Xserve disks and RAID questions

I have an Intel Xserve with its two original 750 GB disks. These are configured as RAID 1 (mirror).
I intend to purchase an identical disk as a hot spare and upgrade two old G4s with four each of the same disks as reserve web servers/backup.
The original disks are Seagate ST3750640NS which I can buy for £140 although the Apple price is £386 including the disk carrier. Apple refuses to sell the disk carriers separately.
The PCI boards I have found are:
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata1v4.html
and
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatax4i.html
costing $120 and $200 respectively.
There are PC boards as cheap as $20 but these may have bootability and compatibility issues. There appears to be little information about the proportion of hard/soft RAID resulting from any of these boards.
My questions are:
1 - Is there an inexpensive way of buying disk carriers for recent Xserves?
2 - Are there alternative satisfactory PCI boards?
3 - Do such boards differ much in terms of RAID types supported?
4 - Do such boards differ much in terms of the degree to which they are host computer independent? - ie more hard than soft and hence, presumably, faster.

>1 - Is there an inexpensive way of buying disk carriers for recent Xserves?
I'm not aware of any sources other than Apple (at least that I'd trust).
>2 - Are there alternative satisfactory PCI boards?
There are several manufacturers who make PCI RAID cards that you can use. You've listed two, but there are others including the RocketRAID series, and those from ACard.
>3 - Do such boards differ much in terms of RAID types supported?
In my opinion, you get what you pay for.
Cheap cards may support RAID 0 and 1, while more expensive cards may add RAID 5. This may or may not be important for you if you're just mirroring.
There are going to be performance differences between each card. Since you're using G4's, though, you're going to have other bottlenecks, so disk speed isn't likely to be a big factor.
>4 - Do such boards differ much in terms of the degree to which they are host computer independent? - ie more hard than soft and hence, presumably, faster.
If you get a card that works in a Mac, it's likely to also work in other hardware. The same can not necessarily be said the other way around - cheap PC-centric cards may not support Macs, mostly because of driver issues.
Note that you may also have issues with booting - not all cards can create bootable volumes which may leave you out in the cold if you don't check that first.

Similar Messages

Newbie FCP HDV monitoring and RAID questions

Hello forum gods.
First off, I must confess - I am a defector seeking assylum in the the Mac camp. I am a born-and-bred Windows person, and a longtime Avid editor who just made the jump and purchased the Mac-Pro with all the bells and whistles, and FCP Studio. I did this to accompany my JVC ProHD cam and deck.
I have no idea what I am going to do with the time I used to spend scanning for viruses and trojans. I am thinking I may write a novel, or build a house by hand - but that is another topic.
Now that the confession is out of the way - we can move on to the actual questions.
<big breath>
Ok - so I have this new fancy shiny computer, deck, camera, and monitors - one of which is the Sony 23" that is comparable to the Apple 23. I do not have a Kona or Blackmagic card because I was told that I did not need one right away - though I do plan on getting one later. For monitoring, I was going to use the firewire in/out of the JVC deck and convert the signal via the component outs to another HD monitor. This would bring the total monitors on the system to 3 - a 19" for the edit screen, the 23" for the video playback in FCP and the braodacast HD for monitoring the final signal.
Is this workable?
Now for the second question - storage and RAID.
Most of my footage will be either SD or HDV. Eventually I'll be going to XDCam, but that's a bit down the road. I have the internal 250 gigger that came in the Mac, and I purchased additional 500gb SATA II drives that I was going to use to set up a RAID. Should I do this internal or external? Will it work? What else do I need? What is the meaning of life?
Thanks for your replies. My credit card is anxiously awaiting your suggestions
G5 Quad Mac OS X (10.4.8)
G5 Quad Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Some question back atcha:
1) When you say you'll be working in SD, what do you
mean? Typically, SD refers to uncompressed 601, 720 X
486. Or are you referring to DV NTSC?
DV NTSC and/or the myriad formats that the JVC100 can do.
2) Your Profile says you have a Quad G5, but your
post says it's a MacPro. Which is it?
Sorry - Consider that my first public gaffe in the new Mac world. I bought the Mac Pro. Time to change my profile. I bought it last week - it isn't even here yet. Supposed to be delivered today...
3) Are you wanting to see your HDV sequence on a
external video monitor while you're editing? If so,
you'll need the Kona card (or the Blackmagic card,
but I don't do BMD, only Aja, so I don't know about
the Blackmagic offerings.)
I've read about the Cinema Preview function and although I know that this isn't the best idea for monitoring, wouldn't it work? On the JVC deck, it has the firewire output/input and component outs (among others) so in E-to-E mode, couldn't the deck act as my converter for monitoring on the broadcast monitor? If not - I have a line on a Kona-2 with the BOB for about $1400. Deal or no deal?
Now as for your RAID question, you can do either
internal or external. Just don't include the drive
that contains your system folder in the RAID.
I was planning on using the 250 for all my system files and the 2-500 giggers as my edit drives. Sound good?
EDIT: As for the meaning of life, go ask your father.
Gaah... He handed me "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and told me to get to reading....
Thanks for the help. Lord knows I need it.

