What to do with our Xserve RAID, moving forward - Need Advice.
We have an 3.5 TB Xserve RAID (14 drives - 250 GB each, split into two 7-drive volumes). As many others have, we've moved into more HD and tapeless workflow. The Xserver RAID was purchased really for one HD project with DVCPRO HD back in 2004 and hasn't really been used since except for backup storage.
I'd really like to move us into a SAN system, but am curious about others' perspectives on populating our Xserve RAID with 1 TB or greater drives now or get a different RAID setup. We've moved to Mac Pros, but the Xserve RAID is still dedicated to just one G5. I am doing some reading on setups such as the EVO and CalDigit, but haven't setup a SAN. It's time though.
We have three post machines - two editorial and one sound station. I could really use some insight on how to use our setup in a SAN scenario or what's the cheapest way we can get into a SAN workflow. Granted, drives are cheap these days, but it's so inefficient copying data between two machines to make sure we have a copy of the same media.
Thanks for any input folks.
+I'd really like to move us into a SAN system, but am curious about others' perspectives on populating our Xserve RAID with 1 TB or greater drives now or get a different RAID setup.+
I'll start with the fact that 750GB are the absolute max you'll be able to put into the Xserve RAID. Compatible 750 PATAs are really hard to find (and are expensive when you can find them) so that avenue makes little sense. I think you should really be thinking in terms of new hardware at this point. I know several people who run XSAN and are much happier with the Promise RAIDs they have now over the older Xserve RAIDs.
Which hardware and SAN software you should be looking at I'll leave up to someone with more modern experience in the video editing realm- I've been out of it for too many years now.
My $.02,
=Tod
Similar Messages
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Our XServe-RAID volume does not mount anymore...
Our XServe-RAID volume does not mount anymore.
On /var/log/system.log I could find the following.
Feb 22 09:52:29 ogre kernel: jnl: open: journal magic is bad (0xf433f != 0x4a4e4c78)
Feb 22 09:52:29 ogre kernel: hfs: early jnl init: failed to open/create the journal (retval 0).
It appears the the journaling is badly screwed.
I tryed to disable the journaling with no success.
Here is what I get.
ogre:/var/log root# diskutil disablejournal disk2s3
The selected journaling request does not appear to be valid
After some googling I foud this :
--- QUOTE ---
The more serious problem occurs when the contents of the journal file are corrupted in such a way that the operating system does not proceed to mount the volume. Fortunately, this problem is extremely rare (I have seen three reports of corrupted journal files at the MacFixIt Forums and Apple Discussion Forums since journaling was introduced).
Starting the journaling process is one of the first things that happens when a volume is recognized by the operating system. There appears to be no way to intervene in single-user mode before the journal file is examined. A message about �bad journal magic� appears. Unfortunately, every tool that can turn off journaling requires that the volume already be mounted.
If the Macintosh can boot under Mac OS 9, dealing with a corrupted journal file involves restarting under Mac OS 9 and using a utility (such as our free TechTool Lite 3.0.4) to make visible these two invisible files at the root level of the volume:
/.journal
/.journalinfoblock
Once these files are made visible, they can be deleted. Mac OS 9 does not support journaling, and recognizes nothing special about these files. Neither of these files can be seen in Terminal or in single-user mode in Mac OS X, because they are considered part of the disk directory.
If the Macintosh cannot boot under Mac OS 9, but the drive has Mac OS 9 drivers installed, the drive can be put into a Macintosh that can boot under Mac OS 9, or an ATA/IDE drive can be put into a suitable FireWire enclosure.
The possibility that you may need to remove these two journaling files under Mac OS 9 is a good reason for making sure that all volumes you use have Mac OS 9 drivers installed. The drivers must be installed when the drive is formatted.
--- [END] QUOTE ---
Well, my disk is part of a RAID 5 matrix.... so the solution proposed does not work.
Does any one of you has any idea ?
XServe Mac OS X (10.3.9)I've seen an article about volumes not mounting and was wondering if this relates to your problem;
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1239224�
The thread doesn't refer to journalling but may be of use?
HTH -
Drives just stop with new Xserve raid
I have just set up a new Xserve on 10.4.5 with 2 x 400 gig drives.The raid has been set up by the book twice and the drives were formated aswell, the problem is that after the raid is set up i then test it by copying lots of data to it from various machine across the network and after about 10 gigs of copying the drives just stop, on their own(not in a raid) the drives work fine.
Any suggestions ?
