E-Sata Raid box to Internal Sata Raid???

M

MagicCat

Well-known member
Hi all

Wondering if someone can answer this with experience. I have a Rocket Raid 4 channel internal Raid Controller. (does Raid 0, 1, 5, 0+1, ETC ETC. I need to increase my storage space immensely and had an Idea.

If I were to convert the Internal Cables on the Rocket Raid PCIE card, to E-Sata Cables, then hook up 4-4 drive external raid arrays to that, (total of 16 drives) Could I stripe two of the external array's together, and then mirror those to the other striped pair. (AKA Raid 0+1 I think)

I don't know if a Raid Controller cares what is plugged into it or not, Someone said I can spider-web out, and hook up an external raid array to each of the internal raid channels. They said the Internal Rocket Raid Card wont know the difference between a single drive hooked up to it, or an entire external array with a controller all of it's own. Is this True? My source for this Idea is not very experienced, I don't have time for issues.

I hope I have explained this properly.

David Walker
 
The RAID card has to know how many drives are connected, otherwise it can't stripe them together. It needs to know where each drive is in order to put the correct number of stripes together.

This article will give you some basic understanding of RAID: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
 
Thanks for this!! I understand the basic concepts of raid, however, After looking at this article, I guess what I was referring to, would be the Idea of a "Nested Raid". I have not heard that term before, nor do I know of anyone who has attempted it personally. I do not know if My Rocket Raid will work with this configuration.

If there arent any differences in protocols between E-Sata and Internal Sata, beyond the physical Cabling? I can easily turn an Internal port into an E-Sata port, with a couple connectors. Those could be plugged into Independent, Identical Raid Boxes, and striped together as Raid 0. According to what I understand from the Wiki page you sent me, they call it a "Nested Raid"?

For what it is worth, I know I could just get a bigger Raid Controller, like an 8 or 16 channel, and this would give me the same result, but I don't want to do that if I don't have to. Not to mention, they are extremely pricey, especially when you consider I always buy two of everything, for use in the event of hardware failure. I cannot afford that ticket right now. If we were not a 3 hour drive from the nearest Micro Center or some sort of REAL computer store, I would'nt think twice about it. However, we are extremely rural and have to be quite self sufficient/prepared.




Much thanks.

Dave
 
You're welcome!

For your application, there's no difference besides the cabling.

FWIW, though, I wouldn't do it that way. Your RAID card doesn't have a hardware controller, so your CPU needs to do all the work of managing the RAID and figuring out what data is on which stripe on which drive. Your performance will not be as good as a card with a dedicated RAID controller. ATTO, Areca & LSI all make hardware RAID controllers that can support anywhere from 4-24 drives, depending on the model. These controllers use infiniband cabling, though, so you would need a different type of enclosure to use them.
 
Wow?!! THAT's and eye opener, I thought this RR had a brain of it's own, that is why I bought this one in particular??. WT%?!! ....and to think I probably could have save a hundred bucks and bought any garbage no-name-brand to do the same job. Thanks so much again for your generous information. Tha'ts what a forum is all about.

I will look into those other controllers you recommended here. I really need to do something, and it needs to be scalable. We don't have a generous budget, and whatever solutions I invest in, will have to carry us for several years.

Our work flow is pretty simple. We buy two external drives for the client for every project. (used VIA USB Socket Stations of Enclosures) One working drive and another as backup. If the project ends up staying on a dedicated machine until it is out of post, then we work off of a redundant, local, raid array located ON that editing machine, then backup that data each day as the project progresses onto one or both of the external drives. (the two external backup drives are never allowed to be in the same building together for extra safety/data security measures, A fire or flood can not only wipe out your gear, but all your current projects/Data which can land a smaller production company in court or Bankruptcy) When done, we trim out the project and keep a working copy on both external drives, along with all the raw footage, so there is always a minimum of TWO working versions of the project. In post and in archive. (larger projects take 4 drives ETC) and flush the raid array. VERY time consuming.

This is allot of redundancy, but it has saved me on more than one occasion. I would like to have one Giant Scalable Sever/Raid array that both of our Main Editing stations can work from. I cannot afford SCSI, or Fiber, so Im trying to find a way to keep it affordable and scalable. It is not uncommon to have several project rolling at the same time, each of which can be several TB's in size between the raw P2 footage and Scratch disc space. This is why I want a super large array. 6 or 8TB of workspace, with obvious equal Redundancy would hold us over for a while. I would like to do this for under $1.5K if Possible.... Hope Im not dreaming.

PS, Old Betacam Cassette Covers make Excellent Hard Drive Cases. Trim off a little plastic inside, and you have a really nice long term storage case.
 
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