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PROMISE Announces First 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 RAID Arrays

UnionVGF said:
I can't imaging how bad the pricing out of most consumers will be with these.
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You have to think about the cost of storage in terms of the cost of the data you restoring. What do you bill clients per hour and how many hours of video fit inside this RAID unit?

I suspect if you do the math this is not a big cost item.

If you are a no-budget shooter like me, then you don't needs this. What I do is get a small 120GB SSD drive for the video data I'm working with. Then later archive and backup to bare SATA drives I keep in a fire safe.

The $125 is faster then this Thunderbolt disk array. The only disadvantage is that it needs tone cleared out when a project is done.
 
I *almost* bought a Thunderbolt accessory the other day. Belkin sent me a 30% off coupon and I almost bought their Thunderbolt dock. I have a mix of several different USB 2.0, FW, and USB 3.0 hard drives, an iMic to run USB stereo audio, a higher-end USB mic, and a USB 3.0 CF card reader all hooked into one USB 3.0 hub. The FW drive (G-Drive) also has eSATA so I've purchased two eSATA to USB 3.0 adapters and both have all kinds of issues. So I have a USB 3.0 cord plugged into my rMBP and a Mini Displayport to DVI for my monitor.

So I thought hey, $210 with the coupon? I can do that. I thought I could compromise and go back from eSATA with it's unreliability to FW for the drive, and run my USB devices and monitor off the Belkin Hub, using only one cable. Well after reading reviews it seems the thing is pretty much garbage. How can they take several years making the thing only to release complete crap? People were saying the Belkin support was atrocious. So yeah, I almost used MY Thunderbolt. And this is my second TB capable machine. Instead I just bought yet another eSATA to USB 3.0 cable, this time from OWC, and I've got my fingers crossed. Going from two cables to one isn't worth $210, but the reliability is. I wish someone would release a reliable TB hub for $200. The one from Matrox seems to have some weird issues too and not many 3.0 ports.

You know what I would pay $300 for? A TB hub with:

  • 4xUSB 3.0 ports (powered)
  • 1xFW800
  • 1xeSATA
  • 1 x Gigabit Ethernet
  • TB Passthrough
  • 802.11ac WIFI
  • 5.1 Audio
  • Memory Card Reader
  • Blu-Ray Burner

And I don't even burn blu-rays! But for $300, come on! And it should work flawlessly. For $200 you can take off everything beyond Ethernet and can step down to stereo audio output. And if this new eSATA cord doesn't work out I'm just going to keep that drive for archives on USB 2.0 and get a pair of new USB 3.0 G-Drives. I thought things would be less complicated by now? It's almost 2014!
 
Those of us who might be upgrading from the current Mac Pro don't need these.

We already have drives either IN our Mac Pro, or attached with eSATA or TB1. I have 3x 3TB and 5 x 2TB on mine now. What we need is Thunderbolt 2, EMPTY, JBOD arrays (preferably with up to eight-slots).

Where are these? No one offering them yet as far as I can tell.
 
CalDigit is abandoning the HDPro/HDPro2 form factor, so if you NEED an 8-bay RAID-5 unit for video on a MacPro the options are becoming a bit limited. Having options from other companies (even at a cost) is a good thing. I'll be curious to see if there are 4, 6, or 8 bay RAID-5 releases from G-TECH or anyone else in the near future that use Thunderbolt2. The closest CalDigit "replacement" is the T3 RAID drive, which still hasn't shipped, so who knows when these will actually start becoming available in the market.
 
Yet these things are still not as fast as PCI-e RAID cards due to TB limitations. The max you get is close to 2GB/sec where with RAID cards one can get passed 3GB/sec. And those cost around 450$ as well.
 
Nunyabinez said:
But... but... I use a computer at work to do spreadsheets, so since I make money with my computer doesn't that make me a Pro user? ;)

The people who "need" these kinds of peripherals are willing to pay these prices because it translates into a real return in terms of faster rendering, or loading, etc. The rest of us just want them, like we want a Ferrari, but can't afford it and definitely don't need it.
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Exactly my point.

UnionVGF said:
I didn't say it was aimed consumers.
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So why mention consumers in your post?
 
iBug2 said:
Yet these things are still not as fast as PCI-e RAID cards due to TB limitations. The max you get is close to 2GB/sec where with RAID cards one can get passed 3GB/sec.
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How do you know TB2 devices are limited to 2GB/sec? Have any even been announced before these, much less benchmarked?

And are you actually doing work that requires speeds above 2GB/sec or just having a pissing contest?
 
Mike8833 said:
...
Thought about buying the TB1 Version.. (didn't come free of hard drives).
This time around the same overpriced ("you need OUR hard drives!")- policy?
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You actually want their hard drives.

Promise has tested their controller against the drives - and has adapted the controller firmware to work with the drive's foibles. (And possibly even received special firmware for the drives.)

Putting random drives (and gord forbid cheap desktop drives) into a RAID array is a failure waiting to happen.
 
jameslmoser said:
From my understanding, if you wanted to boot windows from an external drive, no you can't. I'm sure there are other limitations other than speed and this one that makes USB3 not an option.
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Of course - but I mean thats not reallllllly what a lot of joe blow consumers need to do. Most people don't need the speed of a F1 car. IF you did, you'd have to pay for it.

Besides, just get a thunderbolt -> firewire converter and do it like that. Thats still cheaper than this accessory. My point is about people complaining about the price on something that they aren't even supposed to have or need!
 
I thought drive reads would be the limiting factor on speed here. So isn't the TB2 comparability kinda useless? TB1 is fast enough for any configuration i've seen so far.

Maybe if you chained a bunch of them together...