COPY INSTALL DISK AND DL QUESTIONS

OK, I want to make a backup of the Leopard install disk and I understand it's a dual layer DVD. I'm assuming Disk Utility can burn a bootable DL disk? Is there anything special that needs to be done because it's DL and needs to be bootable?
Also, I'll probably have to buy a package of 3 so what do I do with the other 2? Can I burn data backups on them with no problem and be able to red them like a standard DVD?
I'm assuming yes on all that but thought I'd check before spending the money.
Is there a way to put the install disk on an external drive then boot up from the external and install Leopard from there?

Went out to get some dual layer DVD's and all Staples had was a 25 pack for $53, WAY more than I wanted to spend and I sure don't need 25 of them. So I went back to do an internet search for cheaper DVD's and found an interesting article on cloning the Install DVD to an external firewire drive.
I have an external USB2 drive but my iMac is supposed to be able to boot on that. I used Disk Utilities to add a partition without erasing the one that was there (I love that!). I then used restore in Disk Utilities and selected the disk image I had created and cloned it to the small partition on the USB2 drive.
I then used System Preferences Startup Disk to select it and restarted. Didn't do an install because I didn't need one but did Repair Permission and Disk Repair. All went perfectly, but MUCH faster than booting from the DVD. This can be really handy.

Xserve Disks and megaraid

Howdy, I have a 2 year old Xserve G5 that shipped with Panther. I recently purchased the Hardware RAID card and a pair of 500Gb drive modules. I installed these, and as normal they came up in JBOD mode, working fine. I booted from the server installer CD, version 10.3.3, and megaraid is not installed on the CD, so I can't configure the RAID (we just want to mirror the drives). The card docs state Mac OS X 10.3.5 or higher, and the server itself is up to 10.3.9 with all other updates.
The megaraid software is not found on the server volume either.
How can I obtain the megaraid software in order to use my card? I've been all over the support site, and no one else seems to have had this issue.
Do I need new disks, or is there a way to install/access the megaraid software if it's not on the original CD?
Xserve G5 Dual 2Ghz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1.5Gb RAM

Hi William.
Nice name
Anyway, megaraid should be there with the OS. Have you checked from the command line to see whether it's available?
Here are some Kbase articles which discuss it:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86808
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304244
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25817
I wish I could give you more hands-on, but I know that on my G5 desktop system I have megaraid installed, even though this machine has never had a hardware RAID card installed:
MEGARAID CLI version 1.0.12
Usages:
megaraid -showadapters
megaraid -showadapter
megaraid -showdevices
megaraid -showconfig [ld]
megaraid -destroyconfig [-yes]
megaraid -create {R0, R1, R5} -drive {0 1 2 4} [-stripesize n] [-size x] [-writecache {enable, disable}] [-readahead {on, off, adaptive}] [-iopolicy {direct, cached}]
megaraid -changepolicy ld [-writecache (enable, disable)] [-readahead(on,off,adaptive)] [-iopolicy(direct,cached)]
megaraid -spare pd {-create,-delete}
megaraid -rebuild pd {-start, -stop, -status}
megaraid -chkcon ld {-start, -stop, -status}
megaraid -flash filename
megaraid -changestate pd {-online, -fail}
megaraid -initialize ld {-start, -stop, -status}
megaraid -alarm {-on, -off, -silence }
No MegaRAID Adapter Available
[quadzilla:~$]
So I don't think you should explicitly need to find a driver. You checked from the command line? It should be in /usr/sbin:
[quadzilla:~$] which megaraid
/usr/sbin/megaraid
My system is 10.4, but all the Kbase articles mention it has been there since 10.3.5.
Cheers,
-B
Quad-Core PMG5, 4 GB RAM, 7800 GT, 1 TB disk. Mac OS X (10.4.8)

