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Nyuni · Nov 18, 2003, 11:42 AM

Hey all -

Just got a new G5 and I was planning on adding an ATTO Ultra320 SCSI card with 4x Seagate Cheetah drives attached to it, for a RAID setup with two logical drives in a RAID 1 configuration. I figured there'd be space to put these drives inside the G5, but now that I acutally have the box, I've found out that the amount of internal space is extremely limited.

So now I'm looking at an external enclosure for the 4x drives, but I'm also wondering.. will the built-in MacOS X RAID configuration through Disk Utility handle SCSI drives on a host controller card? The card I'm looking at is the ATTO UL4D dual channel card, two drives on each channel. ATTO has their own RAID software (for a price), but I'm wondering if the built-in disk utility stuff will suffice for setting up the arrays in a RAID 1.

Also, can anyone reccomend a good, Ultra320 compatible external hot-swappable SCSI enclosure? I've been looking at Granite Digitial's products, but am looking for other options as well.

Another question.. do you think it would be wise to perhaps jerryrig some sort of setup for mounting the drives in the space between the fans and the processors? My better sense says that's an absolutely dumb idea. Too much heat there with the drives and the procs, and not enough airflow if the drives are in the way.. so I'm fairly certain mounting the drives internally isn't an option.. but any insight would be appreciated, nonetheless.

Axo1ot1 · Nov 18, 2003, 11:54 AM

I'd recommend using ATTO's striping utility with your array. What type of application are you using it for? Uncompressed video?

I definitely don't recommend trying to fit all those Drives into the G5 enclosure.

Oh and your sig violates.

Nyuni · Nov 18, 2003, 12:08 PM

Not looking to stripe.. just mirror for data redundancy. The system will be in service as a fileserver/domain controller for a primarily Windows-based client network.

My concern is, I don't necessarily see the advantages of the ATTO software over what's built into OS X if it will play nice with the ATTO card..

olePigeon · Nov 18, 2003, 06:43 PM

Maybe you should try the Apple Disk Utility, and if that doesn't work for you, shell out the extra money for the ATTO.

P.S. I soooo envy you.

Westfoto · Nov 18, 2003, 10:11 PM

You should check out SoftRAID.
http://softraid.com/

It is a very good piece of software that has wonderful support.

West

mousehouse · Nov 19, 2003, 01:52 AM

i'd say that if the ATTO card is natively supported by OS.X than the RAID tools from OS.X should work without problems. if you need to add kernel extensions or special drivers for the ATTO card i think you're out of luck.

bwt, with the budget you're clearly showing, wouldn't a small spec'd XRAID not be something worth looking at? Gets you rid of the software-RAID right away ;-) pricewise i think it's not far from your SCSI solution.

also, you could run the two internal drives in RAID1 for the system volume, and use an external volume for your data. the OS.X software works great for that.

Nyuni · Nov 19, 2003, 10:42 AM

The XServe RAID starts at $6000.. so far, I've been able to spec out my SCSI solution at just over $1000.. So that's quite a difference pricewise.

Not to mention I -really- don't need 720gb of storage at the moment, or for the foreseeable future, for that matter. I've also got a fairly hard budget ceiling I'm working on, and I would like to eventually add a second G5 to the mix to replace some of our other Windows-based servers.

The ATTO cards have their own drivers, it seems, but here's my rationale as to why I think the Apple RAID configuration will work.. as long as the OS recognizes the drives connected to it, Disk Utility should be able to manipulate the drives whichever way it sees fit. I may not be able to boot off the mirrored array, but I'm planning to keep the operating system on the internal 160gb Ultra ATA drive anyway, so that's not an issue.

