dac7nco
Senior member
I'm finally building a workstation for a buddy of mine, who has some odd ideas (some of which have previously bit him in the ass). He has always had a software RAID-5 running off of his previous 3 main boards. The 1st two were lucky, the recent C2Q onboard RAID-5 is gone, and he has lost around 4TB of A/V, contacts, mail, pictures and disc images. I've told him in the past to make a small investment in at least a WHS and Carbonite account. Now he's biting the bullet and has given me a decent budget - he's still enamored with the RAID-5 idea, he's seen my pair of hardware RAID-6 arrays+Ent.discs+JBOD & replication and doesn't understand what the difference is from the piddly shit he's been operating. Well I'm finished, and I wrote him this:
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Eric,
This is an example of a modern, robust transcoding workstation using an i7 920 and a PCIe transcoding card. Data Security is attained via two internal 6-disc RAID-6 arrays; Each being an identical mirror of her sibling... To maintain maximum data integrity, both arrays would be kept in a low power-state at nearly all times; Currently user-popular files should (optimally) be kept on a TRIM-capable SSD scratch disc. An example would be a system of 12 1TB RAID-aware (Platter) drives, in 2 arrays with an SAS/SATA Hardware RAID controller+RAID battery. A RAID controller battery backup is cheap considering the benefits, as is a UPS and power conditioning. A decent-sized TRIM-aware scratch SSD serves as the current media play list, although using your system SSD, or a software RAID-1 HD pair as a play list is a viable and possibly cheaper option.
An Important point is to NEVER Generate a play list which reads directly from an array; Copy files to scratch from an array and play from there. The Arrays are for archival duties, not to stay in a constant spin-process for an 8-hour movie marathon. You could of course achieve this cheaper by replicating this process using single large hard discs, and using software such as "Karen's Replicator" across multiple (huge) low-RPM "Green" discs. For further security, I'd recommend a standalone Windows Home Server hardwired to your wireless router- this is ideal for your family's computers as well. The workstation, hardware raid, large enterprise discs, HD 5850, system+scratch SSDs, WHS and WHS discs are under your budget by about 5%. Using a multi-port simple SIIG SATA-II controller card combined with simple data replication (instead of hardware RAIDing) and 8-12 cheap, huge Samsung discs (+6-8 for the WHS) would lower the cost to about 30% under budget while achieving the same goal. That's the equivalent of a 30" monitor & a few romantic dinners for 2. The RAID card combined with appropriate (more expensive) discs is needlessly expensive. The hardware RAID would be faster in read-speeds, but that's not really a factor with an archive. I don't recommend the RAID for you.
-Daimon
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My hope is that either he'll look at the balance of the two systems and pick the cheaper one, or he'll go with the arrays & take time to learn what ticks and what doesn't. Knowing him, he'll take the array & puff his chest out like a man. Hell he actually has the bandwidth to take good advantage of a Carbonite account, so maybe with all of this put together I won't have to listen to him bitch & shout about gazillions of movies gone in a flash.
Thanks
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Eric,
This is an example of a modern, robust transcoding workstation using an i7 920 and a PCIe transcoding card. Data Security is attained via two internal 6-disc RAID-6 arrays; Each being an identical mirror of her sibling... To maintain maximum data integrity, both arrays would be kept in a low power-state at nearly all times; Currently user-popular files should (optimally) be kept on a TRIM-capable SSD scratch disc. An example would be a system of 12 1TB RAID-aware (Platter) drives, in 2 arrays with an SAS/SATA Hardware RAID controller+RAID battery. A RAID controller battery backup is cheap considering the benefits, as is a UPS and power conditioning. A decent-sized TRIM-aware scratch SSD serves as the current media play list, although using your system SSD, or a software RAID-1 HD pair as a play list is a viable and possibly cheaper option.
An Important point is to NEVER Generate a play list which reads directly from an array; Copy files to scratch from an array and play from there. The Arrays are for archival duties, not to stay in a constant spin-process for an 8-hour movie marathon. You could of course achieve this cheaper by replicating this process using single large hard discs, and using software such as "Karen's Replicator" across multiple (huge) low-RPM "Green" discs. For further security, I'd recommend a standalone Windows Home Server hardwired to your wireless router- this is ideal for your family's computers as well. The workstation, hardware raid, large enterprise discs, HD 5850, system+scratch SSDs, WHS and WHS discs are under your budget by about 5%. Using a multi-port simple SIIG SATA-II controller card combined with simple data replication (instead of hardware RAIDing) and 8-12 cheap, huge Samsung discs (+6-8 for the WHS) would lower the cost to about 30% under budget while achieving the same goal. That's the equivalent of a 30" monitor & a few romantic dinners for 2. The RAID card combined with appropriate (more expensive) discs is needlessly expensive. The hardware RAID would be faster in read-speeds, but that's not really a factor with an archive. I don't recommend the RAID for you.
-Daimon
---
My hope is that either he'll look at the balance of the two systems and pick the cheaper one, or he'll go with the arrays & take time to learn what ticks and what doesn't. Knowing him, he'll take the array & puff his chest out like a man. Hell he actually has the bandwidth to take good advantage of a Carbonite account, so maybe with all of this put together I won't have to listen to him bitch & shout about gazillions of movies gone in a flash.
Thanks
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