AHCI and RAID question

Hi, my pc is a :
msi p35 platinum version (mobo v1.2)
Q6600 GO
2X WD 250 sata2 hdds
3 X DVD-RW
1X Nvidia GEEFROCE GT260
(I`m on the lastest Bios version from the live update site)
4GB corsair XMS2 ddr2
Running Win XP home 32bit
Basicly i have a query, ORIGINALY when i changed 2 x Hdds about 6mnths ago i set up as RAID 0, but on the way to getting that up and running i had the `devices scan b4 srart-up` dectecting drives as AHCI.... but i didnt take much notice of this seeting as i meant to ser it up as RAID, LOL
NOW, shortly later i wanna try a ahci setup `non-raid` and cannot get the mobo 2 dectect as ahci, now i have always had 2 sliptream the `F6` flopy drivbers in for my intel raid controller....
as far as i can c theres only 2 suitable drivers for the board on the floppy anyhow, the `ICH9R sata achi controller` and the `SATA-RAID ICH8R/ICH9R`, alll the other are for different controllers.
i built this a few weeks ago and dint realise it wa sall in UDMA5 mode(slow as assholes !)
now IF in the Bios i set the `RAID MODE AS AHCI` (because with an array defined, the sata only mode kicks in (AHCI)), i used ahci contrller driver frome floppy, NOT `SATA-RAID ICH8R/ICH9R`
i assume this is ok as it is ahci mode i want NOT raid, BUT do i use the RAID drive because in Bios its all under RAID MODE=ahci ??? (they `should` be sperate really )
BUT I STILL GET IDE MODE IN HDD SCAN AT START-UP
i am connected on ports 3 and 4 I`m not the jmicron thing, i know about that )
i tried all different bios setting etc, but cant seem to get hdd to show as ahci like they did once befrore, the ONLY difference between now and then, is NOW i on a newest bios version
Help !! LOL
thanks.

http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt92/DJ-1/hddsentenielPROhddtestresults.jpg
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt92/DJ-1/untitled.jpg
http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt92/DJ-1/untitled1.jpg
hi, i hope these help, i done a few hdd read write test to see if there`s any obvios indication of what mode its in, do these help ?
edit: i have been trying to find any indication that NCQ is active on the hdd, but cannot see it anywhere in device manager etc etc.... ( because NCQ is ONLY supported by ACCI mode, ye
ah ? )
it does give the option to enable disk write caching on the hdd(currentley OFF) what mode is hdd caching avaliable in ?
erm, i was looking on the toms harware site and theres a list of all the Intel ICHR controllers, i`m assuming the msi p35 platimum is the `Intel® ICH9 4 Port SATA AHCI Controller - 2923` version (msi site just says ich9r) what is the - 2923 bit about?
thanks.

Disk Utility Raid question

Is it software based RAID? or does the disk utility control a hardware based RAID?

