Xserve raid or other raid

Hello everyone. I'm looking to buy some type of raid system but I dot know if it shoul be an Xserve raid or another one from a place like other world computing. I need my raid to be able to do heavy video editing with video quality at blueray, and it has to act as a scratch disk. The thing I like about the Xserve raid is that it is expandable and runs through fiber. I need to be able totransfer large files fast. If I were to invest in a different raid I might be stuck with FireWire 800, or esata but I don't know if esata works on my Xserve. I know the xraid is discontinued and uses para drives, but is it still worth it.

I found one off the website gainsaver.com for about 400. Thats not including the drives. At first i wont need much space. I would start slow maybe with 2 500gb or 2 250gb something like that. Slowly ill grow, so i dont have to worry about spending a bunch on the top drives. I will be using it for time machine backup of my server, and as a scratch disk for my editing. When i do edit, i need to be able to at least transfer 50mb a second to it because i edit in blue ray quality video. I also have a fibre channel card in my xserve already so i would only have to buy the two wires. One of the things that also pushed me to consider it is that in my school, we have a video editing suite. In that suite there are a bunch of xserves and 2 xraids. They are used as scratch disks for 25 computers that all edit video at the same time. In the school we work with SD so its easier on the transfer but its still intense. Thats why i was pushed to consider the xraid, and especially coming from apple, who makes products that last years more than they should. It doesnt seem like a bad idea. What do you think

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Apple Xserver Raid, 1 raid mounts and the other raid does not mount

Apple Xserver Raid, 1 raid mounts and the other raid does not mount but all the lights on the drives are green

Kind of lacking in detail there...
Did the other volume mount in the past? and it stopped working? When? What changed?
What does Raid Admin.app have to say about it?
Does it see the drives? a RAID set on those drives? A link on the fiber channel connection?

Xserve not recognising LaCie RAID

I have a very strange issue with a LaCie 4Big Quadra RAID.
The device used to be attached to our Xserve (10.6.8 server) as part of a mirrored Raid of two hardware RAIDs, and had been function fime for some months. Recently I added some more RAM to the Xserve as CrashPlan, which we use for running backups was creating huge swapfiles and filling the startup disc. So, to add the RAM all attached drives were ejected, all users disconnected and RAM installed. Drives were reconnected and users carried on working as if nothing had happened.
A couple of days later I spotted on Disk Utility thet the RAID was degraded - the LaCie was 'missing' from the mirrored RAID. No sign of it on Disk Utility.
Strangely when connected by Firewire to my MBP (10.9.2) it mounted and the information stored on it was visible. Reconnected it to the Xserve - still now sign of it. Connected it to an iMac which is also running 10.6.8 server and it mounted quite happily there.
In discussion with LaCie technical support I wiped the RAID, reformatted as RAID 0, then back to RAID 5 all while connected to my MBP and then initialised it. Have tried all formats and partition maps, but it is still not recognised by the Xserve. We actually have two Xserves and it is not recognised by the newer one either. The only reference one can see is in System Profiler where it shows up as an Unknown Device in the FireWire Device Tree.
I have also tried connecting by USB as well as FW 800.
Does anyone have any idea what is going on and how I can get the drive to be recognised again by an Xserve?
Thanks for any assistance.
Huw

adam taylor1 wrote:
As the data is backed up, I am not worried about having to re-format the entire Raid. When (and if) I do - what is the best way to configure the set-up for video work and retain the Raid 5?
That is a loaded question It all depends on a nearly infinite number of details. What type of video are you shooting in? DV, HD compresses or uncompressed, etc. How is the storage used in your workflow? Ingest, editing, play out. How many people are connected to it and how do they connect? Is this direct connect? Is it a reshare over AFP? Are only project files kept there and all ingest/cutting is done on the workstation? And those are just the tip of the iceberg.
Here are some basic suggestions. RAID 5 is the best format for relative safety of your data. However, the nature of the XRaid design is that you end up with two independent volumes. So say you have 14 500 GB drives. This is 7 TB of raw storage. Doing a Raid 5 on each side, no spare, will yield 3 TB (about 2.7 TB formated). On top of those formats, the unit can be software raided into a raid 50 (two raid 5s striped) or 51 (two raid 5s mirrored). These are tenuous as you've discovered. The later is wasteful as you throw 7 TB of raw storage at a volume that yield 2.7 TB of usable space. In high availability/redundancy situations this makes sense. But the amount of data that needs that level of protection is probably pretty small. The other option, which is what I guess happened to you, is taking the two raid 5s and striping them together. The only benefit here is that you get what appears to be a single volume spanned across the two controllers. There is a perceived speed benefit here and since you mentioned video workflow, that may explain the decision. However, unless you are doing ingest, this formating likely makes no sense.
Hope this helps

Raid spare or Raid Slice

I have a four disks Sonnet set to configure in RAID 1.
When configuring it, Disk Utility gives me the option
of "Raid spare" or "Raid slice" for each disk.
What is the best option ? Slide or Spare ?