Thanks
MattHello, Diego Arana and welcome to the AppleBoards,
+I don´t know what OS the Xserve RAID has, I just know that it is the first one.+
The Xserve RAID has no operating system on it. It is essentially a very fancy external hard drive that attaches over fibre channel. It does a firmware version that can be updated but that is the closest thing to an OS that it has. (Unless you're adding drives you can probably leave that alone.) The XRAID is controlled over either of the ethernet ports using the RAID Admin program - if you don't have a copy download it from Apple's support site.
+Is it possible to connect a New MacPro (Early 2009) to a Xserve RAID (RAID 720G/4DRIVE/2X2GB FC) via fiber channel?+
Yes, I have done this and it is straightforward. The fibre will negotiate down to 2GB, of course, but it does just work. If you're talking about the Apple shipped fibre card it is (at least in the states) shipped with SFP connectors that match the SFP connectors that are on the Xserve RAID and you just use the copper cabling (not the optical fibre) to connect them unless you are going a very long distance. If you order the card (again in the states) with Xserve the copper cables are included when they ship it.
If you do have optical connections you can buy optical to copper/SFP converters. I have several of these on my fibre switch and they are not more complicated than adding the adaptor and plugging them in - at least on the fibre switch. I have never actually hooked up an XRAID to optical fibre but this is pretty common in XSAN environments with longer "cable" runs.
HTH,
=Tod -
How can I fix slow AFP writes to our Xserve RAID?
Hi,
This problem has been posted before but I couldn't find a solution. We have a Intel Xserve connected via fibre channel to a 14 disk 10.5 TB Xserve RAID. It's setup as two RAID5 volumes soft raided into one volumes (RAID 50).
There are multiple AFP shares on the RAID being served by the Xserve. The problem is that writes over AFP randomly go really slowly. Sampling using fs_usage shows a load of RdMeta operations from the AppleFilerServer process. I think it's the same issue that was posted here:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8153758#8153758
We've tried everything mentioned in that post - with no success. Has anyone managed to solve this problem? Many thanks,
JamieIt might be an HFS+ filesystem but because I'm seeing this on a simple striped RAID in a PowerMac. I was writing a script to look for system files starting with 32 zero bytes:
find /System/Library/ -type f -exec echo -n "{}:" \; -exec xxd -l 32 -c 64 -p {} \; | grep ':0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000' | cut -f 1 -d':'
Sometimes it appeared to halt for a long time and fs_usage showed RdMeta or WrMeta blasting along at ~100MB/s. After a few more runs it no longer has this problem. I wonder if there's a tuning bug in HFS hot file management or defragmentation. -
Xserve RAID NO Power, need help please
HI all,
i have Xserve RAID, last night i shut down it normally, today i came to switch on, but its not responding, i can see only the Green LED on the power supply is blinking. NO POWER.
please if you can help ASAP.
thankshi
thanks for your reply,
i have tried to do everything, i removed one of the power supplies at each time, but same. i pressed the power button on the back, but nothing happened.
finally i opened the case of the XSR, i was surprised to find that the power cable between the power button on the back and the main board is disconnected, how i don't know, i never open it before, i vever move it, i don't know it was just disconnected.
any way, its working now, thanks all -
Major Issues with installing 4tb internal. Really need advice please
In the process of a long needed upgrade to my 2010 Mac Pro Quad core 2.8 and have run into a serious headache that I really need advice on so I can get back to work. I've already spent 2 days dealing with all of this...
Just did a new SSD install and Migration which went fine but I'm also updating the rest of the internal drives. My main (non boot) drive was being upgraded from a Seagate Barracuda 3tb to a 4th Deskstar NAS (it was showing as compatible with my desktop, see links below). My 3tb ran fine for years but now due to it being heavily used I want to switch to a new drive and I can also use a bit more space.
The issue I'm running into is that initially on boot, my system was telling me it couldn't recognize the disk and it wasn't even showing up in Disk Utility. I had to purchase a SATA USB 3 kit to attach it as an external to get it to show which worked without problem. With the USB kit I was then able to partition it (GUID, Mac OS extended journaled) and format it properly. After reinserting the drive into my tower as an internal it failed to show again. After a few attempts of restarts and trying various bays it popped up but showed as a non formatted drive and I was told again that the system didn't recognise it. I was then given the option to initialise and was then actually able to then format and partition it though Disk Utility while it was installed as an internal.
Figured that was problem solved but when I went to check the drive and getting ready to transfer files over I noticed that Disk Utility was only allowing the First Aid and Partition options but not Erase, RAID, Restore which I'd never seen before. I then also noticed that none of the drive connection info was in the same format nor will it even provide drive bay info, connection info or read/write status (See screen shots). This is what I can't figure out and really need to clarify before I put full trust into using this drive.
