LTO and Storage advice

[Brian Shephard]

There is an LTO thread in the Off Topic section (and I posted my comments below there), but I thought it might be more fitting in the Post Production section (I don't think this Forum existed when that thread was started). Sorry for the duplicate post....

I am looking at backup systems and need some advice.

I like the looks of the BRU LTO-5 Edit Production Bay Desktop: http://www.productionbackup.com/info...e/bundles/sas/
It requires a PCIe slot, of which I am out of on my MacPro. The Red Rocket took my last available slot.
So....I know nothing about PCI expansion. A quick google search brought this up: http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Slot-Extension/PCI-Express-to-Four-Slot-PCI-Expansion-Bay~PEX2PCI4
Anybody have any advice on this or a better solution?

Lastly, I'm looking at more storage: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/RPMSS4B12.0E/
Under the specs, there are several recommended external miniSAS Cards (another reason for the PCI expansion) ranging from $267 - $1079.99. Any advice on these?


I'm on a MacPro Dual Quad Core 2.8 Intel Xeon.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Brian Shephard

[Brian Shephard]

Anyone?

[Dave Blackham]

The Bru stuff works well, SAS connectivity seems to be more reliable then FC as theres no FC layer. We actually use both on diferent systems and they are no issues really. If you do use FC make sure its direct connect not via a switch.

I only know the Cubix PCIe expansion chassis which works fine. I cant comment on the Startech.

When your using the LTO5 you need to feed it with a source of data with out bottle necks as its very fast. Try to get as many bottle necks out of your system as you can. Its very noticably slower with a single drive over a 8 spindle raid.

Also check the Bru site to make sure you have Block size and write cache sizes set correctly from day one for the LTO device you have.

[Brian Shephard]

Hi Dave,

Thanks so much for your help....I'm new at this and your advice is greatly appreciated.

There are 2 Cubix systems that I see on B&H that might fit my needs (and budget).
1. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/749091-REG/Cubix_XPDT_X16_2_OSV_GPU_Xpander_Desktop_2_w.html
That one expands to 2 additional 16-channel slots for about $2200.
2. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/749072-REG/Cubix_XPDT_X16_24_OSV_GPU_Xpander_Desktop_Pro2.htm l
That one expands to 4 additional 16-channel slots for about $50 more.

Clearly there has to be another difference between these two, but I'm not sure what it is, or what it would mean to me. Any advice here would be super helpful too.

Thanks!

[Johnny Friday]

Brian,
i'm in a similar boat...i have 30tb of stock footage to store safely.....been using spinning drives for many years--lost a drive yesterday and reminded me (even with backup) that my spinning media can and will fail eventually. I also have no more PCIE slots..but I'll be damned if i drop $2k for an expansion system....I'll get a new Computer (maybe even pc) optimized for backup and light editing only....and leave my other system with rocket and I/O card as is....my thoughts....

[Brian Shephard]

but I'll be damned if i drop $2k for an expansion system....

Lol. I hear ya.... I just don't know what the best thing to do here is. I'm a creative editor, been on Avid for about 12 years, but I've always edited with and backed up on external harddrives (or tape stock). This is, honestly, new and a little overwhelming to me. I'll be getting an Epic soon and I'm just trying to prepare.

The Startech chassis that I mentioned is $499 and provides 4 additional slots:
http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Slot-Extension/PCI-Express-to-Four-Slot-PCI-Expansion-Bay~PEX2PCI4
but this could be garbage for all I know. That's why I was looking for some advice. $500 may be a lot cheaper, but that doesn't mean it's good. I don't want to spend ANY amount of money that's just going to be wasted.

Bottom line is that I'm not to need more storage (and a RAID controller card), and ideally I'd like to have an LTO backup solution.....and I'm out of PCIe slots. What do I do (without selling my house, car, or one of my children)?

[Dave Cox]

That chassis supports normal pci (33mhz) cards, not the high-speed pci-e cards. You won't be able to plug in a new raid controller or fiber channel controller etc. to that box. I don't see any item in that section of their store which supports 16x pcie cards like the cubix expander does.

For what they are, expanders are horrendously expensive though, I definitely agree there!

[Dave Blackham]

All I can say here is the Cubix works fine. There are different versions of it single width cards and double width etc.

