From: Victor DiMichina <victor@(email surpressed)>
Subject: Re: configuring Promise VTrak as a Mac OS X renderfarm volume - tips and suggestions
   Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:51:11 -0400
Msg# 2094
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Hello Pascal.

I have the exact same setups in two offices.      I am very happy with Raid 6 with no spare.     Options available are:


JBOD = 29.1 TB formatted capacity.   16 drives at 1.82TB usable storage each.
RAID 5 = 27.28 formatted,  using 1 parity drive
RAID 6 = 25.46 formatted,  using 2 parity drives.
RAID 6 + spare = 23.65 TB using 2 parity drives + 1 hot spare.

I highlighted the Raid 6 using 2 parity drives since that's what I use.   It's also the setup recommended in Apple's Best Practics for XSAN.   

Server is connected via Small Tree 10GB Ethernet to the core switch.      I am very happy with the performance and reliability.   Each office has about 30 users + render farm nodes that hammer their servers all day.   

Best of luck.


Victor DiMichina
Pixel Magic
Los Angeles • Lafayette



On Apr 17, 2011, at 9:49 PM, Pascal Grosvenor wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

Hello,

I'm setting up a new Promise VTrak Raid for a new renderfarm i'm building (it's got 16 x 2 TB drives).  It will be connected directly to an Apple Xserve.  Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for how to configure it ?

Given the nature of rendering (having lots of clients writing individual rendered frames back to the RAID) i reason that high write speed is probably the most important feature in choosing a RAID level.

I'm thinking 0+1 would give the highest write performance but then i only get 50% effective disk space.  I'm thinking there's probably something in between 0+1 and RAID 5 that could be suitable ...  That would give more disk space than 0 + 1 and better performance than 5.

Would love to hear other people's thoughts and experiences.

kind regards
Pascal


----
Pascal Grosvenor
Faculty Computing Unit,
Design, Architecture & Building
University of Technology, Sydney
ph   9514 8944



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