Raid for Video Editing Workstation

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Optrix

n00b
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
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Hi all

I need help selecting parts for a Video Editing Workstation.
I've been reading a lot of sites and found some very helpful information here on HF.

Current system:
+ Win7 64bit on a OCZ Revo2
+ 4x 2TB WD Black's running Raid10 onboard Intel raid.
+ EVGA E760 x58 mainboard
+ i7 980x with Geforce GTX580

I have one PCIe x8 slot free.

This system has been running great. However I have 1. run out of space, and 2. now need to capture longish (30min's+) HD streams at close to 500mb/s.

There is room for 8 extra HHD's in my current case... yet I'm planing to move into a Norco 4224 case in the near future. Plus, I have 4x Samsung F1 1TB Spinport drives laying around.

I know I need a raid card that can handle large data sustained sequential writes for capturing... as well as fast random reads necessary during editing. My average file size must be 500mb+.

Current plan:

Make two Raids, a RAID0 with the Samsung drives for capturing... and a RAID10 with new drives (Hitachi 7K3000 2TB perhaps).

What I'm unsure about is:

1. Which Capture card brand is right one? Areca? LSI? Other?
2. How many ports makes sense? Should I plan to use SAS expanders or buy a 24 port card?

I can see that Areca and LSI make cards up to both tasks, sustained sequential writes and random reads.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Kindest regards

Ben
 
Space wise I need an additional 4TB for the next 3 months. I will spend money on the parts that expand possibilities, like the raid card. Yet I think it makes no sense to buy Enterprise drives when the drives will be on for 2 days (extensive editing session) then off over night, maybe for a few nights. I'm a small business expanding my capabilities in the digital video world.
 
I have just made room for one extra drive.. so 9 in total.. would it make sense to run a Raid5 or Raid6 rather than Raid10 for the Editing portion?
 
Depends on how much storage you want to sacrifice. I would not run raid5 with more than 5 disks, since the chance of more than one drive failing is too high, IMO. raid6 would be better. If read performance is important, I'd even recommend raid10 (you would then have 4x2 mirrors, with one spare?)
 
I'm don't mind sacrificing storage... I'm pushing the boundary of video graphics and a big part of that is pushing the hardware to its limits. It's big time fun! + Having hard working tools rocks!!
It enables creativity... and in turn increases my client base... yes Raid 10 could be the winner. So do you think it make sense to buy a Areca-1880-ix-24? Or something completely different? What about the LSI MegaRaid version? Should I upgrade the Areca cache immediately or wait till I have more drives? If so how many? And what about the battery backup thing? Should I do that right out the gate?
 
Those are questions I'm really not qualified to answer, sorry. Specific info about specific raid cards is not really up my line.
 
If you are going to get a RAID card with hardware or FakeRAID, you need to have drives that support TLER, such as the WD RE3 drives, or Samsung/Hitachi drives with their own variant.

Use RAID 10, it will be the most secure and the fastest. RAID5 has too many points of failure for your purposes, and RAID6 is not very fast for video editing with 7200RPM drives.

LSI and Acera are both good, but I would prefer LSI personally. However, SATA drives are only half-duplex. If you are putting on serious load to those drives, and wanting heavy read/writes sequentially, getting enterprise-class, or nearline-class drives with SAS may be your only option. SAS is full duplex and is much more robust than SATA.

I know you don't want to spend large quantities of $$$ on drives, but nearline-class SAS drives aren't a bad choice for what you are trying to do.

As far as a RAID card with a BBU, if you can afford it, then I would do it. However, getting an UPS would be the best choice for the whole system. RAID isn't perfect and if you are doing heavy writes when the power goes out, it's going to hurt. Definitely get an UPS, especially if that machine is your business.

Having that 9th drive bay open would be a good chance to add another HDD and make it a hot spare in case one of the drives does fail.
 
Hi Red Falcon, thanks for your reply.

I've now looked at WD RE SAS, WD RE4 SATA, Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000, & Seagate Constellation ES SAS.
The Seagate Constellation drives are €200 for 2TB with a little 16MB cache... they are the only SAS drive readily available here in Austria. Is this a good drive? I've heard so many horror stories from people using Seagate drives, the price is 1.5x the cost of enterprise drives (2x the cost of standard drives). I do like the sound of a faster interface compared to SATA, up to 30%, and SAS delivering up to 2x the throughput...

Raid cards, would it be a choice between, LSI MegaRaid SAS 9280-24i4e and Areca ARC-1880ix-24? Why do you prefer LSI? The LSI card is approximately €1000 vs Areca's €800.

UPS wise... what kind of features do you suggest? How big should it be (slightly larger than my PSU & primary LCD screen?

