Project: Plutonium 3

jojo1224 said:
So... any new updates?
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The only thing going lately, is using the beast!!
Been pushing 100+GB/day threw the machine in editing/rendering... I wish, I had dual quad cores right now, as the rendering kills me, a 45 minute tvshow takes 3:3-4hrs to render to x264, if I could cut that time down, it would be a huge help...
My next project, will prolly not happen for a while, but I am thinking a water cooled, dual quad core heavily OCed box with 4GB of super fast ram, built into a nice rack mount for rendering alone..... Hopefully, it would be a 150% inprovement in rendering time over my stock q6600 with pretty slow ECC ram.....

I did add 2 ATI 550Pro tuners to Plutonium over the past week, so that I have 6 tuners total (2 on cable analog, 2 on cable clear QAM, and 2 ATSC tuners, hooked to a large antenna.....)

I have been moving to Sage TV, and with the HD Extender, the server keeps all the noise in the server. It is great having little STBs that use 7.5w while playing 720P/1080I/1080P!!!
 
Well my case is on its way and i already have the rest of the major equip.

Couple questions since we have similar systems:

1. those athena power backplanes don't appear to have any support for the LED/hdd plug thats on the areca sata cables. Is this true or am i missing something?

2. The areca sas to sata cables it ships with [mine is a 1231ml] come 4sata per sas and these bays hold 5 drives. How are you handling cabling?

I wanted the LEDs on the backplanes to let me know when there is a problem with one of the drives because i really don't want to have to log in to check that daily. I don't see how these athena power ones can do that. do you recommend another backplane that has red/green leds per drive and plugs into the areca's activity port?

admittably i've only thumbed through the areca manual [holy hell its huge] and i'm just trying to make sense of this all. Any help is appreciated.

EDIT: i just noticed one of your pics shows the backplanes with orange LEDs i think.. but does that show drive faults or just activity and power? I've been re-reading all of the galaxy threads and i did notice ockie said with these backplanes you don't need a separate cable, i just want to know what to expect is all.

EDIT2: Re-read this thread entirely and noticed the dialog about the areca coming close to the backplane and the cabling debacle. could you please document that with some quick pics or just let me know what cables you have/bought to handle that situation?
 
MeHoo said:
Well my case is on its way and i already have the rest of the major equip.
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Very cool, it has worked out quite nicely for me!

Couple questions since we have similar systems:

1. those athena power backplanes don't appear to have any support for the LED/hdd plug thats on the areca sata cables. Is this true or am i missing something?
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They actually do have the connector for the LED wire from the Areca, but I have not messed with it. I am just hooked up with the SATA ends and I still get LEDs for activity.
2. The areca sas to sata cables it ships with [mine is a 1231ml] come 4sata per sas and these bays hold 5 drives. How are you handling cabling?
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As I only have 24 ports on the Areca and 30 drive bays, so I just hooked the 4 drives on the left of each back plane and hooked the remaining 6 bays to my mobos SAS controller....
I wanted the LEDs on the backplanes to let me know when there is a problem with one of the drives because i really don't want to have to log in to check that daily. I don't see how these athena power ones can do that. do you recommend another backplane that has red/green leds per drive and plugs into the areca's activity port?
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I just use the email notify, as I am only in the server a couple of times a week, do not want to trust that, so I have the Areca email my email and cell phone.... I actually had a drive fail in my raid 5 array on Windows Software raid 4 months ago and did not know about it for like a month, so the notification is a huge plus!!!
admittably i've only thumbed through the areca manual [holy hell its huge] and i'm just trying to make sense of this all. Any help is appreciated.
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The Areca's do come with great manuals!!
EDIT: i just noticed one of your pics shows the backplanes with orange LEDs i think.. but does that show drive faults or just activity and power? I've been re-reading all of the galaxy threads and i did notice ockie said with these backplanes you don't need a separate cable, i just want to know what to expect is all.
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I say, to just hook them up the same way as I did, but everyone uses their hardware a little differently......
EDIT2: Re-read this thread entirely and noticed the dialog about the areca coming close to the backplane and the cabling debacle. could you please document that with some quick pics or just let me know what cables you have/bought to handle that situation?
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Port 5 (counting from the left side) of the middle left backplane port is super tight to the backplane, but I really did not need to use, but with the correct right angle sata cable, it would be usable....

This post has some decent pictures of the area afore mentioned.....

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1032130525&postcount=95
 
Thanks for the replies.