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ChrisA said:
The $125 is faster then this Thunderbolt disk array. The only disadvantage is that it needs tone cleared out when a project is done.
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That's a bit of an exaggeration. 4 disk raid 0 should get you faster read/writes than a SSD.
 
Can someone tell me the speed of TB1, TB2, and USB 3 versus the read/write speed of a 7200rpm SATA drive?

I've got an MP 3,1 with 4, 7200rpm SATA drives (no RAID)...three of which will need a new home when I get the new MacPro. My guess is that TB1, TB2 and USB 3 are all MUCH faster at transferring information than the access rate of the drives themselves. Since the drives are the bottleneck, wouldn't you just save money and go with the technology that matches (or slightly exceeds) the speed of the SATA drives i.e. a USB 3 since it's cheapest? :confused:
 
jetjaguar said:
going to be ridiculously expensive:(
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For ENTERPRISE purchases not so much. I just got a spam email for a "sale" on a Xeon 12 core box of another companies server for only $3500 vs $10k new. ENTERPRISE prices are expensive and Apple's stuff actually pulls DOWN the price of performance.. When you get to Xeon and Thunderbolt 2 levels of performance "white box" options like Newegg are really only ever "half baked" because they don't include the failover and monitoring software companies like IBM, Dell, and HP bundle so they're merely "expensive toys" and not enterprise class. Even "free" Linux costs $2k-$3k minimum on these boxes just for support.

Putting together proper Enterprisr class server racks with server units, SAN, fibre channel or iScsi, and fast SSD or SAS HDDs is usually a "car sized" purchase now ($10k-$100k) that's BEFORE software you actually want to use!

Apple's stuff is right in line for price, its just not priced for YOU. If you are making $100k per year editing video, its a reasonable expense. Archiving all your work ($100k is a LOT of video editing or programming) is going to cost more in backup storage than the workstation price.
 
Who cares? I just want some Thunderbolt 1 stuff that is borderline affordable. I have two thunderbolt ports and not a single accessory.
 
Michael73 said:
Can someone tell me the speed of TB1, TB2, and USB 3 versus the read/write speed of a 7200rpm SATA drive?
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Depends upon which version of SATA. Most likely a mainstream 7200rpm HDD is SATA Revision 2 ( commonly indicated as 'SATA II' or 'SATA 3Gb/s' )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates


Thunderbolt 1 10Gb/s ( real world for transported PCIe SATA controller data traffic about 10Gb/s. Still aggregate max of 10Gb/s if use multiple SATA controller on same TB network. )

Thunderbolt 2 20Gb/s ( real world for transported PCIe SATA controller data about 15Gb/s : roughly around x3 PCIe v2 worth of bandwidth )

USB 3.0 5Gb/s ( hits no where near that max rate. After overhead around 3.2Gb/s )

SATA II 3Gb/s

The specific HDD drive is far more likely around 1.4Gb/s if doing single action sequentail streaming and 0.7Gb/s if doing anything that requires random and/or concurrent access.

I've got an MP 3,1 with 4, 7200rpm SATA drives (no RAID)...three of which will need a new home when I get the new MacPro. My guess is that TB1, TB2 and USB 3 are all MUCH faster at transferring information than the access rate of the drives themselves.
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You don't have to RAID the drives. if have 4 drives on the other side of a single cable and are grabbing data from all 4 at the same time then aggregated throughput can swap USB 3 if 4 sequential streams. If 4 random streams of data then even in aggregation there is little to be gain in terms of bandwidth.

Since the drives are the bottleneck, wouldn't you just save money and go with the technology that matches (or slightly exceeds) the speed of the SATA drives i.e. a USB 3 since it's cheapest? :confused:
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There is more to accessing the drives than just data. The thunderbolt connections will pragmatically give you a native SATA path to the drives. If the external SATA controller will pass the info along you can get back data from SATA metadata commands about the health and status of the drives. USB tends to block getting back that kind of data (it is theoretically possible but hardly implemented correctly ) .

Similarly if later go to a mix of 1-2 HDDs and 1-2 SSDs then having more bandwidth will allow that not to get bottlenecked. If it is HDDs "forever" then yes slowest closest match will be cheaper.
 
clamnectar said:
Let's see... current model with 4 drives is $1000. New one, what, maybe $1500?
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Unless they have substantially upgraded the SATA RAID controllers component costs, it should be about the same.

There is no reason to "hold the line" on the costs of the TB 1 devices if they continue to sell them. Those can move down in price. Just like "last year's iPhone/iPad" is sold at lower prices a year later. If they dump the TB 1 devices completely then there is a hole in the price range right where the TB 1 devices was.

Thunderbolt v2 controllers don't cost substantially more than v1 ones do. Nothing even remotely like even motivating even a $100 increase let alone a $500 one. If basically the same box with upgraded RAID controller and TB controller which cost about the same then the cost shouldn't change much.

The price of being "bleeding edge" is/was already built into the TB v1 devices. This is relatively still at the same level of "bleeding edge" so there is little motivator for being "even more bleeding edge" mark up.
 
milo said:
How do you know TB2 devices are limited to 2GB/sec? Have any even been announced before these, much less benchmarked?

And are you actually doing work that requires speeds above 2GB/sec or just having a pissing contest?
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Because Thunderbolt uses PCI-express 2.0 4x lanes. PCI-e 2.0 gives you 500MB per lane, so 4x lanes make 2GB/sec max. And then you have some overhead so the actual bandwidth will be smaller than that.
 
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Cool, so for $1,000 one can add four drive bays to the new Mac Pro!

Only $4,000 for a Mac Pro that matches capability of the old $2,500 tower?

Well at least the iTube has a beautiful polished shell. That way when you ask, "What sort of idiot would blow $4000 on a base Mac Pro with four drive bays," you can look into the Mac Pro's shell for the answer.
 
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