Any info would be greatly appreciated...
Deskstar 4tb internal info which is installed in Bay 2
3tb Seagate which I trying to retire and transfer from.
Here are the weblinks to the Deskstar 4tb drive and the compatibility list but I support isn't allowing me to add direct links so add the www. before hand.
(Drive - eshop.macsales.com/item/HGST/0S03664/) (compatibility list - eshop.macsales.com/Descriptions/specs/Framework.cfm?page=macpromid2010.html).What OSX version?
Disk Utility in later versions of ML and I think Mavericks have problems formatting with 4 TB internal drives.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1661024
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/112266/why-doesnt-my-mac-pro-see-my-new -4tb-sata-drive -
Xserve Raid - moving raid set from one Xserve Raid to another Xserve Raid.
I have 2 raids, and one will be moving to another building. Can I take one raid set out of unit 1 and place it into unit 2 without losing the data that is on it?
You shouldn't loose the data, but you may have to use the RAID utilities to recognize the set, once it is in the the other XRAID box.
As always, you should backup, in any event, if you have the space. -
Background creation with photo attached of examples. Need advice!
I have been trying to figure this out for the life of me and have come to a road block with it. I have seen it done on numerous occasions by one person who states they are doing it in Elements, but will not give me an answer as to how they are doing it. I am very comfortable with PS CS6 and am by no means a novice with it. I consider myself at least at the intermediate or above level with PS. What I am trying to do is extend my backgrounds without stretching them and having them looked like they have been stretched. If you understand what I am getting at. The photos below represent what I am talking about. The first image is the original image 1024 x 768 and the second image 744 x 1392 is the image that was created from the first image. The background in the second image was created from the first image and for the life of me I have been unable to figure out how. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
Hello AlSkier,
You may need to restart (or reset, if you can't restart) your iPhone.
iPhone, iPad, iPod touch: Turning off and on (restarting) and resetting
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1430
Cheers,
Allen -
I have been having problems with Xserve RAID, which happened in a close time span, but may not be related. The Xserve RAID is set up with 7 disks with RAID 5, totaling to 1.3TB in storage capacity.
First, the first disk failed and the RAID system was degraded. Since I got a very similar 250GB harddisk (but without "Apple Firmware") I tried putting it as a replacement. It was recognized but it became a hot spare disk, even though I did not set the system to use hot spare.
Later Mac OS X reported that the Xserve RAID's 1.3TB volume was unmounted. I check with Disk Utility, and it reported a lot of errors. I ended up with about 70GB of files in lost+found, and I confirmed that many files were missing. Disk Utility could not really fixed it.
I put back the failed disk, and Xserve RAID successfully rebuilt the array. I did "Background Array Conditioning" to perform surface scan and mapping of bad blocks. It completed without error. I then did "Verify Parity Data", and it completed but with error, as follows:
Event:
Disk 5 Reported An Error. COMMAND:0x37 ERROR:0x64 STATUS:0x81 LBA:0x119E6880
Description:
The drive reported ATA error. This is a failure in the communication from the RAID Controller to the drive.
Any idea what is happening with this Xserve RAID? Bad disk? Bad controller? Or what? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Xserve RAID Dual G5 2.0GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)After reading here and there on the net (including this forum), yes I realized that the "Apple Firmware" thing may be significant after all. But since I set the Xserve RAID to use RAID 5, a failure of one disk should not affect data integrity. And surface scan was successful, implyingthat all disks are now free from defects. So why did it lost 70GB worth of data? I experienced disk hardware failure often with Windows system but never experienced losing data while the hardware seems to be fine. Without knowing why this happened, I feel scared to put data on Xserve RAID, and this is ironic since this 1.7TB Xserve RAID is meant for storing data safely...
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Hi, We are having a problem with our Xserve RAID, which is direct connected to our Powermac G5. When we shut down the computer, we generally turn off the RAID right after. Occasionally (like once every two weeks), when we go to turn the Raid off, it just will not turn off (No matter how long, or how many times we press the power button on the back). Is there some kind of fail safe, that won't let it turn off if something is going on within the RAID? What else could cause this?
Thanks in advance for any help anyone could offer...I had this same problem in the past week. I couldn't get RAID admin to detect the unit and rebooting etc didn't work. What I did do was unmount the RAID itself from the desktop and then reboot; afterwards I could shut down the RAID unit from the system > shutdown menu.
