Stevesong,

Do we know if we can use Bootcamp with this RAID card?

I understand that we cannot use Bootcamp with the Apple RAID/SAS setup.

The reason I mention Bootcamp is because (at least for the time being) there is no 64bit version of VE3 for Mac. And to get 64bit performance we would have to use XP64 or Vista as the OS on a MacPro slave machine. It sure would be good to find out what the projected timeline is for this from the VSL people.

Thanks,

Jack

 This card is advertised as supporting Windows and pretty much every other current OS - - so, since a MacPro running Vista or XP via Bootcamp would seem to be, for all intents and purposes, a Windows machine it seems reasonable to expect it would work However, you should contact Areca for a certain answer to your question.

Email 1: support@areca.com.tw
E-mail 2: sales@areca.com.tw 

(These addresses appear to be in Taiwan) 

Their website is http://www.areca.us/ 

Hi Stevesong,

I’ve spent a bunch of time investigating this. I did send an email to Areca 48 hrs. ago but still haven’t received a reply as of yet.

However, this seems like it might be the way to go in order to achieve SAS-type results and still be able to run Bootcamp on the slave MacPro. (Areca RAID card, 8-bay external enclosure w/ 8 x 320GB SATA drives in RAID 6 configuration)

I’d even go so far as to say that I might use this on both machines I plan to get shortly: an 8-core 3.2 GHZ MacPro w/ 16GB RAM for the main DAW machine (Logic) and a quad-core 2.8 GHz MacPro w/ 24 GB RAM to be used solely as a VE3 slave machine. (cm seemed to indicate previously that any more processors or speed would be overkill for a slave.)

It solves the issue with running Bootcamp on the VE3 slave machine so I can take advantage of the 64 capability of VE3 for PC (not yet available on the Mac version & MacPro’s with SAS can’t run Bootcamp), it would seem to give me throughput and access times not unlike SAS drives, I would have more drive space for the money than SAS drives, I would have more available unused space on the (RAID) drives allowing higher performance of the drives, the RAID 6 will give me fault-tolerant backup that I wouldn’t have on individual drives and I save a few hundred dollars.

All in all, not a bad deal.  So I would simply order the basic versions of the two MacPro’s with the smallest available hard drive for the OS and add on the speific third-party RAM, RAID card, drives, cables and external drive enclosure.

So thanks for sharing your investigations with us.

Now so long as VE3 works and doesn’t have any latency issues everything should be fine.

I wouldn’t mind if cm would chime in and give us his opinion on all this.

Best regards,

Jack

PS,

Have you figured out which would be the right cable combination between the RAID card and the enclosure?

 Jack:

Sounds like a good plan, but one bit more of research seems necessary in light of what Ithe folks at Areca wrote in response to my query:

" if your application has to access data partition and system partition at same time. seperate raidsets (for OS and samples) will be a better choice because drives have good performance on sequential access, but poor on random access. i am not sure how bootcamp works, so i don't know this tool have such ability to support this feature or not - - but besically, all our controllers have driver to support OSX and Windows both."

In other words, if it is confirmed that the Areca card will work with Bootcamp, do as you plan to and run the OS from a different drive and use the Windows driver for the Windows machine - - until such time as an OSX compatible 64-bit version of VE becomes available.  I am still not clear about the statement about drives having good performance on sequential access but poor on random access, nor am I clear that it would be a good idea to record to the raidset from which the samples are streamed (probably not is my guess). I would write to them about this and check with VSL support as well before proceeding. I will also post a question about using the Areca card with Bootcamp on the AMUG site.

As to the cables - - it depends on the enclosure you want to use. The Enhance Box E8 enclosure reviewed by AMUG  requires two Mini SAS to Infiniband cables. They have links in the review to the Amazon pages where you can buy these cables ($38.43 each). If, on the other hand ,you have enclosures such as two Seritek 4 bay enclousres which have individual eSATA connections for each drive then you would need two Mini-SAS to eSATA cables each of which has one Mini SAS connector on one end and four eSATA connectors on the other. The AMUG review of the Areca card has links for this cable as well. 

I hope this is helpful. Will continue researching it.  

Hi Stevesong,

I really did omit a lot of information about what I plan for my system in my last email. I was under the impression that I was giving enough info. But apparently I wasn’t. My apologies.

I plan to be recording audio onto a separate SATA audio drive in an open slot on the Master DAW.

Bootcamp would be on a separate SATA boot drive on the Slave machine – until such time as VSL comes out with the 64-bit version of VE3. Then I plan to switch back to the Mac OS.

Random Access performance is a bit of a mystery for me on this setup. I know throughput will be just dandy but I’m hoping that RAID 6 will give me fast random access for all the samples I want to playback simultaneously. Perhaps cm could add his thoughts about access times on a RAID with a fairly large number of drives (8 in this case) – as opposed to a couple separate, standalone drives.