For every disk drive I keep two backups. Rather than relying on mirror, which copies problems, and protects only from a hard failure, a FW800 and eSATA might be the way to go.
SoftRAID ($149 3rd party) will alert you on any I/O error and supports "stripe reads" from mirror if you go that route.
Zero your drive, backups, good maintenance. You can also backup to disk images.
Always always have an emergency boot drive AND a copy of the OS before you make any updates.
It is possible to partition a drive and then stripe or mirror using part of the drives to other identical drives. Performance of your "0+1" is poor.
If you are like most, over the years I've tried various setups and configurations, and continue to, in part to test and tweak, or to learn along the way. But backup sets are deeply ingrained from over 30 years of handling files, systems and data. And in the rare event of a drive failure, most of the time a simple reformat (or 7-way write erase nowadays) works. And there are programs to test and map out bad sectors. Heat more than anything shortens a drive's life, assuming the drive's mechanics are good (most are).
You have your drives, so can't sell you on which drives are enterprise, optimized or best for RAID (some are not suitable, and some have problems).

Question about Photoshop scratch disk and specific setup

Hi Folks
Thanks for the help in advance.
I'm a novice and need help finding a solution to a new PC Build. (Windows 7 Pro 64bit with Photoshop CS6)
I only recently found out about having a scratch disk dedicated for photoshop (very novice i know ), and was wondering if a 120-128GB SSD would be enough? (Please bear in mind I can't fit large SSD raid configs to my budget, plus I live in New Zealand, so prices are higher for SSD at the moment).
I only edit single camera RAW files at a time around 25mb per file, with no large amount of layers and very rarely do large images i.e. Panorama etc. I have searched the forums but could not find a concrete answer.
My setup was originally meant for a HTPC (I don't intend to overclock), but I will also be using it for light photography projects. Specs below:
CPU: Intel i7 3770
Mobo: Asrock B75 Pro3-M (or Asus P8H77m Pro, depending on budget)
16gb Ram (maybe bump up to 32gb later)
120-128gb SSD for OS and apps
120-128gb SSD scratch disk
2 TB HDD for storage
If anyone knows, the motherboards I've listed have 3x Sata3 ports, Asrock has one Intel chip and two Asmedia controlled Sata3 ports, while Asus has 2x Intel controlled and 1x Marvell controlled Sata3 port. If I went with the Asrock, would it be okay to connect the OS/Apps SSD to the intel controlled sata3 port and have the scratch disk and storage HDD to the Asmedia sata3 ports?
And one more novice question, when I begin to edit my images, is it best to transfer my photos from memory card to storage HDD then work from there? Or would it be quicker opening images direct from a USB 3.0 card reader / USB 3.0 external hard drive?
Thanks again everyone, really appreciate it

priddye wrote:
Just to clarify, if/when I get one 256gb SSD for my main C: drive, I can load the OS/Apps and store some data for the time being (until I get another SSD) and use the 2TB HDD for scratch disk only?
Yes, that's what I meant. You could try putting Photoshop scratch on C: at least temporarily, and watch your free space carefully. If you don't work on big documents or set your history states to be very large, it might be workable. But be careful. The safe "set it and forget it" configuration is to make your HDD the one and only Photoshop scratch drive.
When I do get around to getting the second 256gb, I will look at installing the two SSD's in RAID configuration. If i were to do this, can I load the OS/Apps to the RAID SSD's as well as using them for scratch disks and have the 2TB HDD for storage? I hope that makes sense.
Sounds about right; with 512GB on tap you should be able to run just about everything from C:, as long as you don't keep your entire photo library on there. Realistically, on a big system that's got a lot of apps installed and has been used for some time, Windows and your apps may end up consuming 100 to 150 GB, so that would still leave you a lot of breathing room.
Keep in mind that what you describe may require 3rd party re-partitioning software and/or backup and restoral, or a complete reinstallation of Windows and everything (usually the latter is what is recommended when moving up to a RAID system volume).
By the way, SSDs stay in best working order if you overprovision - i.e., maintain a fair amount of free space. The internal controllers need the free space to keep the data organized well and maintain top performance.
-Noel

XServe 2009 and 4TB disks

Hello Peeps,
Can an XServe 2009 recognize and format 4tb disks and combine as Raid 1 ?
Thanks.

