Promise VTrak E610f and Mac Pro issue

Question

Level 1

66 points

Promise VTrak E610f and Mac Pro issue

Hi,

I have two Mac Pro's that are connected to a fiber switch which go to the Promise Raids VTrak E610f .

I have the Raids setup for Video stream and they are mounted to the Mac Pro's like any other external storage device (like Firewire)

The idea is to give both Mac Pro's access to footage that are on the Raids.
Which worked fine for the first day.

After a reboot(no matter which workstation) I get the error message:

*Disk Repair*

The disk "Media Raid-1" was not repairable by this
computer. It is being made available to you with
limited functionality. You must back up your data
and reformat the disk as soon as possible.

After this message I have no write permission to the Raid I still have read access.

How can I fix this issue and accomplish the setup that I need.

Thanks

PowerBook G4 1.33GHz , Mac Pro 2x 2.66GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.6), 20" Cinema Display

Posted on May 29, 2009 1:06 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 1, 2009 8:38 AM in response to Shaggy

I'm not sure of your exact setup, but on fibre channel when you have two initiators (the Mac Pro's) with the ability to look at either target (the Promise Raids) and there is no controlling software (like XSAN) to act as a traffic cop to keep the initiators (Mac Pro's) from clobbering the data when writing to the same target (Promise Raids), then this could be your issue.

On fibre channel when you have more than one initiator and more than one target on the same fibre channel switch, you most likely will need to do zoning on the fibre channel switch.

Don't know if this is your problem, but consider it and see if this suggestion helps.

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Answer 2

Shaggy Author

Level 1

66 points

Jun 16, 2009 9:04 PM in response to John Nicholes

Okay I found out what the issue was.
The Mac that connects to the fiber first takes complete control of the Raids.
So the seconds Mac has no Write Permissions. I might have to tinker with the sharing settings.

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Answer 3

Jun 17, 2009 8:53 AM in response to Shaggy

In case this wasn't clear I'll say it explicitly.

*Do NOT give multiple machines access to the same data over fibre channel.*

This will result in data corruption and tears. Seriously, fibre channel is SCSI and any initiator assumes it controls the disk that it is attached to and will do no arbitration with the other initiator. Both will read and write oblivious to the actions of the other and data corruption is inevitable.

The only way to allow multiple machine access to the same data over fibre is to install an arbitration layer with something like XSAN. If the system automatically forced the second machine to read-only status I'm impressed that they've taken this step to protect you and your data. You should be grateful and take it as a warning.

=Tod

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