Promise Vtrak

I'm looking for anyone who may have experience using the NON-APPLE Promise Vtrak systems.
I'm just wondering if there really IS a difference between the Apple version and the regular one. Promise says that the "apple firmware" is installed and you get Apple support from promise.
Anyone have experience with any rack mounted RAID's other than Apple????
thanks!

Generally speaking, storage is storage. The Promise partnership is mostly surrounding official support for Xsan. This is not to say that you can not use other storage vendors hardware for Xsan. Products from Active Storage and from NexSan are capable solutions. For the most "Apple Xserve RAID" experience, go with Active's Xraid. The unit is well made and there is good support. Plus you can not beat the ease of setup. If you are looking for even larger arrays, check out the SATA-Beast and beyond from NexSan. Lacie, Rorke, and others have storage also. And while I can not state experience with the other Promise devices, I am sure they will work fine with Apple servers.
Hope that helps

Similar Messages

Is it possible to directly connect two Xserves with a Promise VTrak E610fD via Fibre?

I have two Xserves and I'd like to connect them with a Promise VTrak E610fD. As this storage has two controllers, I'd like to connect both Xserve with both controllers. Is this setup possible? Can I access (read and write) the same disk array with both Xserves simultaneously (Xsan?) or do I have to create two separate arrays?

Hello bleistift, and welcome to the AppleBoards,
Fibre channel is SCSI which means that any device connected by fibre assumes it is in sole control of that device. When you attach more than one machine via fibre both machines assume they are in control and unexpected behaviors and data corruption ensues. SAN (like Apple's XSAN) provides a layer of arbitration over the shares allowing multiple fibre connections to play nicely with one another while still being connected over fibre.
You could easily connect two machines to a single RAID box if they are accessing different RAID volumes at the same time, but once you start connecting to the same data at the same time you need SAN.
HTH,
=Tod

Promise VTrak E Class RAID/Mac OS X Server

Hi Everyone,
I am new to setting one of these up but we have a new Apple certified Promise VTrak E Class, 16TB unit that I have configured with a little help from some work colleagues and info on Apple's website. It's not rocket science, but it is looking that way. I have created two disk arrays, RAID 6, 4.5TB and 5.5TB, spare logical drives, assigned a primary controller, configured IP addresses for each controller, LUN Masking with (Port World Wide Name) as outlined on the Xserves Fibre Channel card, etc. On the Xserve, Disk Utility took a very long time to identify the Promise Drive (4.5TB) and when I try to partition it, the "Creating Partition Map" progress bar gets to about 10% and stops. I left it overnight to continue in the case it would take a long time, same position 12 hours later. I used GUID partition scheme. My question is, what partition scheme is best utilised for these things? The Promise 4.5TB VTrak E610 appears in Disk Utility but the 5.5TB disk does not. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Otherwise, I'll be looking into configuring the unit with a imported script done automatically.
Cheers,
Message was edited by: Cobra5400

yes I'm still using mine just fine

Promise VTrak E630f

Hello Apple Community,
I have a Promise VTrak E630f and I am trying to connect it to 2 Mac Pro's with Fibre channel cards. But only 1 computer can see at any given time. I'd like for both of them to access VTrak simultaneously. What can I do? Any help is appreciated!

Hello Paradeshi:
It is possible to have multiple computers accessing the VTrak at the same time. If you have a dual port card in your Mac, you will need to connect each computer to both controllers in the back of the VTrak. Each controller will have 4 fiber channel ports. This should allow for both computers to see the volume.
NOTE: The VTrak does not control which computer has read and write access to the volume. If both computers have direct access to the volume, it will cause corruption. You will need SAN software to manage write access to the volume to prevent this. A couple of examples for SAN Software are XSan or SANmp.
The other route you can go is to have a volume isolated to each server. This will prevent the computers from overwriting the same areas of data that can cause the corruption.
If you would like more information about setting up the VTrak to work with multiple hosts, you can call Promise Technical Support at 1 (408) 228-1500. Our VTrak line is open 24x7.
Best Regards
Kris
Promise Technical Support

Promise Vtrak Arrays not showing Disk Utility

We got an Promise VTrak yesterday with 8 750 GB HD. Created two Disk Arrays with three drives and one spare each using the Promise WebPAM utility. Yesterday one volume showed up which I could partition. Today we decided to remove the spares. Modified and used the following script http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1164 for use for 8 drives. But now no 'raw' drives show up in Disk Utility. Restarted the XServe but nothing. They SCSI Logical units show up in System Profiler.
Anybody any ideas?