Are you referring to the internal ADMs? or external disks?
If you're referring to ADMs - where you plan to take the disk out of an existing disk tray and replace it with a disks of your own, then there's been a lot of hits and misses (mostly misses) in using third-party disks. Some work, most don't due to various firmware support issues.
Off hand I'm not aware of anyone that's used 4TB disks (sucessfully or unsucessfully), so the answer might be - try it and see. I'm sure some people would be interested to hear your results.

RAID options, SSD disks and others....

Hi!
This is not exactly topic for expanding my mac pro... This is more "How to expand my upcoming mac pro".
There are couple of things I'm constantly fighting. Memory and disk-speed. I absolutely hate it when I see spinning beach ball on the screen and only thing I hear is the wild hard-drive trashing ...
Now when I finally upgrade my power mac G5 to Mac Pro I'm confronted with myriad of choices:
Memory is easy - 12Gb BTO option 6x 2Gb sticks. This should satisfy all the requirements. Enough to work with. Enough sticks so it really is DDR and so on.
Hard-drives are the real pain. First of all I'd like to ask couple of questions...
a) Does OS X and disk-utily support making striped RAID-disks and use those as boot-disk? Idea was to install two fast SSD disks and stripe those. They have sufficient long MTBF so I feel confident using them striped for increased performance. Performance is blazing fast for boot-disk which directly translates into nice user-experience since boot-up is fast and opening programs is almost instant.
b) Performance characteristics on OS X disk-utily versus SoftRAID. Are there any noticeable differences? Disk-utility driver is single-threaded while SoftRAID is multi-threaded. How about creating boot-disks with SoftRAID?
c) How about using SSD drives and hardware RAID-card from apple? Any experiences with this?
At the moment I think the setup would be something like this:
4x 1Tb disk-drives with RAID-5 for mass-storage
2x SSD drives with RAID-0 for OS
Downside is that I think this would require both hardware RAID-card for RAID-5 and possibly software-RAID if hardware RAID-card doesn't recognize SSD drives. Or if I wan't to be able to boot into windows which I'm forced to do sometimes (Note! booting windows in Mac is against my beliefs!) then I'd need to leave small partition free on the SSD drive(s) and not include that in RAID-setup.
So satisfying the following is pretty hard:
- RAID-5 for 4 internal hard-drives used for mass-storage
- RAID-0 for 2 SSD-drives used for OS and applications
- Ability to dual-boot into Windows via bootcamp

a: If you make a striped RAID array (RAID0) with Disk Utility you can boot from it. I'm doing the same right now, with 2 OCZ Vertex SSD's.
c: Officially, the RAID card only supports drives Apple sells. Besides that, it would be a shame to use SSD's with the Apple RAID card, as it is slow. If you have 3 SSD's in a RAID0 setup they will be faster than the RAID card can handle (the RAID card's maximum speed is somewhere near 533MB/s, look up the exact number in the Apple Online Store).
I don't think you can use Bootcamp when using the RAID card. In any case, you can't start Windows using Bootcamp from a disk that is connected to the RAID card.
Also, you don't have enough connectors for 4 internal hard drives and 2 SSD's if you want to keep your optical drive.
You could go for a third party RAID controller, but then I'd wait with my purchase until more is known about the compatibility of those cards with Snow Leopard. Also, this probably won't work with Bootcamp.

I have a PowerMac G4 running ProTools that no longer boots up. All I get is a file folder on the screen with a flashing question mark in it. Ran the Utility disk and all systems passed. Any ideas?

I have a PowerMac G4 running ProTools that no longer boots up. All I get is a file folder on the screen with a flashing question mark in it. Ran the Utility disk and all systems passed. Any ideas?

You need to use the computer's install disks to repair the hard drive or install a new OS.
(58033)

RAID - 1 and repair question

Hi all,
I have an AMD 770-C45 motherboard.
After setup a raid-1 with 2 500GB disks, 1 of the disk becomes unusable at the RAID set.
The raid set is still visible within Windows XP as RAID disk.
Within the Raid config at BIOS, the 2nd disk has been defined as stand alone.
I removed the 2nd defective disk and inserted a new disk with larger capacitiy and better speed.
Now the 2nd disk is visible but also as stand alone disk.
How can I repair the original RAID-1 set with the new inserted disk??
Thank you,
Mario

Lookout has not shown issues for any system we have had using RAID 0,1, 1+0, and 5.
Good luck,
Mike
Forshock - Consult.Develop.Solve.