Thanks soo much for the input!
 
Just looked at prices for UPS's... my current PSU is 850w... according to online charts I would need a UPS with approximately 1700VA.. wowzers!

What would happen to my RAID if there is a power-cut during capturing? I expect the data file being captured would be damaged, but what about my other already stored data? Would this be at risk also??
 
How large are the files you are working on now? I would consider some large 2 or 3 TB drives in combination with some 256 to 512 GB SSDs utilizing LSI's CacheCade technology on a 9265-8i in a RAID 5 or RAID 1+0 array.
 
Optrix said:
Hi Red Falcon, thanks for your reply.

I've now looked at WD RE SAS, WD RE4 SATA, Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000, & Seagate Constellation ES SAS.
The Seagate Constellation drives are €200 for 2TB with a little 16MB cache... they are the only SAS drive readily available here in Austria. Is this a good drive? I've heard so many horror stories from people using Seagate drives, the price is 1.5x the cost of enterprise drives (2x the cost of standard drives). I do like the sound of a faster interface compared to SATA, up to 30%, and SAS delivering up to 2x the throughput...

Raid cards, would it be a choice between, LSI MegaRaid SAS 9280-24i4e and Areca ARC-1880ix-24? Why do you prefer LSI? The LSI card is approximately €1000 vs Areca's €800.

UPS wise... what kind of features do you suggest? How big should it be (slightly larger than my PSU & primary LCD screen?

Thanks soo much for the input!
Click to expand...

For all of that hardware, getting a 600-800 watt UPS would not be a bad idea. Definitely order online, the best you will get in stores are crappy 300watt UPS.

As far as Seagate drives go, their nearline and server-class HDDs rock. Their desktop-class and portable-class are not that great though.

The Constellation drives are a great choice, and so are the Cheetah drives. Just make sure though, if you get 10K or 15K drives, make sure to have active cooling (some fans) on them so they don't overheat.

I prefer LSI due to some of their features, but seriously, both cards are great and you won't be disappointed by either of them.
 
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Optrix said:
Just looked at prices for UPS's... my current PSU is 850w... according to online charts I would need a UPS with approximately 1700VA.. wowzers!

What would happen to my RAID if there is a power-cut during capturing? I expect the data file being captured would be damaged, but what about my other already stored data? Would this be at risk also??
Click to expand...

Just because your PSU is 850 watts doesn't mean it is actively drawing 850watts. Get a kil-a-watt meter and measure your true wattage.

My server has a 500 watt PSU, and I'm lucky if I draw 200 watts from it total.
 
LSI's management software is not good.

If you're okay with the extra drives, just use RAID10. The problem with parity-based raids (RAID 5 and 6) is that they have a rather nasty write penalty (since the parity is spread among drives, it multiplies the amount of I/O required). RAID10 would be better for sustained writes, which you'd be doing a lot of with video capture work.
 
REDYOUCH said:
How large are the files you are working on now? I would consider some large 2 or 3 TB drives in combination with some 256 to 512 GB SSDs utilizing LSI's CacheCade technology on a 9265-8i in a RAID 5 or RAID 1+0 array.
Click to expand...

Currently, one Live concert edit is approximately 150GB... but I expect this to double as we add more and more cameras.
That CacheCade technology is very exciting! And the 2nd Generation SAS controller on the 9265-8i is an equally exciting feature!! Thanks for pointing both of these out!! WOW!

And if I add 2x Cheiftec CTM-1322S (2x 2.5'' drives in a 1x3.5'' space) I would still have 3 disk spaces free.
 
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Red Falcon said:
Just because your PSU is 850 watts doesn't mean it is actively drawing 850watts. Get a kil-a-watt meter and measure your true wattage.

My server has a 500 watt PSU, and I'm lucky if I draw 200 watts from it total.
Click to expand...

Good call. I'll get one immediately.
 
cymon said:
LSI's management software is not good.

If you're okay with the extra drives, just use RAID10. The problem with parity-based raids (RAID 5 and 6) is that they have a rather nasty write penalty (since the parity is spread among drives, it multiplies the amount of I/O required). RAID10 would be better for sustained writes, which you'd be doing a lot of with video capture work.
Click to expand...

It's clear RAID10 is the way to go. Regarding LSI software, the features offered by the 9265-8i are very compelling... what would you suggest instead?
 
Optrix said:
It's clear RAID10 is the way to go. Regarding LSI software, the features offered by the 9265-8i are very compelling... what would you suggest instead?
Click to expand...

I have an LSI card and the management software is great. On-par with any HP or Dell OEM software (Dell cards have LSI chips to begin with). Not sure where cymon get that idea, but LSI is a great, top-end card.
 
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