). EFI is updated to 1.3 (didn't even know what EFI was when I started). I'd like to boot straight into ESXi, which will be hosted on two drives, RAID 1 (mirrored) together. Performance isn't much of an issue. I hadn't read nanofrog's recommendation to get enterprise drives before I went out and bought them
(simple 640 GB Western Digitals)I tried the RocketRaid 2640, but that didn't work well (was OK if I went into Bootcamp to Windows). After reading lots of posts, it looks like the HighPoint RocketRAID 3510 might be a good choice, but it's out of stock at NewEgg. The ARC-1231ML-KIT is also out of stock. The ARC-1210 looks like it might be a reasonable one ($299). Any comments?
For those that follow after and aren't sure how to locate or get to the iPass connector, these instructions from CalDigit are very helpful and clear:
http://www.caldigit.com/Support/CalDigit_RAIDCard_GettingStarted(1.01).pdf
Oh, and finally, which cable should I get? Right now I've hacked some power and sata links, but I'd really prefer to keep the drives in their original positions connected to the original back plane. I won't ever go above 4 drives, so this will be fine. I guess the cable will depend on which card though...
Hoping someone can help me.
Thanks
What exactly are you trying to do?
Usefull information:
Usefull information:
- Throughput requirements
- Capacity requirements
- Software/system usage
- OS requirments (driver support)
- Boot requirements (some cards can boot OS X, but once the firmware is set to EFI, it can no longer boot any other OS).
- Redundancy requirements
Nanofrog is a bit behind the times he he. It seems your on a 4,1 Mac Pro (because you guys stated that there's only one solution for a RAID card and that would be Apple) and if you are, do as I did and get a Maxupgrades SATA cable that's split to run 2 drives in a RAID. I have 2 SSD's stripped in RAID 0 for my boot drive and I haven't had not one problem with it. A mechanical HD will FAIL sooner than an SSD and you don't need to go huge if it's performance your after. And, the Velociraptors fit in there too if need be. It's just one cable that goes from the bacplane to the drives... The optical SATA bus is a very special bus and going this route will be the way to go for performance... Now a RAID for storage is a whole other thing but the extra 4 bays I'd just keep as a JOBD's. Call Maxupgrades and tell him that you want to just hook 2 drives in a RAID configuration in your optical bay... They will hook you up and you won't be sorry! Works PERFECT here!!!!
drndown2008 is has an '08 MP, not an '09.
So no adapters will be needed to use the HDD bays. Though a cable extention may be needed, depending on the RAID card used (if there's even a need for one). From here:
drndown2008 said:
That would depend on how the drives are used. SSD's are great for OS and applications drives (far more reads than writes), but in a high write environment, particularly with MLC drives, they're not suited for it as well as mechanical. It's one area that even though they don't have any moving parts, the flash ROM used has a technical disadvantage that makes it less suitable for this type of use. SLC was meant for the enterprise market (i.e higher write cycles), but it's far more expensive.
So it really does matter on both the type of flash used in the drive and the usage. For reads (i.e. OS/applications use), MLC is just fine, and is actually what they're aimed at.
There's no such thing as a "One Size Fits All", and the right solution depends on getting the necessary specific information for the intended usage.
That's why I made my last post as I did. There wasn't enough information to go on (too sporadic and confusing).