[Tig] Minimum RAID bandwidth for 2K playback?

[Ramona Howard]

Bob,

> Can you comment on some real-world data rates using the 3ware 9550
> controller?

> I have a PCIX 133 slot available, and would like to know roughly what kind
> of R/W speeds I can expect using a 3ware 9550 controller and 8 7200 rpm
> drives such as the Seagate 7200.11 series in Raid 0 and Raid 1+0 modes.

I will interject here for him.

We have not used the 9550 for some time (using the 9650 and 9690 now). 7200rpm 
SATA Enterprise drives will produce more than the needed thruput with enough 
of them in an array.  At the time we where on that controller, we used all 12 
drives in the array and had more that the needed thruput.  Of course many 
items have changed since then and I guarantee if we were to go back and 
retest the same hardware it could be done with less drives but am unable to 
give you a definite of how many since we are unable to do that.

Like Jason said in his post, the OS and how it is tweaked will have much to do 
with this, in addition to the hardware the controller and AJA sit on.  
Everything effects these real world numbers. A blanket statement would not be 
accurate as it is based on the hardware config we have put together.

> I'm running an AJA 2K card, and I am looking to move away from an Adaptec
> U320 SCSI controller with 8 15K Seagate drives. I'd like to move to SATA,
> but I'm having a hard time finding real world info on what is required.

When we did this 4 years ago, it required lots of research on hardware 
(motherboards, chipsets, controllers, drives, etc) and then many months of 
testing.  No real info then and I do believe still none.

> And can you recommend better 7200 rpm drives than the Seagate 7200.11
> series?

We have tested SATA and SAS, Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital and they all 
performed in the configurations we test.  Stick with an Enterprise drive and 
your worries won't be with the drives.

I can say our current configs are:

6 7200rpm 9690 controller
12 7200rpm 9650 controller

Both produce the thruput needed but obviously the 12 drive system gives more.

I hope that helps you out a bit.

Cheers,
Ramona

-- 
Ramona Howard
CEO/Founder
SpectSoft, Inc.
375 Johnson Ave
Oakdale, CA 95361

Phone: 209.847.7812 extension 104
Fax: 209.847.7859
http://www.spectsoft.com


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