Xserve raid right for me?

Hey all, I do video editing at ble Ray quality (Which is very high in size) and was wondering what raid is good for me. I took a look at a couple of them but the Xserve raid looks so nice and powerful with data transfer. The only prob is that the xserve raid is costly and is running older drives and everything. My question is- should I go with the xserve raid which is running older drives and has not been selling for the past two years, or should i just find some other raid to go with?

Hello,
The Xserve RAID was nice for its time, but I would suggest considering the Promise:
http://www.apple.com/server/storage/
This is Apple's preferred storage, and is much faster and more resilient than the Xserve RAID. You could optionally start out with eight drives and expand to the full sixteen when needed. The hardware is solid, and easy to configure as well.

Similar Messages

Xserve RAID setup for mixed platform office

In our office we have several Macs and Windows machines that regularly read the same files during various tests we run. Unfortunately these files are spread out across various drives on various systems and many of the files are duplicated in many places.
To make us more efficient as well as provide reliable backup for our critical test files I'm considering an Xserve RAID setup.
I understand a computer is needed as a controller and an Xserve is typically used for this. Could a Dual 2GHz G5 serve this purpose? It needs OS X Server installed? Does the G5 get a Fibre Channel card in order to connect to the G5 to the RAID and then the rest of the office can connect to the G5 to access the RAID via GigE.
We are not editing video, I don't see that all the clients need Fibre.
How about Windows clients, are they able to seemlessly access the RAID just like Macs?

> I understand a computer is needed as a controller and an Xserve is typically used for this
Yes, you need a controller, but it doesn't need to be an XServe. Any host will do.
> Could a Dual 2GHz G5 serve this purpose
Yes, quite easily. You just need an appropriate fiber channel card in the host that you're attaching the XServe RAID to.
> It needs OS X Server installed?
No. You don't even need Mac OS X installed - the XServe RAID is platform agnostic and can be used with Windows, Linux, and other Unix systems.
> Does the G5 get a Fibre Channel card in order to connect to the G5 to the RAID and then the rest of the office can connect to the G5 to access the RAID via GigE.
Correct. You'd use some kind of file sharing on the G5 to share the XServe RAID to the network clients. The only caveat is that Mac OS X Client only supports 10 active client connections. If you need more than that you may need Mac OS X Server.
As for the Windows clients, they can access the RAID volume through the G5, too - you'll just need to enable SMB file sharing on the G5.

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.

Xserve, G5, Xserve RAID and fibre channel question

hi guys,
I have a Xserve conneted to Xserve RAID right now. Is it possible connect G5 to Xserve RAID thru fibre channel ? thanks

>is it possible to do ?
Not in the way you describe, no.
The XServe RAID's 14 drives are connected to two separate controllers. Drives 1-7 are connected to the upper controller. Drives 8-14 are connected to the lower one.
If your XServe is currently connected to the upper controller it's talking to drives 1-7.
If you connect the G5 to the lower controller it will be talking to drives 8-14.
Therefore you cannot use this setup to backup the data via the G5.
At the very, very least you need a fiber channel switch so that both the XServe and the G5 can connect to the same controller. However, as Tod has already mentioned, it is tricky to get multiple machines talking to the same RAID drives while avoiding corruption (there's no concept of arbitration, or ways of preventing one machine from editing a file that's in use by the other machine).
You have two basic options - one is to implement XSAN, which will handle the arbitration issue, the other is to configure the G5 to mount the RAID read-only. This should prevent the G5 from modifying a file while it's in use by the XServe (which may be sufficient for backup purposes), but you may still run into issues when the G5 tries to backup a file that's actively in use by the XServe.
In all honesty, a better solution would either to get a SCSI card that works with the XServe and do it all there, or use file sharing between the XServe and the G5 and backup over the network - it'll be slower, but a lot more reliable.

