Vtrak x30s

[rpfloydster]

Anyone had a chance to play with these? Any best practices for Xsan config i.e. head unit to expansion unit ratios?

[dickot]

Hi rp,

The PROMISE x30 series RAID controller has approximately 4 times the bandwidth of the previous x10 series - and each has four 8Gb Fibre Chanel host ports; this provides 6GB/s worth of paths from the switch to the storage.

This GUI has a wizard that allows you to select the 'canned' scripts that you had to import with the x10; a few clicks and your arrays are set up.

One change is that the new topology calls for using the 24-drive E830 for the "head" unit;
- one 2-drive RAID1 for MD LUN
- two 8-drive RAID6 Data LUNs
- one 4-drive RAID5 Scratch LUN
- two Global Revertible Spare drives
Then you can add one or three 16-drive E630s; two 8-drive RAID6 Data LUNs per unit.
This gives you four or eight 12TB LUNs as per Xsan best practices.

I have an E830 and J630 here in the recommended config on a Qlogic switch, with a Mini as MDC and hosting two MacPros and a MacbookPro via SANLink. Sweet...

The Wizard will config the LUNs and controller parameters correctly, but you can still check out the KBs at PROMISE and Apple:
http://kb.promise.com/KnowledgebaseArticle10301.aspx?Keywords=best+practice

http://kb.promise.com/KnowledgebaseArticle10319.aspx?Keywords=alua

Note that with the latest firmware release the ALUA switch is now in the GUI.
Turn it off if you are using Leopard or Snow Leopard, and turn it on for Lion.

Let me know if you have any more questions...

Cheers, Richard

[flumignan]

Has anyone deployed the non-Apple spec x30 on an Xserve? I know they're not supported, and I know the firmware is different.

We connect directly to our 2010 Xserve via fibre channel. We don't use Xsan, we don't do video. Just lots and lots of small medical-related files that get manipulated by two dozen researchers via NFS, AFP and SMB.

I'm working with a research group that needs a lot of disk space, but they have a small budget. We were thinking about the VTrak 830, but even with the .edu discount, the "Made for Mac" version is $23,500 and must come with 24 x 2TB drives. We could pick up the single-controller VTrak 830fS for $7,700 and 24 3TB Hitachi SATA drives for $8,760 and pay $16,450. That's 30% less for 33% more space, minus one controller. We can even throw in an ATTO 8Gbps fibre card and be ahead. Plus all our drives will have 5-year warranties.

We already have nearly 100TB of storage mixed between non-Apple VTrak 610 chassis and "Made for Mac" ones, too. In our experience, they're indistinguishable. The x30 compatibility matrix says the HBA in the Xserve is not quite supported (they support the same make/model, but with newer firmware on the fibre card). I'm just wondering if it works. Obviously, the most terabytes per dollar is our primary consideration, above performance and supportability.

[abstractrude]

I have one of the non apple boxes attached to an xserve. it works just fine. my understanding is that the main difference is there is more RAM in the apple models.

[flumignan]

[abstractrude]

10.7.2. its a test setup. hosts virtual machines and does backup and replication.

Vendor: LSILogic
Product: LSI7204EP
Revision: Firmware 1.3.20.0, EFI 1.05.05.00
Bus: PCI
Slot: Slot-2
Initiator Identifier: 126

Manufacturer: Promise
Model: VTrak E830f
Revision: 402
ALUA Support: Unsupported
Logical Unit Access State: Active Optimized
Load Balancing Algorithm: Least Bytes

[Stinky Grinch]

Any one have any links from apple or promise that show recommended configurations like the ones described below? Could not find anything following the links below. I'm about to build a system likely with x30 units. Looking at using one 4U subsystem and three 3U expansions. Just want to make sure I set it up by the book.

With 11 Clients working with P2 HD footage for the most part I'm worried about having all those drives on just two controllers along with MD in the mix on one of the controllers.

Any any advice or links to best practices for x30 deployments would be great.
This would be my first time working with the x30 units.

[abstractrude]

on your 24 drive unit. RAID 1 metadata 2 disks
2 8 drive RAID 6. rest host spares
do 8DRIVE raid 6 on the rest of your JBODS.

2 storage pools of 4 luns, global hot spares. boom

[keithkoby]

We now have the apple x30 and non-apple x30 variety in 2 separate xsan volumes. The non-apple variety are used for 2nd tier where files are migrated to live for 6 mos or so before they go to tape or are deleted. Editors can definitely edit from it, but we only dual pathed it per controller instead of quad pathed. The performance is still terrific.

The webpam looks slightly more windows-ish and a few settings are only available from the command line (ALUA on/off) vs the apple web-pam. The apple easy setup scripts aren't there of course, but we wanted to carve it up the way we wanted to anyway.

The big factors in purchasing non-apple on this second volume for us were, the jbod units (24 drv vs only having 16 drv from appel) and 3 TB (gasp) discs. And the price was good, but the apple pricing isn't bad either compared to other brands etc.

Both have been solid, although we adopted the apple variety early and had some false warnings about PSUs and a communication issue until the recent firmware update cleared that up.

[Blacknight582]

My facility is looking to upgrade to a pretty serious (for us at least) TB amount, and $$ is definitely a concern (isn't it always). Proposals have been put together for some active storage stuff; but I remembered promise had released the x30 and I had done no research on it to see if it was cost effective or not.

I was shocked to see prices for 24 bay x30's in the less than $15K range, then I checked the apple website and behold, the Apple certified x30, for a mere $28,999... Is the firmware really worth $13K? I have to think not... especially if I am not wanting to use any of their pre-setup slices of the array? I asked promise if there were any differences between the two boxes and two different tech guys said the only difference is firmware. I guess apple has to get their slice for it (oh and "apple supports it"... which is a joke anyways, they barely support "Xsan" as it is...). But other than keithkoby, has anybody else successfully had these work for them? And keith, did you just run scripts to set up your non-apple array? or is the gui interface usable enough to do what you need it to do? or not at all? (sadly there is absolutely no documentation that I can find at least on it). I love the idea of being able to use the other high density arrays like the J930s or something, we need sppaaccee...

[applefan811]

I have successfully had it working, the GUI is easy to use. For the price you can find it to be cheaper other places

Example: www.thunderboltapple.com