Yeah i had seen all those pics, just couldnt make out all of what was going on. i just realized that our backplanes, same part number, are not the same. http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s129/gjvrieze/Picture003-5.jpg shows the exposed pins for the hdd activity/fault led control and mine does not have that. i'm going to open my backplane and see if i have the pins on the board just maybe they never cut out the slot in the plastic. otherwise i am probably going to return these. There seems to be a ton of backplanes that are basically the same with very minor physical differences and within 30 dollars difference. i think i got a more expensive one with less features and thats annoying.

i'll never get to a point where i need all 30 ports capable on that case in the next 5 years so i think now that i know its only one port in the backplane i cannot use without a sata adaper, it will be ok.

EDIT:
DAMNIT. I ordered a slightly different backplane because i didn't pay attention. I ordered the BP-SAS3051B http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/16-119-014-06.jpg not the BP-SARA3051B http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/17-995-001-03.jpg which clearly has the pins.

The only other difference i noticed was the way you plug in the power cables, which i dont much care about. now i'm debating returning these are swapping them out. Also, would you recommend getting all 6 bays now or hoping later on they still make/sell the same ones when i need them? i think i know the answe and its 400 bux more of an expense for investment
 
MeHoo said:
Thanks for the replies.

Yeah i had seen all those pics, just couldnt make out all of what was going on. i just realized that our backplanes, same part number, are not the same. http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s129/gjvrieze/Picture003-5.jpg shows the exposed pins for the hdd activity/fault led control and mine does not have that. i'm going to open my backplane and see if i have the pins on the board just maybe they never cut out the slot in the plastic. otherwise i am probably going to return these. There seems to be a ton of backplanes that are basically the same with very minor physical differences and within 30 dollars difference. i think i got a more expensive one with less features and thats annoying.
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I know, these exact backplanes go with tons of different brand names with different prices....
i'll never get to a point where i need all 30 ports capable on that case in the next 5 years so i think now that i know its only one port in the backplane i cannot use without a sata adaper, it will be ok.
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Same as me, I have 26 drives (24 in raid, 2 for OS) do not plan to add any more then that, as power pull gets high, and I do not want to be using $100/month in power:)
EDIT:
DAMNIT. I ordered a slightly different backplane because i didn't pay attention. I ordered the BP-SAS3051B http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/16-119-014-06.jpg not the BP-SARA3051B http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/17-995-001-03.jpg which clearly has the pins.
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Looks like the one/s you ordered have both SAS and SATA connections, which is kind of cool, but I doubt SAS will be affordable any time soon.....:) (Seagate is coming out/has come out with a 1TB drive with SAS connections, basically an ES.2 drive with different interface, but $600 to boot!!)
The only other difference i noticed was the way you plug in the power cables, which i dont much care about. now i'm debating returning these are swapping them out. Also, would you recommend getting all 6 bays now or hoping later on they still make/sell the same ones when i need them? i think i know the answe and its 400 bux more of an expense for investment
Click to expand...

Ockie gave me a pretty decent deal for the case/backplanes, or it prolly would have been spread out over several months.... I like it, but it is a big case to move, I think when I move out of my parents, I will leave it running 24/7 to serve my family and act as a remote backup solution for the extreme rack mount idea I have for my own house (I actually have a beautiful cabinet rack, but it will not fit in my server room from height resistants....)
 
damn when i lived with my parents i was spending money on computer games and new video cards, not servers lol.

Well i returned the two backplanes i have and ordered all 6 of the ones i will need. I see this as something i will have for years and years so its affordable. And i gotta get it done ASAP because i go in for surgery soon, so i figured i'd get it all set up at once.
 
couldnt get the card to work in bios or windows and thought it might have been DOA. Turns out i'm just stupid at 3am.

EDIT: nevermind.. old motherboard had SLI switch card [gigabyte] and i had it on single GPU mode which doesn't give power to the second pci-x slot. stupid mistake.

Got it all up and running and i'm copying files to the raid 5 thats building now. That was seriously simple to set up in bios and windows.
 
Are you concerned about data loss with such a wide stripe?

The wider the stripe gets, the lower the MTDL gets, according to:

MTDL = MTBF^3 / (N * (N-1) * (N-2) * MTTR^2)
(Taken from http://blogs.sun.com/relling/entry/raid_recommendations_space_vs_mttdl)

7200.10 MTBF is 700000 hours, according to Seagate.

I estimated that the MTTR is 60 hours. This means that you would replace a failed drive and the rebuild would finish within 60 hours of failure. Since you have spares, the replacement time is essentially zero, but the rebuild time will be large. Rebuild could be lower or higher. The time taken to expand the volume may give you a guideline - You mentioned 60 hours in one of your posts.