Mac Pro + XServer RAID + FCP2 + Configuration

Hello all. This is my first post here.
I will soon buy a MacPro por video editing on Final Cut Pro 2 and I was wondering if you could help sort out if the configuration I've chosen is the best.
I'll show you the configurations I thought first:
*Mac Pro*
- Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
- 4GB (4 x 1GB)
- Mac Pro RAID Card
- 2 x 500gb HDD
- ATI Radeon X1900 XT
- 20" Apple Cinema Display + 23" Apple Cinema HD Display
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
*XServer RAID*
- 2000GB ADM (4x500GB Ultra ATA)
- Cache Battery Back-up Modules
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
My idea:
A) The MAC Pro I'll be used for 3D rendering and video editing. I'll configure the 2x500GB with RAID1 (mirroring) for a fail safe env, leaving my with 500GB of available space
B) XServer RAID will be connected directly to the Mac Pro (for now) via the fiber optic cards and we'll provided additional storage.
C) For projects stored on the XServer RAID (videos for example) I must be able to access and edit directly with FCP2 without having to pass it to the Mac Pro
D) I was thinking of using RAID5 for XServer RAID configuration leaving me with 2.64 x 500GB (as described on support faqs) = 1.3 TB of disk space with a reasonable fail safe environment (RAID5 with 3 drives allows one drive to fail and offers a good recovery rate).
OK. My questions:
1) Is my MacPro config enough for FCP2 + 3D Rendering ?
2) Can I use the XServer RAID directly with Mac Pro or do I need aditional software / hardware?
3) Can I connect the fiber optic from one board to the other without using the router? (on google the answers I found were very vague...)
4) Is the RAID5 the best choice (in terms of performance vs data recovery) for video editing. The RAID5 specs states that random writes to disk are slower that other RAID configs. Is RAID 50 (5+0) a better choice?
5) I opted for the 4 HDD config on XServer but I could change to a 7 HDD config for a similar total space.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I can't find anywhere suitable information about this questions.
Hope to hear from you.
Thanks in advance!

We have a ton of Xserve's and Xserve RAID's at my work. As of right now they're all directly connected to our servers with Fibre Channel cables (NOT fiber optic, totally different animal.) We finally just bought our first Fibre Channel switch to hookup five 10.5TB RAIDS and a huge tape loader for backups. The RAID's work perfectly when directly connected and are very fast. The only reason that you would need a Fibre Channel switch is if you want multiple machines to be able to access the array without using network shares.
I really don't think that just four drives will give you the performance that you're looking for. In order to get good performance out of a RAID5 you NEED as many spindles as you can get. If you're stuck to a budget if would probably go to smaller drives but get more of them. I think you've already discovered this but if you want to do a RAID5+0, you'll need to populate drives on both sides of the RAID as they are physically seperated.
As far as I know, you can only get Xserve RAID Drive Modules from Apple as they do some pretty intensive testing on every drive before they ship. You can't even buy empty modules, you can buy blanks but they don't include the required electronics.

Oracle and XServe RAID

I wonder if anyone have tried setting up an XServe RAID array for tablespaces with Oracle 10g running off an XServe G5. I'm interested in knowing how well (or bad) it performs.
Cheers,
Dan.

I've been thinking about how an Xserve RAID could be used in a RAC configuration under 10g on OS X. It looks like you'd need to connect your hosts and the Xserve RAID to a fibre channel switch and use Xsan to get a clustered file system.
I thought about using the drives in the RAID as raw devices but this won't work as ATA drives cannot have more than one 'login' to them ... Firewire and SCSI can.
I'd like to get RAC working over Firewire just to experiment ... I don't know if Cluster Ready Services will work on OS X yet though - the binaries seem to be there. Anyone tried?

Repair Utility for xServe RAID?

