Digital Video - August 2008 - (Page 26)

THE ULTIMATE DIY RAID The RocketRAID 3522 card proved to the perfect heart of my Ultimate project. At right is one of its 4-channel MiniSAS Connectors . BY NED SOLTZ O ver the past several years, I‘ve built RAIDs, utilized several in production and reviewed turnkey systems from several major vendors. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things from both hard knocks and advancing technologies. The first lesson is redundancy. The question is never whether a hard drive will fail, but when it will fail. I’ve learned that hardwarebased RAID controllers are superior to software-only RAIDs. A software-based RAID places additional load upon the host computer’s CPU for processing, is potentially more vulnerable to host computer failures and can only function in a write-through mode for less data protection. Hardware-based RAIDs employ chipsets that effectively make the RAID independent of the host computer. For video purposes, where maximum error correction and fastest read/write times are critical, hardware-based RAIDs can employ a write-back cache for data protection and their independent processors handle the i/o tasks as well as drive maintenance and rebuilding the RAID in case of drive failure. And now, before I even proceed to the specifics of the Ultimate RAID, I offer you the ultimate caveat: I have tested and reviewed RAIDs from 3ware, Dulce Systems and CalDigit. All offer amazing performance. I could equal that performance with my Ultimate RAID and at a lower price. But in a professional environment, time and convenience are worth money. Think of saving money on a RAID but losing money in downtime when dealing with multiple vendors. Hmmm Was it the card, the drive or the enclosure that failed? Where is the receipt for those drives? What do you mean that boxpusher dot-com says I need to replace the defective drive through the drive manufacturer? In short, the peace of mind of single-vendor support that delivers a properly formatted, configured and drive-matched RAID is “priceless.” Now that I’ve told you that cheaper isn’t always better, let’s save dv august 2008 money and learn about RAID technology by combining some of the top products on the market. THE CONTROLLER CARD The RAID controller card is the heart of the system. A hardwarebased controller card must be able to support whatever level of RAID protection you desire. Most frequently utilized in video applications are either RAID 5 or RAID 6. These levels of RAID write parity across all of the devices in the array and have the option for a hot spare. RAID 5 allows for one drive failure and RAID 6 allows two drive failures. The controller card should have options for battery backup to complete an i/o operation in event of host computer power failure, remote notification, rebuilding options and remote control options. These features and more are found in the RocketRAID 3522 ($560), an 8x PCIe 1.0 card that works in any PC or Mac with PCIe slots. Note that in a MacPro (early 2008), it will work at 4x speeds in either of the 4x slots but will only work a 1x speed in the 16x slot (which only supports PCIe 2.0 cards at full speed). I tested the card in a MacPro (early 2008), dual 3.2 with 14GB RAM running OS 10.5. The RocketRAID has an optional battery backup as well as an Ethernet port. This port allows remote administration of the RAID and was very useful when I ran into some configuration issues when first setting up the RAID. Highpoint Tech Support was able to see my RAID over the Internet via VPN and diagnose that the first card Highpoint had sent me was defective. A new card arrived in a matter of days. Highpoint gets very high marks in tech support. Central to the card is the Intel IOP 81341 processor, which offloads all RAID activities, reads and writes from the computer’s CPU and sequences those i/o operations to achieve fastest possible speeds. The card contains two 4-channel MiniSAS connectors which lock into the card, making this connection much more www.dv.com 26 http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - August 2008

Digital Video - August 2008 Contents DV Update My Studio Close-Up Wristshot HV30 Camcorder Tiffen DFX Bench Test PCM-D50 & R-09HR Recorders Camera Cradle Instant Expert My Passport Elite High School Confidential The Ultimate DIY Raid DV101 Click to Play Production Diary

Digital Video - August 2008

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