I should add that my RAID Admin tool didn't detect the unit until I unmounted it and rebooted, but after rebooting it did detect the unit fine.
Of course this may not be the case with you- but it's worth a shot if you haven't already tried it.
Good luck!
Paul
Message was edited by: Paul Munro -
What is the best way to increase the size of a "full" Xserve raid?
Hi,
our Xserve raid consists of 2 x 7 x 350GB disks.
These are arranged in 2 volumes (one per controller), RAID 0+1, 3 disks striped, then mirrored, and such are using 6 of the 7 disks per controller. 1 disk per controller is configured as a hot spare.
During time both volumes have filled up and now there only are 100GB left on every volume and we need more space
Is there a way to hot replace 350GB disks by 750GB disks?
Or is the only way to copy data off, replace disks, and restore data?
I would guess, that I can replace one disk with a 750GB disk, but only 250GB of it will be used. If I then would wait for reconstruction of that new part, and then replace its counterpart? Would only the first 350GB be reconstructed and the 400GB be lost, or would the raid recognize the free space and allow to add it to the stripes and mirrors?
Cheers,
MartinA disks in the array need to be the same size, so your guess is correct - if you replace a disk with a larger disk, the additional space will be lost.
As a result there's no trivial way of doing this.
Copying off the data, reformatting and restoring the data is the best way to go.
If that's not possible, you have one small chance thanks to how you've currently configured the arrays as 0+1.
You could break the mirror on controller 1- that would give you two logical arrays of three disks each. You could then take the data off the 0+1 array on the second controller and put it on the second half of the first controller, leaving the second controller's volumes spare.
Then destroy both volumes on the second controller and rebuild it as a RAID 5 volume. If you want to retain a hot-spare, this will equate to a 6-disk RAID 5, or about 1.8TB
Now you move the data from the two RAID 0 arrays on controller 1 onto the RAID 5 array on controller 2 and repeat the process to rebuild the 6 disks into a single RAID 5 volume. You can then redistribute the files as you like.
Of course, during this process you'll be running with lower (read: no) redundancy, so you had better hope a disk doesn't fail in the process.
A 6 disk RAID 5 is going to offer about the same performance and redundancy as the two mirrored 3-disk RAID 0 arrays (more performance if those RAID 0 arrays are full), with the advantage that RAID 5 isn't so wasteful of disk space (you lose have your total space to the mirror as opposed to one disks-worth of data to parity in RAID 5).
Either way, back the data up first. -
I have an Apple Xserve raid that I connected to a Dell PowerEdge 1950 using a QLogic Sanblade QLE2460 card. I currently have 7x750GB drives installed in the raid that yields around 4TB of usable capacity. I am running Red Hat 4 AS and created an ext3 file system. I have unfortunately had two occasions where the file system has gotten corrupted somehow. The file system seems fine until I shutdown cleanly and reboot. After booting, the partition table appears corrupt showing the file system is 4GB put the drive is much smaller. Is there a better file system type that is known to work with the xserve raid? Could this be a driver or kernel issue? Thanks!
Hello RandyMartin and welcome to the Apple boards,
I don't know how many people here are running your set-up, but hopefully someone will chime in with some ideas.
The general clearinghouse for all things Xserve RAID attached to non-Apple machines is: http://alienraid.org/
Good luck,
=Tod
G5/2.0x2, Dual XServes x2, XRAID, beige G3 501Mhz -
Hello all,
I have what I thought would be a simple question, but I've found nothing anywhere to answer it.
We have a new G5 Quad and an XServe Raid connected via Fibre Channel with 4 500 GB drive modules. Our Video capture card is the Decklink Extreme SD, but my employer has found a firm that will transfer our Cinealta HDCam tapes at full HD onto hard drives for transfer into our system. He then wants to work in full 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 HD (1080i) for editing.
I have tried several RAID configurations and used the Decklink Drive Speed Test Utility and found that the fastest data rate I am able to achieve is around 75 MB/sec (using RAID 0), which, according to the utility is only good for about 15 fps at 10 bit 4:2:2 1080.
So my question is this: How many Xserve Raid drive modules striped as RAID 0 would we need to achieve the 182.3 MB/sec data rate (according to the FCP manual) required to edit in full 10 bit 4:2:2 at 1080i at 24-30 fps? Is it simply a matter of doubling the 4 we now have? or is there some other calculation that would be required?
Thanks for the help14
Figure conservatively that each fully loaded controller (7 drives) in an Xserve RAID will give you 80 to 100 MB/sec. 160 to 200 MB/sec for both controllers fully loaded.