We have an xServe with an attached RAID consisting of four 350 GB drives. The drives are set up as a RAID. Due to storms/hot weather (air conditioning failed) the server restarted and the RAID powered down. The xServe is fine but the RAID is not functioning. From RAID Admin the drives all show up and are OK but the array is not showing up. Is there any disk repair utility that would be useful on a RAID?
xServe RAID Mac OS X (10.4.6)
xServe RAID Mac OS X (10.4.6)

The fact that it's showing up as spares is a significant problem. The host won't recognize it until the RAID recognizes the array. There is no separate utility to help you with this, other than RAID Admin.
What firmware version is on the array? If it's 1.5, there's a "recognize array" option that you should try. If it's an older version, I'd tell you it would be nice if you could have gone back in time and upgraded the firmware. Since that's not possible, you should call AppleCare (assuming you have got APS&S for Xserve RAID, or the machine is < 1 year old) and inquire about your options.

Looking for some ideas for setting up and xServe RAID

Everyone,
Here is what I would to do. I have a new xServe and 7TB RAID. I would like to set all of my end users up with Portable Home Directories. They all have laptops and I would like to use their PHD as my backup source. I would set them to sync in the background a couple of times per day and then write to tape at night.I have about 60 end users. I would also like to use the same xServe and RAID as my Kerio mail server and mail store. What I am looking for is some ideas of how to go about setting up the RAID. I was orginially thinking of setting up as one big RAID 5 using all 14 drives. What I would like to know is what is the number of drives that would need to fail that would render the RAID unrebuildable? I am now thinking about splitting the RAID into two 7 drives in RAID set up as RAID 1+0.
I am not sure if I phrased a lot of this currently, but here is quick recap of what I would like to know. What would be the best way to set up a 7TB RAID to store PHD and my Kerio mail store that provides me the most redudant and fastest acccess.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
Daniel Krajc

Daniel,
I'd suggest a 6 disk RAID 5 plus a hot spare for each side. It will give you about 2.4 TB capacity per side (4.8 total), and it can tolerate 2 drive failures per side without losing data, provided there is sufficient time between failures for the RAID set to automatically rebuild on the hot spare. This window is 8-12 hours.
Note with Xserve RAID the two sides are totally independent in the data path -- it will look like 2 separate LUNs. If you want to combine these at the host level, as RAID 0 or RAID 1 to look like a single volume, you can. But the Xserve RAID will not combine them itself... the RAID controllers are independent... it might as well be two separate RAID volumes in the same chassis.
I assume you'll plug this into an Xserve that is serving as an Open Directory server and a file server?

Maximum size for Xserve RAID modules

What is the maximum storage size for an Xserve RAID module?
Years ago, an Xserve RAID was out of my price range. Now, I'm looking into getting one on eBay and playing around with it.
I have been making Mirrored RAIDS with Western Digital 3 TB My Books.
Can I put 3 TB drives in an Xserve RAID? It probably depends on the controller firmware or something.
Thanks for thinking about this.
Doc

Short answer is no, you can't.
The XServe RAID has IDE drives mounted in a carrier. The maximum size drive shipped by Apple, supported under 1.5.1 firmware on the controllers is 750GB, though finding these on the used market is farily difficult. Aside from that, any IDE drive can be put in the carriers. If your unit has 'blank' slots, these are indeed just blank slots - you will need to get carriers / drive modules if you want disks in the slot if that makes sense.
People on the Internet, myself included, have experimented down the route of using IDE to SATA bridges in the carriers with 2.5" SATA drives which are more freely available. This way you can utilise cheap drives in your drive modules, or even SSDs (which offer little benefit I have found). Some users have had success with 1TB 2.5" SATA drives in this method, but not with anything bigger it seems. Myself, I've had suceess with 500GB SATA and 256GB SSD with this hacky method.
Hope that helps.

How to connect multiple Xserve Raid for Best Performance

I like to get an idea how to connect multiple Xserve Raid to get the best performance for FCP to do multiple stream HD.