Together with Promise I got it to work. Following three things are important:
1. Since we had it directly attached to the XServe we had to disable LUN Affinity. The weird thing is that it does not say so in Apple's Documentation: (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1164). You only need that for connecting an XSAN or on Promise: (http://kb.promise.com/Article.aspx?id=10074).
2. With two arrays you need to use both controllers.
3. Make also sure that you set your arrays 'left' and ''right'. Not top and bottom like I did. (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1200).
And when that's all set properly they will popup after a restart on your desktop ready to be partitioned for use.
And 4. Get a 4 port FC card for your XServe. Not essential but to get high uptime and throughput worth the extra investment.

Xserve 3,1/10.6.8 Server and Promise VTrak Ex30 Raid

My set up
Xserve 3,1/10.6.8 Server/18go ram/3x 2TO AppleRaid Card/Services AFP,SMB, OD, VPN
I need to add some storage space to the Xserve.
I could buy the Promise H4946LL/A Vtrak X30 Series 3U 16-Bay Dual-Controller 16X2TB SATA APPLE for +/- 19K
Or I could buy the Promise VTE630FDNX (No drives) and had those HD. +/- 10K
Add 8X4TB SATA for 3600$
Total: +/- 14K for 32TO and I still have 8 free hard drive bay for the futur
So did anybody ever setup Promise VTE630FDNX with a Xserve 3,1/10.6.8 Server/Atto Celerity FC-84EN ?
Thanks,

Hi, maracujana,
the problem can be solved if you allow the permssion of parental folder of your share points to have at least Read Only permission for User and Group:
permission: 644
User: Read&Write
Group: Read Only
Others: Read Only (or No Access)
In my case, it is strange that PCs can still do the search to the Snow Leopard Server by SMB protocol while Mac using AFP cannot even when the parental folder had permission 600. This could be a secure issue in Snow Leopard's SMB1.0 protocol. Note that SMB in Snow Leopard is SMB1.0, which is less secure and hence deprecated after Snow Leopard. From Lion onwards, all OS X uses SMB2.0 and/or SMB X.
Oh, yes, there is one more thing:
you may find your scanner using SMB protocol stopped functioning properly if you use (Mountain) Lion client and (Mountain) Lion server. It boils down to Apple's silent change of SMB protocol from SMB1.0 to SMB2.0. Solution? Use FTP protocol for now. Don't blame Apple too much because Apple had to follow the rules of GPLv3. The SMB issue will go on as Microsoft introduces its own SMB 3.0 protocol in Windows 8 while Apple introduces its SMB verison dubbed SMB X.
Hope this helps.

Promise VTrak e610 Setup Questions

We currently have an 8-core Xserve with a SCSI card going to an HP autoloader for tape backups and a 2 port fibre card in the second slot using 1 port to connect to our old Xserve XRAID enclosure with 4TB of RAID 5 capacity. 3TB of the space is in use currently, but we just bought a Promise e610 16TB that I eventually will need to get the data moved over to. I wanted to set the e610 as RAID 60 across all 16 drives, but based on what I've found online I'm getting the impression that this is not possible. Are you able to utilize all 16 drives across both controllers as one volume? Ideally I wanted to use an already established script, but I have not been able to find any for RAID 60 and the RAID 5 script I found shows each controller independent of the other leading me to believe that I would need to have 2 volumes each with its own spare. Is this the case? I'm assuming I'll need to configure RAID 60 manually which I'd rather not do.
Also, is it ok to connect one controller on the e610 to the one port on our xserve while having the xraid connected on the other fibre port? The documentation states using a separate fibre card to connect each controller on the e610. Is this for redundancy or a necessity?
I was planning on plugging one of the e610 fibre ports into the open port on the xserve, manually configuring the 16 drives as raid 60 and then using ditto over the weekend to copy everything over from the old to the new enclosure. How wrong am I?
Thanks

I plugged fibre connection 1 from the promise left controller into the open port on the server card and it shows the array as a fibre connection, but does not show it as connected in the fibre channel system preference. The web utility to set up the array is great. The hyper text links in each setting explaining what each setting is proved very helpful. I was able to set up 15 of the 16 drives as a raid 60 array and specified drive 16 as the spare. Once the volume is done synchronizing I'll try copying the data over from the other raid enclosure, but so far it seems to work as is. Once data is copied over I'll be connecting both ports on the pci-x card to the promise raid which i would image would improve performance if anything correct?