With an Xserve RAID, RAID 5 will give you almost the same bandwidth as RAID 0, so there's insufficient reason to forego the file protection of RAID 5.
Then, when you stripe the two sides together in Disk Utility, you should be getting more than 200 MB/sec, enough for a single stream of uncompressed 1080i, but probably not enough for two streams. It depends. -
Hey all
We're encountering a problem with the number of users attached to our Xserve RAID. It seems to be limiting it to 10 users. Is the Xserve RAID licensed itself, or is it limited to the number of users of the server it is attached to? And what if it is attached to a fibre-enabled switch?
Thanks to all.What do you mean by 'number of users attached to a RAID'?
Are you saying your users directly connect to the RAID? How can you do that without a fiber channel switch?
Or are you saying that your RAID is connected to a single host, and that host is sharing the volumes to network clients, then you may have a 10-user limit depending on the OS version you're running.
If your server is running Mac OS X (client), you can support 10 users. If you're running the 10-user version of Mac OS X Server, you're also limited to 10 users. If you're running the 'unlimited' version then you can run as many as your server can handle (CPU, memory, etc.). -
Xserve RAID lost RAID 5 array on right/bottom controller
I cleanly shut down an Xserve G5 with an Xserve RAID attached and then powered off the Xserve RAID this morning. I replaced a failing memory module in the Xserve and moved the rack 6". I then powered on the Xserve RAID, waited for a couple minutes until it was fully booted, and then booted the Xserve. When it came up, my RAID 50 volume failed to mount. Upon further investigation, it appears that the RAID 5 array on the right hand disks is "gone". In RAID Admin (Disks and Drives tab), the left side array is visible, but all disks on the right side list status as "OK" and Type: as "Spare".
Configuration: Xserve RAID with 14 250 GB disks. Each side was configured with 6 disks in a RAID 5 array and one spare. These were striped using Software RAID on the Xserve into RAID 50 and mounted as a single volume. The RAID firmware is currently 1.5 and the Xserve is running OS X Server 10.4.3.
To summarize today's activities: under Apple's guidance (as this entire system is covered under a Premium Support contract), I swapped the (bottom) controller for the right side, updated firmware (from v1.3/1.20a to 1.5/1.50), multiple resets of both controllers, repeated forced firmware updates, etc.
Also, I swapped the left set of disks for the right set, and the array from the left set now shows up on the right side, and the missing array from the right is still missing with the disks on the left side. I replaced the disks to their original positions with the same results.
RAID Admin's Utility "Recognize Array" will not perform any operations on the rigth side disks and Apple tells me that there's nothing further that I can do with it.
None of this has solved the problem or substantially changed the issue, and the disks on the right side are still missing their associated array. Apple is unable/unwilling to offer any further help except to refer me to 3rd party data recovery services.
Does anyone have any suggestion at all that might possibly recover the missing array? Is anyone aware of any tools that I might use to recreate the RAID 5 array on the right controller? I was hoping that there might exist some low-level tools with which the disks could be recreated into an array by hand? Are there any commercial products that would work on this? Any other ideas?
Many thanks for any suggestions.
- Martin
Xserve RAID (14 250GB disks) on Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)Not sure why you swapped the controllers back and forth
William, I don't think I was clear on this. I swapped the controller with a new controller that I had in a spare parts kit. This was at Apple's request.
really, RAID is not a backup...
I'm well aware, but despite my incessant warnings, users will become lulled in to a false sense of security when something "just works" for a very long time. This array wasn't intended to store valuable data that couldn't be lost, but...
It may be possible for Apple to re-create the RAID set, did you ask AppleCare about the possibility?
Apple has told me more than once that there's nothing else that they can do for me...and yet I keep calling back.
I was surprised that this array was lost when there were absolutely no prior signs of a problem and the system was merely shutdown and restarted cleanly. I'm more surprised and quite disappointed to learn that Apple will do nothing else for me (under a Premium Support contract) to attempt to repair a damaged array. When I asked questions about where the RAID information is stored, I received the answers: "I can't tell you that" and "Apple doesn't release that information". I did not get the feeling that they were working with me, but rather holding my hand while they walked me through published documentation.
I expected that there would be utilities (analagous to filesystem repair utilities) such as RAID Admin's "Recognize Array" that could help repair and recover damaged array data. I think that the lesson that I've leanred today is that I was naive to have expected such a thing without actually having investigated it ahead of time.
Anyway, thanks for your input, William.
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