The MTDL for your pool is still above a single drive, but significantly lower than using two 11 disk stripes and using a LVM to create a single volume. Yes, the total capacity will be lower by 1.5TB but the MTDL is much, much higher due to fewer volumes and faster rebuilds. (I'm assuming that a volume 1/2 the size will rebuild in 1/2 the time.)

As a point of reference, NetApp recommends not exceeding a 7 disk stripe for single party protection, or 14 disks for double parity. Other vendors make similar recommendations. Were you aware of this when you set up your system?
 
bhigh said:
Are you concerned about data loss with such a wide stripe?

The wider the stripe gets, the lower the MTDL gets, according to:

MTDL = MTBF^3 / (N * (N-1) * (N-2) * MTTR^2)
(Taken from http://blogs.sun.com/relling/entry/raid_recommendations_space_vs_mttdl)

7200.10 MTBF is 700000 hours, according to Seagate.

I estimated that the MTTR is 60 hours. This means that you would replace a failed drive and the rebuild would finish within 60 hours of failure. Since you have spares, the replacement time is essentially zero, but the rebuild time will be large. Rebuild could be lower or higher. The time taken to expand the volume may give you a guideline - You mentioned 60 hours in one of your posts.

The MTDL for your pool is still above a single drive, but significantly lower than using two 11 disk stripes and using a LVM to create a single volume. Yes, the total capacity will be lower by 1.5TB but the MTDL is much, much higher due to fewer volumes and faster rebuilds. (I'm assuming that a volume 1/2 the size will rebuild in 1/2 the time.)

As a point of reference, NetApp recommends not exceeding a 7 disk stripe for single party protection, or 14 disks for double parity. Other vendors make similar recommendations. Were you aware of this when you set up your system?
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the info, one thing I did want to say, was that 60hrs was an expansion, not a rebuild, I did have one drive fail and rebuild was really fast, less then 12hrs, might have even been less then 8hrs, do not really remember..... Plus, I am working on building a real kickass backup solution, so I will not need to be worried.... I really needed every once of space I could get out the machine, so I am pretty pleased with 14TB!!! (plus the space that the hot spares take...)
 
jtg1993 said:
Updates???...
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I doing some "upgrades" this week.

(1) I bought back three of my old 320GB drives from a friend.
(A) I was recording on the big array, but it is not formated with 64k block size and Sage TV was a little "juttery" on recordins/live tv. So I put the three drives into a Windows RAID 0 array with 64k block...
(B) Recorded HD/SDTV was always filling my raid array, so this way I have a 900GB RAID 0 only for recording, so my big array can stay the big archieve tank it was intended!!

(2) Added more TV tuners, I was haivng problems with the family canceling my recordings so that is no good!!!
(A)I am now running 3 ATI 550pro's for SDTV, 2 HDHomeRun's for 4 Clear QAM tuners, and I ordered a Hauppauge HD PVR for capturing non clear QAM channels off the STB... So I will have 8 tuners for the moment!!!

(3) I added more HD Extenders to my system, I now have 2 Sage TV HD100s, and 2 client XP machines running Sage TV client. This works very well, everyone has what they want!!

(4) I now have over 15,000 tv show episodes.
(A) Got History and Discovery in HD a few months ago and been recording 10-20 shows a day and editing/rendering them out, so my server is down to 5TB free!!
(B) Hopefully 2TB drives will be shipping by the time I run out of space!!

(5) With all the editing I have been doing, I found the RAID 6 array SLOW!!
(A) So I took the 2 hot spares and put them in RAID 0 on the Areca 1280ML, for editing/rendering only, so that works very good!!
(B) I have the card email/txt me if a with any notifications, so I really do not need the hot spares!!!
 
Well, this server needs a sister, so I order the parts to build a rack mount that will run as a recording/Sage TV server only, no file serving.

Got an Asus mobo in socket AM2, with a 4200x2, 2GB ram and pretty neat case.....

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811165052

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131013R

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103214

RAM: coming from my old desktop, 2GB Corsair with LEDs!!..

The case has 5 hot swap backplanes that I believe are the same as the ones in Plutonium 3, so drives will not need to be unmounted/remounted.....

I went this route, because I now have 10 tuners, and needed a non 64bit OS. I am still deciding between XP Pro or Server 2k3 32bit R2....

I got my Hauppauge HD PVR, 2 HD STBs from Charter, 4 ATI 550Pros, 2 HDHomeRuns, so even with the all the users on my machine, I am going to be fine.....

