Massive video system in the works

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Leadman584

Limp Gawd
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Jun 10, 2004
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Ok, I have the rig in Sig. I am wanting to move to a server tower soon, figuring at least 10 Hd's. i realize i need a second power supply, gotta find a tower that supports at least 2 PSU's, maybe 3. 4 primary HD's(36 GB Raptors) running Raid 5 via card controller. The rest are for archival purposes, speed not an issue. I can go 2 ATA, and 6 SATA max capacity(in addition to primary's), rather than speed. I have an electrician( my brother the master thief, and master of anything mechanical) working on wiring me up to 3 seperate lines to individual UPS's. Yes, all my rigs fold for the [H]orde when idle, bout to break into top 1,000 on the best American team there is. Lance rides a bike for a bit, my rigs fold to keep us all from dying from preventable diseases.

Here are the problems, so far:

-Need to find a tower that supports multiple PSU's, 2 at least.
-Bays for at least 10 HD's, yes I can honestly fill them all, and be looking for more ( I process over a TB of video data a month), about to be a whole lot above that soon, so I understand.

I would appreciate any pointers, links, ideas, or suggestions my brothers in the [H}orde can contribute.

PS. Ice, before you give me crap about Raid 5 performance, Look at the promise S150 SX4 data throughput numbers availabe online. I could easily be wrong (been so a few dozen times already today), but I think this may be the solution I've been looking for. Gotta move several GB's of video data into, and out of CPU quickly, and accurately. 0+1 Raid produces slow , incremental data corruption via the Si3114 controller. If you can come up with a better solution, please, I'm listening.
 
This is the sexy storage server case I have been looking at:
http://www.lian-li.com/products/pcv2100.htm
No multiple power supply support though.

Enlight makes some nice server cases with redundant power, here are a few:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-116-161&depa=0
http://us.enlightcorp.com/products/server/detel.php?kind=servercases&serial=40
http://us.enlightcorp.com/products/server/detel.php?kind=servercases&serial=39 (used this one in a build long ago)

And they also make nice 5-in-3 hotswap cages (U320 or SATA):
http://us.enlightcorp.com/products/server/detel.php?kind=servercases&serial=51
 
I'd suggest looking at one of the short/fat server cases. IBM Netfinity cases have always looked really slick. They're not made anymore but exist on ebay as old Xeon machines. While you may not want a used case or anything, that type has a low profile and accomodates an immense number of drives. Some also come equipped with arrays of suction fans behind the drive bays. I've seen a few modern cases made along those lines in the past few years, but all come in this terrible white color and really look like garbage. It's really disheartening to see what companies see as aesthetic these days.
 
i'm building a similar system with 8x 200g seagates on a 3ware 9500-8mi. i was planning on a coolermaster stacker for the case. pc power & cooling for the power supply. raid 5. at least 1000va rackmount ups. if you're looking at a tb of video data/mo, tho, you may want to look even higher-end. even with the upcoming 400gb disks, 10 of those will only give you 4 months worth of storage. definitely worth it for tape storage/bakup in this case. usually it isn't worth it, but here it is. look also at network appliance or something similar, or maybe fiber channel storage. external sata/scsi enclosures are also a possibility. pop in 4 or 8 sata drives and connect them by scsi or fc. i think you're looking too small... care to explain what happens to data after a month?

also, where do you work?
 
well for starters sounds like you might want to consider this
http://www.netcell.com/
http://www.netcell.com/technology_whitepapers.html > SynchRAID Removing RAID Adapter Bottlenecks

specifically built for your access pattern ;)

next running multiple PSUs can be problematic, Ive done it but that was back when everything was alot less sensitive, I had dual 400 watt PSUs hardwire synchd
but these days the new specs call for 3 to 4 isolated +12V rails in EPS12V power supplies
If I was you Id seriously look at 1+1 and N+1 PSUs which are 2 or more shared bus PSU moduals, but maintain the isolated rails and all the fail over safeguards
sort of depends on the mobo, the whole PSU spec thing is truely fubar right now, but thats mostly ATX12V its much more defined in SSI EPS12V

the leading manufacturer in that area would be Zippy Emacs

as far as cases go, Im rackmount oriented, and such animals are common
(4U) at least for the drive bay capacity you are somewhat constrained
on what will fit on the PSU front with an ATX\EATX mobo and the typical layout

Zippy.jpg


a typical 4U N+1 my (out of focus) Zippy Emacs MR3-6450P (3x225W)
if you find such an animal and wanted to go rackmount youd likely want a 26" deep case
there are advantages in airflow, and many of the standard monitoring features they typically come with (sort of like a digdoc 5 built in)
 
Holy mother of god, you the man ICE. Looks like I gotta try to RMA the promise card. Absolutely perfect card for me. $249 for 400MB/sec data throughput in Raid 5. That's just insane. Checked out all the links to Cases, bookmarked a couple, and still looking around. Got a buddy that does scavenger work on the side, just sold 4 server towers last week to a hospital. He's keeping an eye out. I have a partner that shoots event videos, weddings, party's, whatever. Charges $1200 up front. I use computer, and editing skills to convert to very nice quality disks for half the fee. Also mess around a lot with video compression conversions. Really should look into getting a few Porn studios for clients. The quality is usually pretty poor, unnecessarily.

Gotta look into the tuned PSU issue. At this rate, I may actually know what I'm doing, some day.
 
Leadman584 said:
in Raid 5.
Click to expand...


a specialized RAID3 actually, but I havent seen any real independent benchmarks
Toms Hardware covered it, but then it was Toms Hardware that covered it :p

the Promise is pretty impressive http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/400 (thats Dutch)
and the main benchmark is based on IPEAK SPT just like Storage Reviews, so its as good as it gets, but what pattern was employed...

On the PSU front, what mobo are you powering?
 
I'm using the IC7MAX3 in my sig. I'm gonna give the Netcell 5 drive controller a twirl. There are no independent reviews, kinda eerie, but this is an educational project. Tom's review was for PATA version of card, but as you say it is Tom's....lol. IF the card works at 50% of companies claims, I'd be delighted beyound belief. No F6 needed, sounds too good to be true, which means it probably is. I'm game though, will report back once I get it in and running.
 
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