PS : I suppose I'll just have to type RAID 1+0 in the field "RAID Set name".
You can type whatever you want. It's just a label.
why the application RAID utility is unavailable in my iMac ? When I click on the icon, it says "RAID utility is not suppported on this computer".
RAID Utility is for controlling the hardware RAID card in an XServe (or MacPro). Your machine does not have a RAID card, therefore it is not needed.
Everything described here is software-RAID and can be done via Disk Utility (although I'm not sure how you're getting 4 drives in an iMac...

What are the latest versions of RAID Admin and RAID Firmware

As of 10/18/06, what are the latest versions of RAID Admin and RAID Firmware?
Currently I have RAID Admin 1.5.
RAID Admin reports my RAID's firmware is version 1.3.2/1.26a.
Am I safe?
Do I have the latest?
Thanks.
XServe G5

You do not have the latest firmware. The latest firmware is version 1.5.
You should upgrade. Make sure you have a current backup and then select "update firmware" from within RAID admin. It will then ask you for the location of the firmware update -- it should be in /Application/Utilities/Xserve RAID Update.

Why can I not add a system in Raid Admin, my raid is not being recognized

I was able to see it a few days ago but now it will not connect, I need to check one of my drives which I am pretty sure needs to be replaced. amber light is on and when I checked it the other day it showed a degraded array and drive 2 was not being recognized. could the cables from the xserve to the raid be bad?
thanks

The XServe RAID uses the ethernet connection for all administration. Make sure the ethernet links are active and that you're in the same subnet (or at least somewhere the XServe RAID can route to).
Did you manually configure the network ports or leave them as DHCP?
If DHCP it's possible that the controller's IP address has changed, in which case you'll need to be on the same local subnet to locate the RAID.

While transferring several files to the G-Raid, the G-Raid device locks up with the following warnings: "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in (whatever file) can't be read or written (Error code - 36)."

While transferring several files to the G-Raid, the G-Raid device locks up with the following warnings: "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in (whatever file) can't be read or written (Error code - 36).” NOt sure this is a G-Raid problem, can anyone help?

This is likely a problem with the drive itself. This error indicates unspecified I/O errors with the drive, which can be from a hardware fault, or a formatting issue. If the drive has valuable data on it, then try connecting it to another PC to get the data off, and then try fully partitioning and formatting the drive with Disk Utility. If this corrects the error then you should be able to use the drive again as it was likely a formatting issue, but if the problem continues then it is likely a hardware fault and the best solution is to be safe and replace the drive.

I replaced the battery on my RAID card, when I booted my mac pro up, I get the folder with the question mark. I used a boot USB drive to boot and when I looked in the RAID utility, my RAID 5 volumes were no longer showing, advise.

I replaced the battery on my RAID card, when I booted my mac pro up, I get the folder with the question mark. I used a boot USB drive to boot and when I looked in the RAID utility, my RAID 5 volumes were no longer showing, advise.
Ernest

Not sure if I'm following you. I have 4 hard drives installed on my Mac Pro. I had a RAID 5 configured and functional for about 5 months. My battery died on the RAID card. I replaced the battery, seated the RAID card back in the slot I removed it from. When I booted to the USB drive to look in the RAID utility, I could see the battery is charged but my volumes are not showing.
The drives don't show in disk Utility. I built the RAID with the RAID Utility and they did show there. I have a early 2008 Mac Pro, Mavricks OS running Mac Server

RAID 0 or RAID 5 for SSD's in Virtual SAN

I guess I WAS missing something. Oops. Ingore me, carry on.