Promise VTrak E-Class 16 x SATA RAID & Mavericks

Hello,
Can anyone tell me whether this legacy RAID is still supported in MAC OS X Mavericks?
Chhers,
-Mark

yes I'm still using mine just fine

Will XSAN See : Promise Technology VTrak M200F

Hey Guys,
Currently I have 1x Xserve RAID, its about 7TB of storage. I came across a 'Promise Technology VTrak M200F' for pretty cheap and I can throw 1-2TB drives each in it and make around 16TB of storage, for still pretty cheap.
I was wondering if this model is actually compatible with Apple XSAN. I am very new to SAN's. I Just got the xserve raid setup in a SAN this last week, but our storage needs are extraordinary.
Thanks All!

It would probably be irresponsible to say "every", but the list of arrays people are successfully with using with Xsan would at a minimum include Promise, Active, and Infortrend. Other similar arrays will work as well. There are some things to keep in mind though:
-Apple only supports and warranties Promise Vtrak. This is important if your company requires the purchase of support for critical infrastructure.
-Don't mix different RAID chassis, at least within in the same Data storage pool. Some installations use a different chassis for Metadata, but staying as consistent as possible is important to minimize compatibility problems and maintain even performance across your arrays.
JM

Super Slow Performance with Xserve RAID / Promise Fibre

Hey guys,
I am experiencing a strange thing on both 10.5.8 and 10.7.5 servers (yes these are in the process of being retired). They are sharing out either an Xserve RAID or Promise Vtrak with OS X Server.
We have the fibre channel card and the storage attaches to there and they appear mounted on the desktop.
The problem we are having is that whenever OS X's file sharing is enabled these volumes run incredibly slow! I did a clean install of OS X 10.7.5 on an entirely different machine and it was still bad. All of my tests show that when you turn off file sharing, both AFP and SMB, the performance goes back to normal -- so what can we do here??? These are file servers, so that's pretty much the only thing that needs to work.
Thanks,
Andrew

Slow/poor RAID performance can be down to a number of things. Some of which are easier to check than others.
Some easy things to check are:
How much data is stored on the RAIDs?
Performance really drops off alarmingly once the RAID gets to 85% full. For a 1TB RAID this means you need to keep at least 250GB of free disk space at all times otherwise you will get the poor performance you're seeing. Once it gets to 86/87/88% full performance can drop alarmingly. Yes those few percent points can make a big difference.
How is the data stored on the RAIDs?
Having thousands and thousands of single files stored loosely on the RAID or within one single folder is not a good idea. The Finder can be and is fairly inefficient at drawing the icons for those files that are presented to network users accessing the share point(s). This can/and is perceived as very slow performance as you're viewing the files over a network connection. One way to overcome this 'feature' is to organise the data into logical folders/sub-folders and/or shares.
Are there problems with the file/directory structure of the RAIDs themselves?
Use DiskUtility (or better still DiskWarrior) to repair any issues (generally built up over a period of time) with the storage disks you have. You can't repair permissions using DiskUtility or anything else on a non-OS bearing drive. Don't forget to do this also for your System Drive (which can have its permissions repaired) as well. This will mean the server being off-line for a time whilst the system (OS) drive is being repaired. Before doing this step I would make sure you have a current and effective backup of your System/Server OS as well as all data stored on the RAIDs themselves. Hopefully you should be doing this for your data already?
To understand Disk Utility's repair permissions feature please read Apple's support document here:
About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature - Apple Support

Promise Pegasus R6 web management

Hi There,
anybody has a clue, what is the user name and password for managing Promise Pegasus R6 from a Safari? I know the address is 127.0.0.1:8080 for its WEBPAM PROE service, but could not find the user name and password to log in. There is nothing in the user manual, nothing on the Promise support site, I could find only the Promise Vtrak manual, where is says it is adminstrator and password, but it does not work with this.
I have connected two R6 arrays to a Mac MIni sever and the second array is doing something continously what is not shown in the Promise Utility and bogs down the second array, so I got the idea to use its web management to check what is going on.
Many thanks for advising.

Hi,
Use the same account details you login to your Mac with. If those don't have administrator rights, you may need to use an account which does.
I've found most features on the web interface to be well represented through the "Promise Utility". I believe there was an update to that subsequent to your post so you may wish to try that also.
CIAO

New setup with promise what is the speed ?