Again, for storage (and retrieval), FireWire 400 should be fast enough. If you are encoding video directly to the external drive, then FireWire 800 would probably be beneficial. But as long as the processing of the video is taking place on the fast internal SATA drive, and then you are storing files on the external drive, FireWire 400 should be fine.
Instead of speculating about whether it will work well or not, you need to set it up and try your typical work flow. That is the only way you will know for sure if performance is acceptable or not.
For Time Machine, you should use a single 1.5TB drive. It is likely that by the time your backup needs comes close to exceeding that space, you will be able to buy a 3TB (or larger) single drive for the same cost. Also, I would not trust a RAID where the interaction between the two drives is through two USB cables and a hub. If your primary storage drive fails, you need your backup to be something that is simple and reliable.
Oh, and there should be no problem with the adapter, if you already have it and it works.
Edit: If those two external drives came formatted for Windows, make sure you have use Disk Utility Partition tab to repartition and reformat the drive. When you select the drive in the Disk Utility sidebar, at the bottom of the screen +Partition Map Scheme+ should say *GUID Partition Table*. When you select the volume under the drive in the sidebar, Format should say *Mac OS Extended (Journaled)*.

Any recommendations for selling some old Xserve RAID parts?

I have 6 unopened SFP to SFP cable kits and an original Xserve RAID that's missing drive modules.
eBay seems like a ghost town for this stuff, any suggestions? Not looking to make a ton, I just want to get it out of the conference room corner...

You can still find some interest on ebay. It seems less and less as the RAID's get older.
I am also interested let me know if you are looking to sell I may be interested too!

Suggested methods for full backup of XServe RAID data

I know this is only peripherally related to the discussion topic, but since every other suggestion posted here is followed by the disclaimer that you should make a full backup of your data before proceeding with any major operations on your RAID arrays, I'd like to know what more experienced admins do in order to create a full backup for reasonably fast recovery in case of substantial data loss during maintenance/repair.
Our current "backup" availability is incremental optical disc archival (our data is mostly "write-once"), but this isn't entirely practical for recovery since it's over a terabyte of data. Since the connected server has a free hot-swappable SCSI drive bay as well as an interface for external SCSI devices, not to mention the fiber channel and ethernet interfaces, the options that I'd consider in order would be:
1. A handful of 150-500 Gb SCSI hard drives, rotated out of the hot-swappable bay
2. An external tape drive attached to the SCI interface (with appropriate tape size, maybe the LTO-2 with 200Gb native capacity?)
3. Some other external SCSI storage device
4. Larger optical disc archival (I hear there are technologies arriving in the near future)
5. Network-based option; remote seems impractical due to sheer size, but perhaps local?
The idea is to make a full backup (long-term solutions are superior of course) of 1-2 Tb of data on the XServe RAID before attempting major surgery. Suggestions for common, accepted, tested, efficient methods for accomplishing this would be greatly appreciated. I apologize if this thread isn't on-topic enough for some of you.
-Brian

Brian,
Tape IMO is kinda yucky (to steal a term from your average 3 year old). It's fairly slow to back up to, it's very slow to restore, and it's actually not that reliable by itself (I worked with a large enterprise customer who said their backups were successful about 70% of the time (!!!)).
That said, tape has the advantage that you can offsite it and archive it very cheaply, and the media are fairly cheap, so you can make lots of backups, so if one fails, you probably can restore the data from another tape.
Disks are more expensive initially, but end up being pretty reliable, and you get a lot more flexibility (plus, they're fast).
An emerging "best of both worlds" backup strategy is what's called disk to disk to tape, where you typically back up to another large "disk," for example a second Xserve RAID. Data is then backed up from the second disk to tape, which is taken offsite... thus tape is used for what it's best at (offsite archival). Restore can be from disk in most cases, which is 10-20x faster than restoring from tape. People use software packages like Netvault's Bakbone or Atempo's Time Navigator, which can handle the whole process, and it works quite well. The backup disks (e.g. the RAID) can be onsite, or can be at a backup site a couple KM away, attached via optical (this is preferable, for DR reasons).
For cases where a second Xserve RAID is prohibitively expensive, cheaper (and slower) RAID 5 enclosures like Wiebetech's RAIDtech can provide a large (say, 1.6 TB) RAID 5 volume, accessible over FW800 or SATA (not sure if they have a SATA-based one yet).