Is it better to use RAID 0 or RAID 5 in a three node virtual SAN all flash system? Since two of the three nodes can fail and all of the VM's are still up and running, I was thinking RAID 0 may be the way to go. I've read that with 6 flash drives in each of the three servers, RAID 0 creates less wear & tear on the flash drives then RAID 5 does, but not sure if that is true. However, I might sleep better with RAID 5. Our vendor is recommending RAID 0.
This topic first appeared in the Spiceworks Community

On-board RAID and PCI RAID controller

Hello everybody,
I am new to the forum. So, please excuse me if that topic was already covered...
I have MSI MAX2-LR (MS-6398E) board. It works just fine, no problem so far. Though I have 2 problems with add-on cards:
1. I was planning to use on-board RAID and additional PCI RAID controller = FastTrack 100 TX2 to cover 6 hard drives into 2 mirrored sets: 4drives one and 2 drives the other.
It doesn't work! I can use either on-board RAID or PCI RAID. As soon as I have any drive connected to on-board RAID, the PCI RAID disappeares. If I have no drives connected to on-board RAID, I can see both RAID controllers, they have different I/O and IRQs, and PCI RAID is working just fine. If only I connect one drive to the on-board RAID, it gets activated on startup, and the other one disappeares. :O
I believe it's a BIOS bug. I wander, if that can be fixed easily????? :D
2. I have a new Matrox Video card = Parhelia. It doesn't work in AGP slot! System doesn't recognize it, and beeps non-stop. I am dealing with Matrox Tech Support on that matter. ?(
Maybe, it's a known issue, and somebody can save me time by telling what's that about.
Appreciate any imput. Have a great weekend.!!! :]

Hey I also have the same Raid card and also the Matrox Parhelia, and I see that you also have some problems with the card I got also problems with the card, but they couldnt help me at theire forums (http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum10/HTML/005085.html), I hope we have got more luck here :D

Replace the Hot Spare that Shared between Raid 1 and raid 5

I have ProLiant ML370 G6 with Smart Array P410i Controller on System Board
I have two Logical Drive (Logical Drive 1 - Mirroring (RAID 1) And (Logical Drive 2 - Distributed Data Guarding (RAID 5)
The logical Drive 1- Mirroring (RAID 1) Have two Physical Drives
The Logical Drive 2 Distributed Data Guarding (RAID 5 Have three Physical Drives
And There Are One Spare Drive Shared btween RAID 1 and Raid 5
Controller Configuration Summary
2 Data Array(s)
2 Data Logical Drive(s)
5 Data Drive(s)
1 Spare Drive(s)
The problem :
there are that the spare Drive FAil and have warining To replace it
I replace this drive with new one but the repulid for the Drive not start and Give Inactive
How Repulid the Hot Spare drive ?

Hello Amostafa,
Welcome to the HP Forums, I hope you enjoy your experience! To help you get the most out of the HP Forums I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide First Time Here? Learn How to Post and More.
I understand that you are looking to rebuild the hot spare drive on your ProLiant system, and I would be happy to guide you towards a resolution!
I am sorry, but to get your issue more exposure, I would suggest posting it in the commercial forums, since this is a commercial product. You can do this at:
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/bd-p/itrc-264
I hope this helps!
Regards
MechPilot
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos, Thumbs Up" on the right to say “Thanks” for helping!

RAID 1 or RAID 6 Compatibility?

If I purchase the 1 TB Time Capsule and I also purchase an additional 1 TB External Hard Drive that I connect directly into the USB port or Eathernet port on the Time Capsule, then will I be able to setup RAID 1 Mirrored 1 TB data integrity/storage where a drive can fail without sustaining any data loss? If so, what if I eventually chained 3 1 TB USB External Hard Drives or connected 3 to the Eathernet ports on the Time Capsule, then would I be able to setup RAID 6 Data Integrity, where up to 2 of the hard drives can fail without sustaining any data loss with 2 TB of storage? I guess really what I'm asking is are all of the hard drives seen as unique partitions separate from the Time Capsule when you either chain them via USB or connect them to the Eathernet ports on the Time Capsule?

JFraser wrote:
Is RAID via Ethernet supported?
No, it isn' t
Actually with TC you can't use any RAID configuration