I've actually thought of a better solution to my issue - instead of using an external SCSI enclosure for the internal drives, I've looked at grabbing two Lacie Ultra320 SCSI externals connected to the ATTO card, and maybe grab another UltraATA drive to back up the internal one which will run the OS and user profiles.. It ends up being a little more expensive than the internal-drive based solution, but it'll at least meet my needs in a graceful fashion.

mousehouse · 03:11 AM

doubling the internal drives using RAID1 sounds like a very smart idea. what's the point in having "safe" external storage and spending a day recovering your system drive and having downtime anyway!

you're right about the $6K for the Xserve, and you'd need a FC card for the G5 as well... in my memory i just see Steve shouting it's cheap storage ;-)

if you're into the file-servring thing you could get an Xserve/G4... i know, it's just a G4 but for fileserving/LDAP/... kind'a work it should rock. you get 4 drive bays and an unlimited OSX server licence with it. just browsing on the store the single-1.33 base version is $3000 which is a little higher than the G5, and for $1250 you upgrade to 60G system storage (RAID1) and 180G user storage (RAID1).

So, Xserve 1x1.33 + 2x60 + 2x180 + 1G RAM is about $4400,

a G5, 1G RAM, 2x160 comes to about $4000, but still needs your external storage solution.

edit: again a stupid $ error :-)

Nyuni · Nov 20, 2003, 03:41 PM

Well, the G5's already been bought. I didn't see much reason to go with a (more expensive) XServe for a slower set of G4 processors. On top of that, it had hot-swappable RAID capability, but it's all ATA! Apple really needs to wake up and make the XServes Ultra320 SCSI based.. Nobody's going to take an ATA-based server seriously, especially in high data traffic situations.

What I'm looking at now is some sort of Direct Attached Storage solution that I can hang two G5's off of.. and while such solutions are rather pricey, it may be the best way to go about managing the storage.

mousehouse · Nov 21, 2003, 02:24 AM

in my (limited to SUN & Compaq) high-availability fast external storage experience i'd say your only real solution is to buy an external Fibre-Channel array. You can hook it up to multiple machines at the same time and do the hardware-RAID in that box, which should always prove faster than a software solution.

i (partly) agree with you ATA vs SCSI argument regarding the Xserve, but with a properly setup ATA RAID array on good hardware (not $40 PCI cards) your data integrity and speed should be in the good ballpark.

going with an external FC solution would also give you room to grow (or call it "scalable") by eventually getting two FC switches and possible additional storage arrays. you could eventually add a few file & email servers together with some storage arrays and have everything connected redundantly.

i think you need to make a fundamental choice on how your future storage requirements are going to be handled and implemented. it would be a waste of your money to buy an external Ultra320 solution now, just to have it replaced in a few months. maybe spending some more on a Xraid or Sun/Dell/other solution is something that you can do? especially if you want to use the array on more than 1 machine, or provide redundant connections to your storage i think FC is your only real option.

the solutions that litter the thread :-) are all of the "duct tape" kind, but let me provide another... get a refurbised or now MDD G4, it had four internal bays, stick an Ultra320 card in and you've got yourself an external storage cabinet on Gig-Ethernet. don't know if it's possible to get a faster connection than that between your G5 and that machine...

mousehouse · 02:48 AM

ok, slightly out of my leage now!

browsing for external storage slutions how about:
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/sup...;fromarea=prod

has an u320 interface for your G5 for $2700...

Nyuni · Nov 22, 2003, 10:40 AM

Yeah, I've seen the Adaptec solution, I've been scouring the web to find all the different vendors I can.

I'm considering Fibre Channel, but when you start getting into that range we're looking at a big jump in price. A lot of high-end enterprise RAID array solutions are still running on Ultra 160.. I'm having a rather hard time finding Ultra 320 SCSI-based solutions! I think it's a case of either slow industry adoption of Ultra320, or the world knows something about a RAID array hooked to a host computer via Ultra 160 that I don't..

aaanorton · Nov 22, 2003, 11:32 AM

I started this thread last month about an Xserve vs. a Snap Server .
Since then I have bought the Snap Server and couldn't be happier. You might want to look into one of these. It's fast and easy to set up (well, it woulda been a LOT easier if Panther didn't have such schytzo networking). I have mine at RAID 5, but you can config it other ways.
I got mine at CDW for a little under 4k. I really only needed/wanted the 480 GB model, but at the time, the 720 was only 50 bucks more, so I bought that. Interestingly, they shipped me a 1 TB unit, so go figure... I see that they're now offering the 480 for $3500, pretty good.
If you want any more info on these, feel free to ask.