Will post pictures as stuff rolls in:)
 
should be interesting. I can't wait to see the entire setup once it's all complete.


edit: You don't happen to have a kill-a-watt, do you? I was wondering what the power draw on something like your server is.
 
SC385 said:
edit: You don't happen to have a kill-a-watt, do you? I was wondering what the power draw on something like your server is.
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Ya, I actually have had it plugged in for a while... 462w under 100% load rendering video.... This is with 29 HDs installed, 3 tv tuners, and what not.....
 
Well, the new server is done and works great, I repeat, 10 tuners!!! Will get pictures of this beast up here this afternoon:)

Been in use for 2 weeks without serious issues, I do need a stable build of Sage with support for the HD-PVR, but the beta has gotten me buy, needs to be restarted 3 times a week though.....
 
Well finally, some pictures, sorry for no interior pix, but it is in use!!!

Specs:
AMD 4200x2
2GB Corsair XMS RAM
120GB IDE (boot)
(3) 320GB SATA RAID 0 (TV Recordings)
(4) ATI 550Pro (Analog Cable)
(2) HDHomeRun's (Digital Clear QAM)
(1) DCT-6200 (Firewire non 5c)
(1) DCT-6200 with Hauppuage HD-PVR with USB-UIRT (5c encrypted channels)
Server 2003 Standard 32bit
Sage TV 6.4.4 Beta

Well, enough about the 10 tuners, here is pictures:
(remember, my cabinet rack is too tall to fit in my current server room, so that will happen down the road)
Picture001.jpg


Look at all those cables
Picture002.jpg


Picture003.jpg


IR Blaster (USB-UIRT)
Picture004.jpg


More cables
Picture005.jpg


Network wall with new server installed
Picture007.jpg


Picture008.jpg


2 HDHRs stacked!!
Picture009.jpg
 
Very nice setup! Cable management is pretty good considering how many cables you have there...

What format are you recording from all those tuners? mpeg2? h264? How much space does a 30min show take up?
 
Twoheaded said:
Very nice setup! Cable management is pretty good considering how many cables you have there...
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It is controlled chaos!!!!



What format are you recording from all those tuners? mpeg2? h264? How much space does a 30min show take up?
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The 550Pros are hardware mpeg2 at 2-3GB/hr, the HDHR just pick up what is on the cable system and send it to Sage, 6-8GB/hr, The firewire recording is very similar to the HDHRs except that the cable box decodes the channels I pay for and dumps them in mpeg2 ps to the firewire port, which sgraphrecorder sends to Sage, 6-8GB/hr (ah History channel HD at 18Mbps is just the best!!!) and the HD_PVR captures in H.264 at 4-8GB/hr
I like to record at the highest setting and then edit the show, then render it with AutoGk for SD, and AutoMKV for HD, works very well.....
 
SC385 said:
what is your network usage like with the two HDHR?
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Each stream in HD is roughly 1-2% of gigabit, so usually it is like 3-4% max when feeding the Sage Clients.... I have the switch giving priority to them as well...

[LYL]Homer;1032762914 said:
That's a whole lotta TV! Do you ever go outside? ;)
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Outside, what is that!!! :) No I actually like to be at home, I am usually watching Mad Money or MSNBC while editing/rendering tv and cruising the forums, and fictional tv for relaxation....
 
Well, I just ordered one of these cases from Newegg:
So Plutonium 4 is started..
I am thinking about 12 1.5tb drives in raid 6 down the road to replace the 24 750GB......
11-219-021-04.jpg
 
nitrobass24 said:
I just bought one too...this is amazing
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It is a lot of case for the money.

For my future which needs 3-8TB per year:
(12) 1.5TB drives puts me at roughly 14TB in RAID 6
(20) 1.5TB drives puts me at about 24TB RAID 6
(20) 5TB drives would push me to around 80TB RAID 6

Great upgrade path with little need for new hardware along the way....
 
Alright gang, selling the Lian Li PC-343 and the backplanes, PM me if interested..... Maybe selling the Q6600 G0 too, think dual E5405s or 5410s!!!
 
gjvrieze said:
Alright gang, selling the Lian Li PC-343 and the backplanes, PM me if interested..... Maybe selling the Q6600 G0 too, think dual E5405s or 5410s!!!
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How much for just the case?, and how much for case and backplanes?
 