Installed new hard drive in imac and i get folder with question mark, put in OS install disk and it does nothing? All I have is wireless key board and mouse, is this a factor?

Installed new hard drive in imac and i get folder with question mark, put in OS install disk and it does nothing? All I have is wireless key board and mouse, is this an issue?

Other than put disc in you don't give much info about what you've done. With the install disc inserted restart your Mac while holding the C key, that should start it up from the install disc. Should also work fine with a wireless Apple keyboard.

RAID PCI Necessary (and another question)

Good Morning,
I just ordered an XServe with 3x80GB drives. I did not order the RAID PCI card.
Is the RAID PCI card necessary if I want to Mirror the boot drive to one of the other 2 drives in the Xserve?.
Also, If I were to setup up the 3 drives as RAID 5 configuration, how much usable drive space should I expect to have available?
(I also ordered an Xserve RAID with 4x500 GB drives. I will have 2 sets of mirrored drives from that for data storage)
Thanks very much

>Is the RAID PCI card necessary if I want to Mirror the boot drive to one of the other 2 drives in the Xserve?.
Necessary? no.
Mac OS X can handle RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (Mirroring) out of the box.
The Hardware RAID card can do RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5, so you only need the card if you want RAID 5.
Note that the card can also do RAID 0 and RAID 1 and should be faster since it offloads the work from the main CPU, but it isn't necessary.
>Also, If I were to setup up the 3 drives as RAID 5 configuration, how much usable drive space should I expect to have available?
The general rule is that RAID 5 uses one drive for parity, so for a RAID 5 array with n drives you end up with a capacity of ((n-1) * drive size).
So in this case, with three 80GB drives you get (3 -1) * 80, or about 160GB of usable space.
>(I also ordered an Xserve RAID with 4x500 GB drives. I will have 2 sets of mirrored drives from that for data storage)
That's not the optimal use of 4 drives in the XServe RAID.
With two sets of mirrors drives I assume you're intending to create two 500GB mirrored volumes which results in 1TB of usable space.
Compare that with a four-drive RAID 5 set which yields 1.5TB of usable space. You get 50% more volume that's still RAID protected against a drive failure.
OK, you might tolerate two drive failures in the mirrored scenario, but you'll have to decide whether that minor advantage outweighs the additional space.

Xserve G5 RAID question

Can you use the Xserve G5 PCI RAID controller and the Xserve RAID Fibre Channel controller in the same Xserve? Thanks in advance.

Yes.
The XServe has two PCI slots. The RAID card must be installed in the lower slot, but that leaves the upper slot available for the fiber channel card.
Note, though, that when running with two PCI cards installed, the PCI bus runs at 100MHz, not 133Mhz, potentially degrading throughput. Whether or not the difference is noticeable will depend on your usage pattern.

Is the disk equal to log files and other questions?

In the web page http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/je/GettingStartedGuide/introduction.html#dplfeatures, there is a statement, " The checkpointer is responsible for flushing database data to *disk* that was written to cache as the result of a transaction commit ".
I wonder if the disk here means log files under the JE home directory.
From my understanding of these documents and other web resources, the check pointer is to write records in Cache to Log files (disk), and then cleaner is to reorganize and then to remove unused log files. For the records in a Cache, they are brought from disk to Cache by querying the index organized in a B-Tree structure, and the In-Compressor is to delete some empty internal nodes of B-Tree.
I wonder if the above is right to describe relations among these components, check pointer, cleaner, B-Tree and In-Compressor.
Thanks for your help!
Best,
Jiangfan

Jiangfan Shi wrote:
I wonder if the disk here means log files under the JE home directory. Yes.
I wonder if the above is right to describe relations among these components, check pointer, cleaner, B-Tree and In-Compressor. Yes.

Xserve disks and RAID questions

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for