Finding replacement xServe RAID Drive Modules for sale

I've just started a new IT job and inherited an xServe (snow leopard) and xServe RAID
I'm not an expert on either. I've some experience with OS X Server, but I've never been a full on server admin.
One drive is dead. I believe they're 500GB units in the first six bays.
I also believe this is the most recent xServe RAID hardware. Purchased in 2008 or so.
So, first, where on earth would I buy a replacement?
And assuming that's possible, what are people's suggestions for buying drive modules for the other bays, and replacement parts for the xServe itself (power suppies, etc.).
Thanks!

first of all i don't have experience with proprietary Apple products, but typically i believe you can buy any hard drive so long as the interface is compatible (SATA or SAS for example) and the size is the same. there should not be a need to buy 'special Apple xserve hard drives'. if you buy a drive larger than 500 GB then the extra space beyond 500 GB will just be ignored depending on the type of RAID you have setup. definitely do not buy a disk smaller than 500 GB. pull out the disk that is bad and see what the make/model is. my xserve uses Seagate drives so you could probably just search eBay or whatever for the model number of the drive and use that. the hard drive should be able to be removed from the caddy so you don't really need a whole new "module".
as for power supplies those are proprietary and will need to be purchased thru apple or somewhere else like eBay, just search for the part number...

Xserve raid brocade switch, do I need xsan for multiple xserve raid with one gbic hba?

So I have 3 xserve raids. I would like to mount all 6 volumes on a single server with a 2 port hba. I have a brocade silkworm 3200, however the raid volumes will not mount. The only thing I can think of is do i need xsan to accomplish this? Initially I gathered it would be like additional resources on a normally data switch bu that does not seem to be the case.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

No, you don't need XSAN for this. XSAN is for connecting one or more RAID units to more than one host. Since you only have one host, XSAN isn't an issue.
You may need to look more closely at the switch configuration. Mac OS X doesn't support multipath (at least last time I checked), so you'll need to make sure that you're either using just one link from the server, or that you've setup zoning in the switch so that each link from the server sees a subset of the RAID volumes (e.g. three RAID volumes mapped to each link to the server).
You may also need to check the RAID configurations to make sure you're not using LUN masking (a feature of earlier firmware versions).
One test here would be to connect the server directly to each RAID controller in turn and see if you see the appropriate volumes. The chances are you do, which points back to the switch configuration being the issue.

Easiest solution for adding Fibre Channel Tape Backup to Xserve RAID setup

I'm interested in getting a Fibre Channel LTO-3 tape library such as the Exabyte 221L for my Xserve RAID/Xserve G5 setup. I realize there are SCSI LTO-3 solutions that are less expensive than FC, but I'd prefer not to have to add a SCSI card to my Xserve, mainly because I'd have to pull the video card and run the server headless (horrors!). However, I understand that I must get a Fibre Channel switch to allow the LTO library, the Xserve, and the Xserve RAID to communicate... you can't just daisy chain FC devices. The least expensive switch I can find is the new QLogtic SANbox 3050 for about $1800. For my situation, in which these will be the only FC devices I'll probably ever use, does this switch sound appropriate? The specs on the switch can be found here: http://www.qlogic.com/products/sanbox/sanbox_3050.asp.
Xserve RAID & Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

For simple environments like yours, it's trivially easy. You must plug everything in, and you're good to go... as simple as a network switch.
Now if you start adding multiple hosts (i.e. plug in a second Xserve or G5), you need to be careful, because in the default configuration everything is "wide open," so every device can see every storage LUN. This would actually be problematic, as systems could (actually, would) corrupt each other's storage. When you get to this point, you'll need to look at either zoning the ports on the switch, or using LUN masking on the Xserve RAID to allocate specific pieces of storage to specific hosts.
But for now, just get the switch, plug everything in, and you're off.
BTW if you mark "answered" for me, versus for the thread overall, it helps me out a bit in this forum ranking system, whatever it is.
Cheers.

Xserve raid right for me?

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