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Any RAID builders in the house?

Bytehoven

Bytehoven

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 1, 2015
190
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Up Shellpot Creek
I'm seeking advice on RAID0 settings within the ATTO ConfigTool software for an (8) HDD RAID built from the Seagate ST3000DM001 7200.14 3TB drives using an ATTO R680 PCIe SAS card. ATTO recommended 128K Interleave with 512 sectors. I was just asking if anyone had an alternative settings recommendation based on their experience.

Thanks
 
I'm pretty sure I used what ATTO recommended with my R644 but the configuration was over two years! I have an 8HDD RAID 0 build getting these numbers:
ATTO.png
 
To make it easier to support multiple projects with smart synced cloning to back up volumes, I have this (3TB x 8) 24TB RAID0 production read formatted as (4) 6TB volumes. Using the AJA System test using a 16GB file, I'm getting the following performance...

Volume 1 (performs like an empty volume) 1501-1450 MB/s write-read

Volume 2 (performs like 25% full) 1446-1450 MB/s write-read

Volume 3 (performs like 50% full) 1284-1305 MB/s write-read

Volume 4 (performs like 75% full) 1088-1050 MB/s write-read

I used the default 128K interleave but wondered how using a 256K, 512K or 1MB interleave alternative might affect performance. I know Sonnet recommends different settings for their 800 series SAS systems.

Thanks for your post.
 
Like many I use RAID 0 just for the speed. I have yet to have a drive failure but it does takes 2hrs to rebuild. And of course it is completely backed up! :cool: IF the OP is using his array for 4K-8K footage with Premiere, RAID 0 may not be necessary. The combination of the CUDA cores and any RAID speed may be sufficient. I just so happen to use Avid and their play back engine is the development stages :eek:.No where close to the Mercury engine used by Adobe!
 
OS6-OSX said:
Like many I use RAID 0 just for the speed.
Click to expand...

RAID 60 is just short-hand for RAID 6 with RAID 0. It's normally about as fast as 0 but but has reduced capacity to increase reliability.

With RAID 0, if a drive dies you lose all the data, you have to do a full restore from the backup and you can't access your data until that's done. With RAID 60, if a drive dies, you just plug another drive in and the RAID will put the data back onto it all while you're still accessing it (though it's slower while the rebuild is happening).

Edit: should add that RAID 60 has fast reads but slower writes.
 
Last edited:
Arron Rouse said:
Don't know anything about ATTO but maybe you should run the numbers before going with that RAID 0 build. http://www.raid-failure.com/raid0-failure.aspx RAID 60 with 2 groups of 4 is probably your best bet.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I am aware of several mathematical studies and one recommended running an (8) drive RAID as RAID5 rather than RAID6.

I was seeking advice on the ATTO configTool settings for maximizing the data I/O of a RAID0. I am not worried about failure of a drive in the (8) drive primary production RAID0 because I have redundant back up. I want that primary production RAID to be as fast as possible.

If I did have a drive fail in the production RAID, I have a 500 MB/s back up I could turn on and switch too immediately to complete a session, then after the session I'd replace replace the failed drive in the (8) drive RAID and rebuild in a couple of hours (faster than LTO). Then I also maintain (2x) single 5TB volumes of all project data, which get clone updated as soon as any new material is added to the project. Rebuilding from these single drive volumes is much slower but there in the event of a greater failure.

In all of the years I have been in biz, the only major drive failures I had were a DataFrame 20MB back in the Mac Iici days, and during the period (3-4 years ago) when Seagate 1.5TB drives were crashing and burning all over the place. During that time, I had a documentary in production and we kept (2x) single 1.5TB volume back ups of the production, which consisted of (3) sets of 2 drives. We lost 3 drives, one in each set. So out of a total of (12) 1.5TB drives I owned and used on various projects, we lost 3 drives to the controller board failure which plagued that series of Seagate drives. The other (9) drives never gave us a problem and all but a couple were sold a while back. I would note, Seagate was able to recover data from those (3) failed drives free of charge, the turn around was about a week for Seagate to sends us new 1.5 TB drives with the recovered data.

All that said.... I've been looking into an LTO drive for one more layer of back up on more costly projects.
 
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