On my current system – a single G5 dual 2 Gig – I have an UltraSCSI card attached to an external enclosure with two 300GB 10K RPM UltraSCSI drives for playback of all my VSL samples. To make matters more difficult, the drives are 80% full. That won’t be the case on my new computers.

On my new system I plan to have the RAID 6 setup on both machines. The Master DAW will have the samples for VSL woodwinds, Harp and Percussion (and various Kontakt libraries). I will be using a RME HDSPe MADI interface to get all the audio back into Logic. I’ll offload a lot of the audio processing onto a TC Powercore X8. I have another MOTU interface that I’ll use for mic input and for audio monitoring and headphone outputs.

The slave machine will be dedicated to VSL strings, brass and when available, the choir. Of course all the audio will be piped back to the Master DAW via VE3’s ethernet.

I’m pretty confident that this dual machine setup will have enough capacity to last me for some time to come. It will certainly give more playback capabilities than my current G5 setup.

Thanks for the info on the cables.

Jack

Jack: 

 If the entire purpose of the RAID you propose is to serve as a source for samples, you might want to consider RAID levels other than RAID 6.

The great thing about RAID 6 is its redundancy - - being able to reconstruct itself in the event of two drive failures. However one already has a backup of the samples on the DVDs or, if one wishes to spend the time, one can, as I did, make disk images of all the DVDs and put them on a drive - - so that installation will be much faster than installing them from the DVDs. Thus you could opt for RAID 5 which is faster than RAID 6 but is less redundant - - that is it can rebuild itself after one drive failure, but not after 2 simultaneous drive failures, or a RAID 0 array which has no redundancy whatsoever and  fails if one drive goes.According to the AMUG tests, a RAID 5 array consisting of 8 320GB Seagate drives has an average speed of 438 MBS (write) and 420MBS (read). A RAID 0 array has an average speed of 505MBS (write) and 479 MBS (read).

The main attraction to me of the Areca is that one can boot from a drive or an array that is attached to it. If this is not important to you, then you could consider the significantly less expensive cards such as the Highpoint RocketRAID 2522 card (which is capable of RAID 5 but not RAID 6) or a Sonnet Tempo E4P which can be used to create large RAID 0 arrays.  So, for me, another attraction of the Areca card is its flexibility - - you can elect to set it to JBOD mode, make bootable backup drives on one channel and use Disk Utilty to construct either a RAID 0 or RAID 0+1 array for the sample drives. 

The main question remaining appears to be the effect of different RAID levels on Random reads. I would suggest writing to support@vsl.co.at for better information on this subject.

EDIT - I have no idea why all the paragraph formatting was lost this time. I did it on a PC with Explorer. Tried it 3 times. My apologies, it was a lot easier to read when it was properly formatted. -

 Jack:

Thanks so much for sharing the valuable information you got from Christian. For me there is an additional problem in that I would like a card that is bootable because I would like to retain a backup system similar to that I currently employ with my G5.  I back up to removable hard drives both via Retrospect (which allows for retrieval of multiple versions of a document backed up at different times) and via clones of the startup drive made with Carbon Copy Cloner which, because it backs up block by block, produces clones with software licenses intact.  I rotate three clones and two Retrospect backup drives so that several drives are offsite at all times. The idea is that, in the event of a startup drive failure, I would be able to continue working right away from a cloned drive with a minimal loss of data - - and in the event of a building collapse or fire (assuming that I survived and, therefore cared! [:)]) I would lose a maximum of one week's work.

On my G5 I have a relatively inexpensive Firmtek PCIx card that allows one to boot from drives attached to the card. On a MacPro there are, as far as I know, currently no inexpensive PCIe SATA cards that allow one to boot from attached drives - indeed the Areca card appears to be the only currently available OSX compatible PCIe SATA card with boot capability.  Hence my initial interest in this card. I could do backups with a much less expensive PCIe (non-bootable) SATA card but would not be able to test cloned drives unless I put the drives inside the MacPro - - obviously not an entirely convenient arrangement. So, I will keep pondering the best course for me. The Areca card and external drives cost more than I would like, but still they would appear to provide a backup solution that is far less expensive, much faster and far more reliable than tape. As you might guess, my experience with computers is long enough to have included a few quite memorable near death experiences involving potential (and once at least, actual) loss of important data. 

 Edgar:

What are you using for samples at present? The major time waster for me is the license scanning process - - prior to loading samples. The first thing I do every morning is launch the VE standalone - - even if I don't plan to use it, then go get some coffee. If I don't plan to use the standalone, I quit it. After the license scanning process has taken place it isn't repeated until after a reboot - - so I can use the VI or VE plugins without going through this process.  Loading the samples from my simple RAID 0 array is reasonably fast on my G5. I will let you know what happens when I get a MacPro. 

As an aside, I received further information from Areca: the tech support person said it was possible to create multiple RAID arrays with one card, so that one could have, for example, a RAID 5 array for the OS, applications and documents and a RAID 0 array for samples - - and, he seemed to suggest, a separate non RAID backup volume. I will continue my inquiry.