We are building a new Xsan setup. This is the my setup
2x Metadata Server 2.8 GHZ 4 Gb Ram model mid 2008 OS 10.5.7
1x OpenDirectory OS 10.5.7
Fiber channel Switch
3x Qlogic 5600 4Gb voor storage en servers
Metadata network not connect to public network
1000 Gb Cisco
Plublic network
100 GB switch
Storage
2x Promise VTrak E-Class 16x SATA with latest firmware
Configuration with the scripts for the Apple support site.
Xsan Version
Servers 2.11
Client’s 1.4.2 and 2.11
The servers and the 2.11 client’s have a 2x 4 Gb connection to the Xsan.
We are using xSAN for FinalCut Pro and FinalCut Server.
My question is what can I expect form the speed of the Xsan. What is the total bandwidth of the xSAN. And what is the speed of a single client. And what is the best way to measure the speed.
Who has a same setup and what is your speed on the xsan.
Thanks for the help.
Greetings,
Gunnar

We are building a new Xsan setup. This is the my setup
2x Metadata Server 2.8 GHZ 4 Gb Ram model mid 2008 OS 10.5.7
1x OpenDirectory OS 10.5.7
Fiber channel Switch
3x Qlogic 5600 4Gb voor storage en servers
Metadata network not connect to public network
1000 Gb Cisco
Plublic network
100 GB switch
Storage
2x Promise VTrak E-Class 16x SATA with latest firmware
Configuration with the scripts for the Apple support site.
Xsan Version
Servers 2.11
Client’s 1.4.2 and 2.11
The servers and the 2.11 client’s have a 2x 4 Gb connection to the Xsan.
We are using xSAN for FinalCut Pro and FinalCut Server.
My question is what can I expect form the speed of the Xsan. What is the total bandwidth of the xSAN. And what is the speed of a single client. And what is the best way to measure the speed.
Who has a same setup and what is your speed on the xsan.
Thanks for the help.
Greetings,
Gunnar

How can I make an invalid dynamic disk Array available to the OS again

Hello Storage Pros
The setup
I have a Promise VTrak E610f head unit with 2 VTrak 610j expansion units attached to it together giving me over 27 TB of usable storage space.
At the hardware level I slip the storage into 6 parts containing 7
1TB disks and had the parts configured into 6 RAID 6 arrays. In the end; each of the 6 arrays gives me 4.6TB of usable storage space.
On the OS level, I have the storage attached to 2 servers: Windows server 2008 and windows server 2008 R2 over a Qlogic fiber channel switch. Each of the 6 arrays are viewable as basic disks of 4,6Tb which I went on to configure as a single RAID 0
spanned volume of 27TB and for that all the disks had to be converted to dynamic.
The problem
Now comes the problem: On my first attempt to do a firmware update on the VTrak E610f storage; all the volumes were rendered foreign and I had to import them to be able to use them. Although the import was successful, I lost all the set NTFS permissions
and SMB share and I had to manually reconfigure them. Upon doing so The OS registered some inconsistencies in the storage and recommended that I ran chkdsk. Since the storage is that big I reluctantly complied and restarted the server.
The first server was restarted BUT chkdsk did not commence as scheduled, the server powered right up. After logging in to inspect; I discovered - to my surprise, that the disks were now shown as invalid in Disk Manager and were no longer visible to
the OS. Assuming that maybe a restart of the other server and the storage would set things right, I went ahead to do so but to no avail. After rebooting the entire system (including the storage), the other server also displayed the disks as invalid and were
no longer visible to the OS as well.
My question is; how can I make the disk available again from this ‘invalid’ state without losing data?
What I tried but did not help:
Taking the disks offline and then online again did not work, after the disks were online again, they still appeared as invalid.
Reactivating the disks threw an error “operation not allowed on an invalid disk pack”
Calling support of the storage manufacturer: they did not find anything wrong with the system, after 5 hours we had to stop.
I fear converting the array from dynamic to basic will destroy all the data.
HxD is showing no errors in the disks
If there is any expert out there with helpful tips; your assistance will be greatly appreciate.
Cheers
John

