share RAID5 with 2 mac's

Question

Level 1

4 points

share RAID5 with 2 mac's

My current video editing setup consists of a mac pro 2,1 running OSX Yosemite, connected to a CalDigit 3TB RAID5 array for storage.

I recently purchased a second-hand 2012 mac book pro, witch I would like to start using as a 2nd editing machine, so I can stil edit when I'm not at my main editing machine.

The problem I'm running in to, is that I need to somehow be able to acces the RAID storage from my laptop, without having to physically boot up my mac pro, witch the storage is connected to.

I looked in to ways of booting a mac via ethernet, but this doesn't seem to be possible on mac computers. All threads I found on the subject end up recommending just putting the mac pro in sleep mode when not in use, and turning on "wake for ethernet network acces". Unfortunately, I'm using a "unsupported" graphics card that doesn't have boot screens etc, and if I put my mac pro in sleep mode, it won't wake up unless I restart it.

The other option I considered was to connect the storage to a server instead of directly to my mac pro, and mount is as a network volume. The issue is that my server is a mac mini, and so it won't hold the CalDigit RAID controller (witch is a PCI card) Software controllers for RAID5 don't seem to be available for mac, or at least not for free.

Simply leaving the mac pro on 24/7 is also not an option, since my parents would start complaining about the power bill...

Mac Pro, Mac pro 2,1

Posted on Sep 15, 2015 3:46 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

John Lockwood

Level 6

13,679 points

Sep 18, 2015 12:25 PM in response to _Ties

There are several ways to share some RAID5 storage - some will not be possible for you.

You could get a Thunderbolt SAN and have two computers connected directly to it, I believe your MacBook Pro supports Thunderbolt but a Mac Pro 2,1 certainly does not, see http://www.h3platform.com/thunderbolt.html
You could 'share' over the network the RAID5 from one Mac to another using file-sharing, this would require the 'server' to always be on, also this is likely to be slower
You could buy a RAID5 NAS which shares the storage using a dedicated box over the network either using standard AFP, or potentially you can use iSCSI. Macs do not include iSCSI client software as standard but several versions are available.
You could setup a full-blown SAN system, connections to the SAN could be via iSCSI or via Fibre, adapters are available for both the Mac Pro and Thunderbolt equipped Macs

In your case the cheapest and simplest option would be to use a NAS system from either NetGear, QNAP, or Synology. You would have to copy any existing files to such a system. Many people use NAS boxes like these at home.

Hmm, it seems the above Thunderbolt SAN system is a bit misleading, it does appear to support connecting a older Mac Pro via a PCIe card to it, as well as newer Thunderbolt only Macs via adapters. So both your computers could be connected to it. I suspect this approach will be overkill for you if your a single person setup doing this at home.

Depending on what video card you have it maybe possible to 'flash' it to make it support the Mac fully. What model is it?

Reply

Answer 2

_Ties Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 18, 2015 12:25 PM in response to John Lockwood

Thank you for all that info. I'm probably going to be looking at some different NAS systems, or maybe just try to convince my parents to let me run an old mac pro as a server and run something like FreeNAS on it with my existing RAID.

I have looked in to re-flashing my graphics card before, but unfortunately it's not a very common model, and I'v not been able to find anything to flash it with so far.

It's a EVGA GTX570hd, but a weird version of it, with (i think) 2560MB Instead of the standard 1GB.

Reply