New RAID card in Mac Pro

[Hrvoje Simic]

Apart from new IMacs, one more good news from Apple is a new RAID card for Mac Pro, allowing level 5 RAID.
Nice.

[David Nardini]

Apart from new IMacs, one more good news from Apple is a new RAID card for Mac Pro, allowing level 5 RAID.
Nice.

Cannot find details ... can you point me to a URL ??? Does not appear to be available separately at this time ???
Thanks :unsure:

[found this info on the 'configure' your Mac Pro :

The Mac Pro RAID card offers improved performance and data protection to your Mac Pro system — up to 304MB/s of sequential read performance in RAID 0. Ideal for video and creative professionals with demanding storage needs as well as for tower server applications, this hardware RAID option supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 0+1, and Enhanced JBOD. It has 256MB of cache and an integrated 72-hour battery for protecting the RAID cache. The card occupies the top PCI Express slot (slot 4) and connects to the four internal drive bays.

To enable your Mac Pro for hardware RAID, select the Mac Pro RAID card option and two or more hard drives in bays 1 through 4. Each RAID level has minimum requirements for the number of hard drives:

RAID Level ~ Drive Requirements ~ Benefit
================================
Enhanced JBOD ~ One to four drives ~ A non-RAID configuration with the ability to migrate to a RAID set at any time
RAID 0 (striping) ~ Two to four hard drives ~ Maximum performance and capacity for the most demanding I/O requirements
RAID 1 (mirroring) ~ Two hard drives ~ Maximum protection for critical data
RAID 5 ~ Three or four hard drives ~ Data protection, up to 199MB/s of sequential read performance, and efficient capacity utilization
RAID 0+1 ~ Four hard drives ~ A mirror of striped drive pairs providing performance and data protection

The Mac Pro RAID card supports the creation of multiple RAID sets in a system and multiple volumes per RAID set. For optimal disk utilization in a RAID set, all hard drives should be the same size. Your Mac Pro system ships with each hard drive individually configured in the Enhanced JBOD level with Mac OS X installed on the drive in bay 1. Using Apple's RAID Utility software, you can migrate the drives into a RAID set without reinstalling Mac OS X or reformatting the drives, or you can customize your RAID volumes to meet your exact requirements.

Please note: The Mac Pro RAID card occupies one of the available PCI Express expansion slots.]

[Matthew Rogers]

Apart from new IMacs, one more good news from Apple is a new RAID card for Mac Pro, allowing level 5 RAID.
Nice.

Ok, this looks really interesting and is getting me excited! The only problem is, there's only 4 HD slots... Right now I have my OS on one drive, and all my media on a Raid 0 drive. Do I really want to be putting my OS on my media drive? Plus, if I don't use all 4 drives, then I can only get about 2 TB of HD space.

Right now I am looking at getting this: http://www.nitroav.com/product/452/ It's only $1349 and then the 750 GB drives are $223x5=$1115. That gives me just over 3 TB for $2464 with Raid 5. The Apple RAID would be $1892 with HD's and RAID card. It's seems like for just a few hundred more, it would be better to get the bigger raid. Of course, that's still an external solution, but anyway.

Matthew

[Michele Gavazzeni]

Nothing interesting to me
4 drives direct connect 199MB/s 166MB/s RAID5
and usually with this setup, while the array gets around 40% full the performance dies.

As long as you work on a single workstaton and in a compressed workflow could be an option.

[Mark L. Pederson]

too expensive - Apple REALLY needs to set their storage ducks in a row -

[Hrvoje Simic]

too expensive - Apple REALLY needs to set their storage ducks in a row -

agree...



btw - I've been told that you can put 5th HDD in the second optical drive slot , having 4 disk RAID array (RAID 5 now) independently to OS disk.

Has anyone tried that?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

btw - I've been told that you can put 5th HDD in the second optical drive slot , having 4 disk RAID array (RAID 5 now) independently to OS disk.

Has anyone tried that?

Yes, you can do that. To physically mount the drive, all you need is a 5.25" mounting bracket for a 3.5" HDD. These cost just a couple $$ and anyone who's built a few systems over the years probably has one or two of them in their spare parts box. :)

The RAID card functions independently of the internal SATA bus and PATA bus (optical bays). So in a stock Mac Pro, you could technically install 5 HDDs already, but there are sometimes issues sharing a performance HDD and high-speed DVD-RW drive on the same PATA bus depending on usage. With a RAID card like this, it becomes a non-issue... Just use the top HDD bay for your system/OS drive. Then the next three bays plus one of the optical bays for the 4 drives connected to the RAID controller. You could use the top optical bay if you'd like instead of the lower one, but with one optical drive you'll want to re-route the cable or change appropriate jumpers on the drive (if available) to keep it as a master if you change drive bays.

Apple is a little late to the game with this product and is charging too much. Similar RAID offerings have been available for the Mac Pro for some time now from Adaptec, Sonnet and others. I think Maxtech has a RAID card with an additional HDD mounting cage and fan system so you can install a RAID in the lower front section of the system case with up to 5 drives there, and still leave the 4 bays up top unused.

[Thom Steinhoff]

I've been really researching Raid setups, trying to get ready. Then I came across this one:

http://www.caldigit.com/HDPro.asp

Holy Crap--20 Gbps and they show a test that shows a AJA system test at 310 MBS read and 401 MBS write--seems to blow the doors off everyone.

6 TB's for 8 grand.

Does anyone have an experience/opinions on this?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

...but it doesn't allow you to use the internal drives in the Mac Pro (unless you're an engineer and machinist). The Apple Mac Pro RAID is designed to use the internal bay drives, albeit only up to the four "official" bays inside the Mac Pro.

Huh??? The Highpoint RocketRAID works just fine with the internal drive bays on the Mac Pro. You install the card and run the appropriate cables right to the drives. You're confusing me. No need to be an engineer, but it does help if you're skilled at using those small zip-ties, because one of them works out great to hold your SATA cables in place. It comes equipped with standard SATA connectors and they even include the cables. Same with the new Apple card, it's not like the card controls the internal bays via osmosis or other special means. Hehe. In fact, looking at the pic of the Apple card and the specs, I'm really starting to bet it's just an Adaptec RAID controller anyway. Great card, I think I'll order it elsewhere and save myself $350, same with the drives, Apple's prices on additional hard drives are an insult to their customers.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The only picture of the Apple card I know of is the one on the Mac Pro configuration page. The blue card with the nearly full-length heatsink reminds me of one of some of the older PCI-X Adaptec 0-channel RAID cards I've seen in the past. All the newer Adaptec stuff seems to use chipset fans now instead of heatsinks on the hotter-running stuff. And Adaptec's current PCI-e cards don't look anything like this... I'm sure someone will identify the manufacturer soon enough though. It might be a custom Apple component and if it's a 0-channel card, there's a good bet that it is or it would at least have to be "built to Apple spec" so that its EFI would play nice with the Mac Pro.

On closer inspection, this card does look like it may be a 0-channel card, which installs and augments the onboard SATA controller rather than providing its own set of SATA ports. If that's the case, then the price is way, way out of line. But in Apple's really tiny picture, I can only make out two objects that appear to be connectors and it seems way to large to be a 0-channel card. But this seems to fit the specs as most Adaptec, Mylex/Symbiosis and other 0-channel cards are limited to RAID - 0-5 configs, whereas most other RAID controllers out there also support RAID 6, 7 and nested configurations.

Anyway, I've been awake for nearly 36 hours straight at this point and I think I'm posting some crazy stuff tonight. I think I'll go away for a while...

[Hrvoje Simic]

Thanks Jeff. Really useful info.