Are you going rackmount like Ockie for Pu-4? Why did you decide to drop the 343?
 
alan.p said:
Are you going rackmount like Ockie for Pu-4? Why did you decide to drop the 343?
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I just bought one of Norco 20 HD hot swap cases for a good price and looking to downsize on the number of hds a little, looking to grab dual quad cores (cpus, mobo, and FBDIMMs ordered) time for a little upgrade on the base system... I love the PC-343 case with the backplanes, just want to go rack mount and have the need for a extended ATX mobo.....
See my FS thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1032772910#post1032772910

Well here is my parts list for Plutonium 4:

Norco RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case
ASUS DSBF-DE Dual LGA 771 Intel 5000P
(2) WINTEC 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM
(2) Intel Xeon E5410 Harpertown 2.33GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 771 80W Quad-Core CPU
Sony NEC Optiarc Black SATA Slim Combo
Slimline SATA>Normal SATA cable (off of Ebay)

Reused Parts from Plutonium 3
Areca 1280ML, with 2GB Cache, and BBU
(22) 750GB SATA HDs in RAID 6
80GB SATA HD (boot drive)
PC Power and Cooling PSU 750w
 
gjvrieze said:
I just bought one of Norco 20 HD hot swap cases for a good price and looking to downsize on the number of hds a little, looking to grab dual quad cores (cpus, mobo, and FBDIMMs ordered) time for a little upgrade on the base system... I love the PC-343 case with the backplanes, just want to go rack mount and have the need for a extended ATX mobo.....
See my FS thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1032772910#post1032772910

Well here is my parts list for Plutonium 4:

Norco RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case
ASUS DSBF-DE Dual LGA 771 Intel 5000P
(2) WINTEC 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM
(2) Intel Xeon E5410 Harpertown 2.33GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 771 80W Quad-Core CPU
Sony NEC Optiarc Black SATA Slim Combo
Slimline SATA>Normal SATA cable (off of Ebay)

Reused Parts from Plutonium 3
Areca 1280ML, with 2GB Cache, and BBU
(22) 750GB SATA HDs in RAID 6
80GB SATA HD (boot drive)
PC Power and Cooling PSU 750w
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Dont forget to update your bios when install those 54xx series;)

Also are you running sage on a VM? I thought you were running 2k3 on this box?

Still using automkv...you should try out ripbotx246 I have found it to be much faster on 8 core setup...automkv is good but it uses the old Vdubmod.

EDIT: Let us know how the case is when you get it in..build quality, weight, drive trays etc.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Dont forget to update your bios when install those 54xx series;)

Also are you running sage on a VM? I thought you were running 2k3 on this box?

Still using automkv...you should try out ripbotx246 I have found it to be much faster on 8 core setup...automkv is good but it uses the old Vdubmod.

EDIT: Let us know how the case is when you get it in..build quality, weight, drive trays etc.
Click to expand...

I know from reviews the mobo I chose will at least post in order that I can update the BIOS, so no threat there (I do not have any other 771s just laying either)

Sage is on it own, unnamed server, it does need a name!!:
Decaserver 1 (10 tuners, becomes decaserver!!)
Picture001.jpg


I will check into ripbot, I have to say as much rendering as I do, even playing with a new tool slows me down, I cannot loose any rendering to keep up, but will find a machine to test it at least.....

Going to post pictures tomorrow, got a dentist appointment, but should be able to get pictures up before work at least!!!

jtg1993 said:
We need pics when the parts arive.
Click to expand...

Will try this time, this move is going to be fast, I want to be in the new case back rendering on Saturday at latest, I usually do not push myself so hard, but I am actually sitting almost caught up on rendering, and do not want to get a week behind....

EDIT LATER:
Looks like the case should show tomorrow, 38lbs on the tracking bill, that is a good sign!!
The slimline optical drive is coming Wednesday.
CPUs on Thursday
RAM and mobo on Thursday!
Only thing that could hold me up is the slimline SATA cable which I got off eBay....
 
Plutonium 4 first pictures:

Picture001.jpg


Double boxed:
Picture003.jpg


Pretty well wrapped:
Picture005.jpg


Front backplane and caddies....:
Picture006.jpg


Inside at last:
Picture007.jpg


Back side of the back plane:
Picture010.jpg

Picture011.jpg

Picture012.jpg

Picture013.jpg


love the short cabled fans and there own little board, should make cable management nice:
Picture014.jpg

Drive caddy's, they have LEDs for drive status, and or activity the way it looks..:
Picture015.jpg


One last shot:
Picture018.jpg


I think it looks pretty good, would have liked a manual though, also, the drive trays in the Athena bays slide much nicer then these do....
 
I wish norco makes multilane or minisas backplane options for these cases in the future, that would be stunning. I hope they also have USB backplanes as they do for their other rack products, that would give ultimate flexibility.
 
What are the red ports for as compared to the blue ones? How's that work?
 
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