Digital Video - August 2008 - (Page 28)

THE ULTIMATE DIY RAID the RocketRAID 3522. And it gets even more credit when the secure than eSATA connectors. With each channel being independinevitable occurred. I noted a blinking light on my enclosure and ent, there is not any loss of speed as occurs in port-multiplied SATA went into the browser GUI. (I had not set any e-mail notifications in configurations. the software). The RocketRAID software showed a failure of drive The RocketRAID 3522 is administered on the host (or remote) two. But it also showed that the RAID had rebuilt and was running computer via a browser-based GUI. Setup takes some careful attenon seven drives. No data was lost, and while I did not test throughtion. After logging into the management features, initialize the put, I did test uncompressed capturing via SDI. The seven drives drives within the RocketRAID interface (not the host OS), designate were able to handle the throughput adequately. Catastrophe was the drives you wish to include in the RAID, specify a RAID level and avoided, and that is exactly the reason why — particularly in this specify write-through or write-back cache options. Write-back tapeless age — we need redundant RAIDs. cache will slow down transfers but provide more protection. I tested the card with the Enhance E8-MS enclosure to be described below, first with eight Seagate 1TB drives and then with THE ENCLOSURE Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB drives. In Enhance Technology manufactures a range both cases, I chose RAID 5 with no hot of enclosures from desktop to enterprise spare. That essentially would result in the level and partners with a number of card loss of drive capacity with the parity vendors. I chose the E8-MS Proavio enclobeing written across all eight drives. I also sure for this test because this new device chose to squeeze every bit of speed out supports either SATA or SAS drives, it is a of the array by specifying a write-through plug-and-play solution, it has the option of rather than a write-back cache. a redundant power supply, it is quiet and Once that policy is specified, it is time its 4-channel miniSAS connectors are more to build the RAID. And here is where I secure than eSATA connectors. But most learned a major lesson. There is an important, at $650 including cables, it repoption to intialize in the foreground or resented an excellent value. background. The initialization process While some enclosures are tray-less checks every sector on every drive. and just allow inserting a bare drive, the Initializing in the background makes the Enhance E8-MS does require attaching the RAID available immediately, but the inidrive to the tray and then inserting the tialization process slows down throughdrive into a locking slot in the enclosure. It put to the extent that it is not usable. is a little less convenient, but in reality, how The Enhance enclosure, fully loaded. The first initialization I did was backmany times would one actually be replacground. Initialization took 36 hours. I tried again, this time using ing a drive. It took me just a little over a minute to attach a drive to foreground initialization. It took a little under 3 hours. Once initialthe carrier. ization is compete, it is necessary to return to the host OS’s disk And while we’re on the topic of changing drives, another management utility to partition and then mount the RAID. In the important plus for the RocketRAID 3522 paired with this enclosure case of Mac OS, this is accomplished in Apple’s Disk Utility. is that the drives can be replaced in any sequence and the It was now time to test. First up were the Seagate drives. Using RocketRAID’s processor will figure out the revised configuration. the AJA System Test utility, I tested 10-bit uncompressed read/write and achieved the amazing rates of 537.1MB/s write and 635.7MB/s THE BOTTOM LINE read. This would be more than sufficient to support not only 10-bit Creating my Ultimate RAID did represent a financial savings over HD, but even 2K. The Samsung drives were not as fast as the purchasing a pre-configured unit. Pre-built hardware RAIDs could Seagates, returning write speeds of 462.1MB/s and read speeds of run about $1,000 per terabyte. The RocketRAID card lists at $560; 571.6MB/s. Now these speeds are not exactly shabby. the Enhance E8-MS Proavio is $650. The 1TB Seagate drives were For real-world tests, I kept the Samsung drives in the enclosure. $250 each. That’s a total of $3,210. Over two months of testing gave me trouble-free and droppedThe combination of the Decklink MultiBridge Pro and the RAID frame-free video in Apple Final Cut Studio 2 and Adobe After as constructed provide me more power than I need, and my brush Effects CS3. I captured uncompressed 10-bit HD live from the SDI with disaster left me confident that data is secure. Physical construcoutput of a Sony EX1 camera through a Blackmagic Design tion was a snap. Configuration of the RAID required a bit of learnDecklink Multibridge Pro system. The Decklink performed flawlessing and attention. Management features require a learning curve, ly in Final Cut Pro and nary a frame was dropped. And I achieved but this would be the case as well in a turnkey system since all will up to six layers of 10-bit HD footage in Final Cut Pro before needutilize a similar browser-based configuration to the RocketRAID. ing to render. Whatever I threw at this system worked. This is the last RAID I’m going to build (for a while) since I’ve Much of the credit for this RAID’s smooth operation must go to finally built the Ultimate RAID. DV 28 dv august 2008 www.dv.com 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

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.