The other issue was raised about network back ups. These seem not to work well over Gbit networks, they should, but in practice don't run as fast as they should. Id say over 10 time slower. if you want to run fast back up or restore make sure its from a locally connected fast drive array. I ma hoping tim from BRU can jump in here and tell us if or how this can be fixed.

[Jarek Zabczynski]

LTO5 with Thunderbolt would be sweet. Surely someone will make one no?
Maybe a SAS to Thunderbolt enclosure?

[Dave Blackham]

LTO5 with Thunderbolt would be sweet. Surely someone will make one no?
Maybe a SAS to Thunderbolt enclosure?

You can go Thunder Bolt to Promis Convertor then the Fibre Channel. Not as elegant but shound work. I dont know if Thunderbolt to SAS is available yet.

http://knowledgebase.tolisgroup.com/?View=entry&EntryID=257

[Brian Shephard]

I think Johnny is right...what about just buying another computer? I'm thinking about buying a used MacPro from Ebay, and putting my Rocket Card in there and just having a transcoding station. That would open up enough PCIe slots in my current system to add the LTO backup. Since my new (used machine) would pretty much just be used for transcoding...are there recommended specs for the MacPro? Does it need to be about least an 8-core or can it be 4-core? Does it need to be loaded with RAM? Or does the RR do most of the work, regardless of the system specs?

[Tobias Straka]

You can go Thunder Bolt to Promis Convertor then the Fibre Channel. Not as elegant but shound work. I dont know if Thunderbolt to SAS is available yet.

http://knowledgebase.tolisgroup.com/?View=entry&EntryID=257

True, but then you'd have to go with different, more expensive LTO drives. And Fibre (especially in the field) is a bit finicky with the connections. SAS connectivity via Thunderbolt will soon be here, Sonnet, Magma and probably others are close to releasing their expansion chassis.

[Bob Gruen]

Slots are why I jumped from Mac to PC. I do miss the simplicity of OS-X, but I now have a PC with 7 useable PCI Express slots (6 really as one of my two video cards eats up an additional slot). With 2 video cards, a RR card, and a RAID card I still have 2 more 8 way PCI express slots open.

The other reason I jumped was cheap 5.1 sound monitoring. PCs have it built in while Macs have to resort to more expensive solutions.

Bob

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Anyone have any experience with this SAS card?

MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-2e
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/MXPRMS6G2E/

Looking to use it in combination with an LTO5 drive on one port and 4x eSATA fanout on the other.

[Joe Pontecorvo]

I know this is an older thread, but I am using this card (the same one above) in my MacPro:
MAXPower RAID mini-SAS gG-2e http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/MXPRMS6G2E/

I have an LTO-5 HP 3000 external tape drive, but can't seem to get the MAXPower card to recognize the tape drive.
Has anyone had success with this combination? OR do I need to replace this SAS card?

I appreciate any feedback on this.

[John Saunders]

I don't know if this helps or not.

I have been looking into adding an lto to our setup and in the process realized that macs will not recognize lto drives natively and that you need software to use them.

I am looking into bru software and will probably get it once I get my lto.
Plus they have a free 30 day trial so you could see if it works for you.
http://www.productionbackup.com/

Don't know if that is your issue or not but thought I would throw it out there.

P.s. I will be using it with our atto h680 card.

[Joe Pontecorvo]

Thanks John, I did download the 30 day trial as well as the software by HP, but I can't seem to get my computer to recognize the tape drive.
I may end up having to swap it out with a ATTO card - another costly lesson.

Let me know how your ATTO H680 works out.

[Matt Gottshalk]

I went with a B-stock Cache-a LTO5 from B&H.

Love it.

[John Saunders]

I was actually thinking of going with a quantum lto-4 and backing up by project on to dedicated drives. Most of my projects are not more that 800gigs so I don't know that I would benefit from lto 5 or not. I don't know if there is a disadvantage to this....

How do you do it Matt?

So far our h680 is great for our esata raid back up and other external esata drives but we are having issues with our esata hard drive dock (thermaltake) and are trying to figure out what the issue is.
My plan is to keep running the mini sas to 4 esata cable to those devices and use the other mini sas for the lto.

[stu aull]

nothing to contribute here guys, but def interested in LTO for our biz too and have lurked thru any thread on the subject. Hoping NAB will bring in either some new players or better price-point for the multitude of small post shops like ours!
Experiences, good or bad, appreciated here.

Stu Aull
Alaska