RAID-5 over RAID-1, with encryption

I'm planning to restructure my fileserver. It has (well, will have) 8 hard drives for data, each 1.5 TB in size. I want to create 4 mirrored pairs, and then place each pair in a RAID-5 array, for a total usable space of 4.5 TB. I want to place encryption on top of it, with dm-crypt/LUKS, with either ext4 or xfs on top of that (_probably_ ext4, but it's easy to change that after I have the block devices set up).
I guess my questions are mostly about performance and best practices.
For reference, the server has 6 GB RAM (although I can easily buy more if needed), and a first-gen i3 (which, sadly, does not have hardware AES support). The hard drives are all running off the motherboard's SATA ports, but I can buy (and probably will buy at some point) a good JBOD controller.
I should also say that the server will be used for (a) keeping differential backups of my other computers (probably only 500-750 GB in backup files), (b) streaming music / HD video, (c) torrenting. So the usage is really a fix of access patterns, but the files should generally be larger-than-average (most files will probably be over 10 MB), and there will probably be many files open at once.
1) What kind of chunk size should I use? I assume using equal chunk sizes for the mirrors and the RAID-5 array would be good. I was thinking 256 KB (which would yield a 768 KB block size in the FS), but that may be a bit big.
2) I hear it's best to put the encryption between the filesystem and the top-level block device (which is the RAID-5 array in this case). The other feasible option is placing it directly on the drives (well, on the drives' partitions). Is this true?
3) An alternative configuration would be to mirror two RAID-5 arrays together, but partial rebuilds would take longer and put more stress on the drives. It would be nice to get some confirmation that I'm right in my reasoning here, and that RAID-5 over RAID-1 would be better than RAID-1 over RAID-5.
Any other advice with such a setup is welcome.
Thanks for your input!
(Note: This was brought about due to the failure of a few hard drives in my fileserver. To that end, I am unable to really test anything with all the disks until I get them back from the RMA. I can still play around with a few disks for now, though.)

alphaniner wrote:α. BAARF
Yeah, someone linked me to that too. I looked through their reasoning (well, about 3-4 of the links on that site) and I don't think it really pertains to me, because:
During a full rebuild (of the overarching RAID-5 array), one (or even up to three) more hard drive failures will not cause issues.
RAID-6 provided ample performance for me, so I assume RAID-5 will be the same (if not better).
Adding more hard drives would entail (a) a new controller, (b) a new case (probably a server chassis, to handle 10+ hard drives), and possibly (c) a new PSU. So it's actually not at all cheap for me to buy them.
The reason I'm thinking of RAID-15 and not RAID-51 is because if 1 drive fails, the rebuild only reads from one drive (to restore that mirror). If 1 drive fails in RAID-51, then the rebuild must read from the other 3 drives. The situation can easily get worse with 2 failures, since this would cause reading from probably 2 but at most 3 drives in RAID-15, but would cause reading from all 6 with RAID-51. Basically, recovering from a failure would take about 3 times as long, which means about 3 times the stress on the remaining drives while the array is more vulnerable.

RAID 5 vs RAID 10 vs RAID 6

SSD has different "rules" regarding raid 5 acceptability. Raid 5 and Raid 6 put a higher level of wear and tear on your drives however.

We are expanding our VMware server and I'm weighing my options. I have four open drive bays and I'm considering the following using 4 600 GB SSD's:
RAID 5 (3 drives + 1 drive hot spare) - Gets me 1200 GB storage, plus 1 drive redundancy
RAID 10 - Gets me 1200 GB storage, plus 1 drive redundancy
RAID 6 - Gets me 1200 GB storage, plus 2 drive redundancy
Either way, I end up with 1200 GB storage, which actually gives me lots of breathing room for the next 2.5 year, when the server will be up for replacement. The RAID 5 vs RAID 6 issue has been beat to death. I see the pros and cons of that argument. I also had RAID 5 work beautifully for me on another server a few months ago.
Given that this is four drives, does RAID 5 actually make sense? RAID 6?
This topic first appeared in the Spiceworks Community

Differences between RAID SB and RAID Promise

HI all,
I would like to know all the differences between the raid SB and the raid Promise of the KT6 Delta-LSR and KT6 Delta-FIS2R (that have two kind of raid (SB and Promise).
Please help me, I don't know what to buy!

one is built into the southbridge and has been proved to be faster because of this
the other is on a seperate chip
Serial ATA/150 controller integrated in VT8237.
- Up to 150MB/sec transfer speeds.
- Can connect up to two Serial ATA drives.
- Supports RAID 0 or RAID 1.
so sata drives only
Supports Ultra ATA, Serial ATA, Ultra ATA RAID 0 or 1 , Serial ATA RAID 0
or 1, Ultra/Serial ATA RAID 0+1 supported.
• Connect up to 2 Serial ATA devices and 2 Ultra ATA 133 devices
promise allows use of normal ide drives
promise will take a single drive the via one as ive read it seems to want 2 in raid 0

Xserve raid or other raid

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