Hello Shoan
Thanks a lot for your response and tips. Sorry I could not get back to you in good time for I had to run some of the tests you provided, it took some time to
thoroughly re-test the system.
The summary
The initial firmware upgrade attempt forced 3 disks offline and the other 3 became foreign. I had to re-import them to have access again. after re-importing
the disks I realized all NTFS permissions and SMB shares of the folders on the disks had disappeared, but at least the disk was visible and accessible at that point - but not fault free. It was recommened that I let chkdsk run. However rebooting the
system to allow chkdsk to run did not result in chkdsk running, instead chkdsk did not run and after restart, the OS showed the disks as invalid. And that is still the case now.
Response to your questions:
Yes the storage array was (and is still) connected to another server 2008 R2 server when the problem occurred. The second server is also displaying the same problem: the disks are shown as invalid.
The loss of SMB shares and NTFS permissions occurred after the initial firmware upgrade attempt, some disks (3 out of 6 of them) were forcibly offlined and the other 3 were, suddenly, marked as foreign. In the end, and to have access to the disks
I had to online the offlined 3 disks and then reimport the rest of them. From the way I understand it, if the upgrade was not the cause, then at least it was the trigger.
In as far as converting disks from dynamic to basic, I was not in luck so far:
Three of the companies I have contacted (recommended by promise Technology technician) so far only work with smaller disks like 2TB, 27 TB like I have is so
far too big.
I’m not sure converting the disks to basic will help much though, since that would break the single 27 TB volume which the OS was working with into 6 individual
disks of 4.6 TB. Will I be able to get the data back that was written to just one volume from those 6 individual and unrelated disks?
Above all, I have connected the RAID storage system to a newly installed Server 2008 R2, the disks are also shown as invalid.
I have spent more than 17 hours in remote sessions with a Promise Technology technician trying the resolve the issue. From the technician’s side all seems in place with the exception
that the disks are invalid in the OS.
I have contacted Microsoft Customer Support service with the issue. Given that Microsoft did not manufacture the storage unit, can they help at this point – or am I better off
putting my hopes else?
Your help is always appreciated and again, thanks for your response and advice.
JohnV

Server Setup advice for a video production house

Hello Forum,
I recently started working for a small video production company, I need advice on the type of server and other hardware and services that will allow my co-workers to work efficiently. Here are some details:
Currently we are going to buy a new server, I am not sure what we should look at getting,
currently we use a mini mac running OSX server and have 6 iMacs that the editors and other staff use.
We also have a 15 TB Drobo network storage device which is attached to the mini-mac server we are going to replace.
The production team uses Final Cut and Motion to build documentaries.
The other issue is that need a way to connect the office in Baltimore to the office in Washington DC and ideally share files between each location, currently they cannot access the network from Baltimore and have to have a copy of the unedited footage on their own Drobo.
What type of server setup do you recommend? Quad core? speed?
Should we set up a VPN to connect offices or does someone have a better idea, if so what applications do we need?
I know windows networking pretty well, but Mac is totally new to me.Currently editing files from the server is really slow and files are usually pulled to the iMacs to do editing, burning DVDs from files on the server hardly ever works- they pull them local then burn the DVD and it works.
I would love to hear suggestions to help us get up and running.
Anyone know of a good website for server setup- Since there is no Domains in OSX that i know of, how can we secure the network? Links would be great.
Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions.

Well if your looking for performance. You could get a Promise VTrak E-Class RAID with 32TB of storage, later on you can add more chassis to the raid for more storage space. The raid can be expanded up to 160TB. (80 drive bays, each drive 2 TB)
Using fiber you could attach the raid to an xServer or Mac Pro (running mac os x server). You'll probable want at least 8 or 16 GB of ram on the server.
The server can run a copy of final cut server. Witch makes it easer to work as a group. Mac OS X server, when properly configured, can also be used to create a VPN between both locations.
Final Cut Server will let editors check in/out specific parts of the documentaries. So the project lives on the server; instead of scattered over every ones computers. Part of this is you can pull down thumb nails versions of the video to work off of. Only when you do the final render do you download the HD version of the video.
If you want even better performance on the editing stations. you could also upgrade to Mac Pros. Mac Pros have upgrade slots witch you can use to add fiber networking. You could also use the upgrade slots to add a black magic real time HD capture card.
Or if you want to keep the imacs. you might want to hook the server to a switch by fiber, and have the imacs connected to the same switch by 1000-T
If you call apple i'm sure they'd be happy to help you figure this all out.
for info on Promise: http://www.promise.com/apple/
for mor info on final cut server: http://www.apple.com/finalcutserver/

Which RAID to go with

I have an Xserve g5 that I'm going to be using for my clients to access from anywhere in the world. I have to decide what raid to go with. I've been thinking about the Xserve raid but the thing is that it is discontinued. So I've been looking around on macsales.com and they have some pretty nice systems. Any ideas anyone on which I should get

1 xserve G5 , slim pickins. single processor or multi ? it's going to make a difference.
do you really need a RAID ? if yes, find some after market xserve raids they work very well under 10.4 on ppc G5's. If you have enough memory 10.5 would work, but 10.5 brings more CPU overhead, hence the question,.. 1 or 2 processors.
2gb, fiber channel -- > apple xserve raid. if you can can find one. new, you could use a promise Vtrak but you may need a 4gb fiber card.
some USB 2.0 and firewire Stacks can be found useful. I I have seen some very nice SSD setups also.
gl

Promise Vtrak

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