Q: Thunderbolt with Pegasus R4 heavily slows down boot performance of internal SSD

steven,

thanks for the insight.  i ended up ordering an (1) R4 to test for my setup from B&HPhoto last week shortly after you response.  i plan to start setting eveything up later today physically.  the reliability is very important and concerned me with the other thread of issues.  it seems most of those problem users are euro located so their may be something to the gsm/spectrum hypothesis.

i already have a XrackPro 12U rack with noise reduction from my previous setup and would like to use it.  i ordererd a 1U sonnet rack system for mounting the 2 mini servers and will likely just place the R4 on a rack shelf below them.  my only decision at this point is what to RAID level to format the R4.  no need to use 0 due to my network so i am looking at 5 and 1E (due to the article you referenced) to get some redundancy.  the performance is better with 1E, but in either case the network will be my limitation.  with 1E it seems i could potentially lose 2 drives and still be operable... as long as the second one lost is not in the mirror of the first?  with 5, i could only lose 1 disk and be operable, but i would have an additional 1G of storage (i.e. 3 instead of 2 of 1E).  raid 5 rebuild can be rather slow and bring performance down ~25%.  any thoughts on 1E?

one other thing i forgot to mention is that we are looking at upgrading all iPhoto users to Aperture with the masters referenced off the RAID once everything is tested.  any experience with that?

David,

Sorry for the slow response.  That's awesome you ordered a R4, I honestly think you will love it.  As for what Raid to use....I'm a fan of Raid1E over Raid 5.  If space is an issue then by all means use Raid 5 but for performance, ease of repair if a drive failed I personally would do Raid 1E.  I personally used Raid 0 for Speed as I have 3 HD that are used as backups instead of using a "raid" for a backup.  As you will see online in the articles do not rely on a "Raid" setup as your only backup...You MUST have another HD that is a backed up at the very least, not to mention 1 HD off site that is rotated out each week or month(at most)

I don't use Aperture so I can't really comment on that however I use Photoshop CS5 and I have 3 users on 3 iMac's that access information(at the same time) from 1 R4 unit on the network without any issues at all so I don't think you will have any problems.  The ONLY problem you have, like me is the network speeds...which at this point we can't do anything about.  Put a Man on the moon and can't get over 120MBps network speeds?  Seriously?  lol  Besides my iMac, the 2 other iMacs have like 70GB on the internal HD's...all the information is on the R4 unit which is what you would want and honestly, the setup runs great.  You shouldn't have any issues at all.  The programs(Mail, Photoshop, Lightroom,) are all on the internal HD's so install Aperture on each Mac you have.  I use Numbers and Pages and those programs don't have any problems accessing the information on the R4 either.

Also, my 2 R4 units are on 24/7 and I haven't had any issues.

David,

As Steven recommened I went with the RAID 1E option on my R4. I've extreamly happy and thanks to Steven for all the great advise! I also have my OS and boot from the R4 with no problems at all. I think I've had it for around 3 months now and have never experienced a single disconnect of the drive (touch wood).

Unlike Steven I switch mine off every night and boot in the morning.. no problems at all!.. you just have to remember to boot the RAID first THEN the imac and visa versa when switching off.

Just as an FYI.. here's the procedure that I used to connect and install the R4 as my startup disk.. posting as someone somewhere may find it helpful :-)

1) Fire up  imac.

2) Connect of R4 to the imac with thunderbolt cable and power up (use left hand thunderbolt port on the R4)

3) Copy over the Pegasus RAID utility from the R4  and save it on the internal drive and or a Disk for safe keeping

4) Format the RAID using the Pegasus RAID utility for 1E with sector and stripe 512 and wait to complete (10 hours)

5) When format is complete, check that the drive appears on disk utilities

6) Download  the Osx Lion Installer from apps store

7) Connect a Time Machine backup disk to the imac

8) When it asks which disk to install on then choose the RAID 1E

9) When the install walk through screen prompt asks if you want to import data then choose time machine backup

10) Finish install process

11) Go to system Preferences and Startup Disk. Select R4 HD and restart. The machine should boot from the R4 and wont touch the internal drive

12) Carry out system check, everything opens and runs OK, closed down OK, no crashes etc

13) Complete all available updates of SW and re run systems check

14)  Download Black Magic design speed test from the App Store and benchmark the read write speeds. Record results.

15) Connect up 2 x 2TB WD External HD's to USB ports and add them to time machine backup and Deja Vu backup respectivly. Make sure that the second Deja Vu backup is in the TM exclusion list (which I didn't, and again Steven helped me with! :-)

Steve.

Great post Steve and real easy to understand.

I just wanted to add, in case anyone is wondering why we used Sector and Stripe 512, it's because for some reason I could only get the iMac to boot to the R4 unit with that 512 settings.  If you don't plan on booting from the R4 then you can use whatever Sector and Stripe you want.  I can tell you, it took me FOREVER to work that out.  It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for a 10 hour Format time. lol

I also use Carbon Copy Cloner without any issues.  Time Machine is on the Hour, CCC is once a day.  I have a 3rd backup but only because I'm not using any RAID as a backup.  Raid is fine as a backup but shouldn't be considered the only backup.

So, I was planning to set up a server in our office ot host around 2TB of image files.

Mac Mini server, Lion Server and one Pegasus R6 to host the images.

Our office has 10 workstations.

Got everything up and running.

All was great for a week.

After a week the R6 Disapperead from the Mac Mini desktop

and the Mini crashed.

Since then I've spent 2 weeks on the phone with Pegasus tech support.

They had me:

Buying different cables

Attempting to run a few checkup routines using the terminal version of the Promise utility.

Trying a different computer

Different ports etc...

In all this the R6 never came back to life, never mounted once.

Today they finally issued an RMA.

My concerns are many.

Once the server will become a production server it will need to be u and running 24/7, PERIOD.

Is Pegasus a bad choice, or I just got a lemon?

Thanks!

Federico Chieli

It was all your work Steven, I would never have figured it out without all of your trial and error ground work and support!

Just as an add on to the RAID 1E here's a picture of the Read Write performance that I'm getting on 1E.

Of course the proof of the pudding is if or should I say WHEN I have a drive failure on the RAID.  I'm anxious to see how the 1E configuration and the R4 for that matter deals with it. But not an experiment that I want to try until the event actually occurs!.. hence the two backup drives!

Steve

lol.  I don't want to try and experiment a drive failing either. lol

As we can see from Steve's speeds they are over a wired Network speed which I'm getting around 120MBps tops, on average I'm getting around 90MBps with different users on the network at the same time so from a speed stand point I think Raid 1E is fine.

Federico,

FIrst question would be...what country you live in?  I believe europe has had several issues with the R6's...but from the sound of your problem I believe you got a Lemon, if it didn't boot back up it's most probably a unit issue and not a HD issue or a Thunderbolt Cable issue.  I personally love them, I have 2 R4's, no problems at all, Steve has 1 and hasn't had any issues.  My R4's run 24/7 and have since I got them(1 in Sept and 1 in Nov)

Like I've mentioned in previous posts, I have 3 iMac's and 1 Macbook Pro and they are connected to the R4 and can access that information on the R4 at any time, all the time and you having 10 work stations, I don't think you will have an issues either.  The speed is great and even though I'm on Raid 0 I'm not using any more than 2TB at any given time.

What other concerns do you have?