High capacity RAID with SSD cache

[259844_1454182107]

Hi all, 

 

INTRO:

So I am looking to upgrade my existing storage configuration for video and photo archival in my main PC. I have a UPS, so power failure is unlikely.

 

EXISTING HARDWARE SETUP:

4x3TB RAID 10, but I am rapidly running out of space with 4K footage. I edit videos off a 512GB SM951 which is great but at the end of a project it can take an hour or longer to offload the footage to the archive. 

 

UPGRADE:

So my plan is to upgrade to 6x3TB drives in a RAID 5/6 (15/12TB usable), but I would need a RAID card to get any reasonable write speed, additionally I would like to get 2 SSDs in a RAID for a write-back cache to accelerate further. 

 

SUGGESTIONS:

I can find little information online for this kind of setup, can someone recommend a RAID card, or a better configuration? I am an enthusiast, rather than pro video editor, so I am looking for speed and reliability, but preferably in the £100s rather than £1000s. 

 

To summarise, something like Intel SRT except with a larger buffer and more configuration options.

 

If I have left anything out, or anything is unclear please ask.

TYIA

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

just asking? thought about a NAS ? there are crazy fast ones don't you worry. it comes down to what you are willing to spend in total. there are adaptec raid controllers (at least those are the one I know of) that can provide the function you are looking for, but they start at 500$+.

so a NAS maybe not that far fetched. sth. on the upper end like the RS series from Synology maybe even coupled with the RP addon units, they also can be set up with ssd cache... it gets expensive on that end quit fast though.

[xentropa]

I don't know how well that would work. SSDs are not well known for their write speed, write endurance, computational overhead in performing dynamic mapping / wear leveling and lack of byte level addressing to be used as any type of cache.

[259844_1454182107]

5 hours ago, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

just asking? thought about a NAS ? there are crazy fast ones don't you worry. it comes down to what you are willing to spend in total. there are adaptec raid controllers (at least those are the one I know of) that can provide the function you are looking for, but they start at 500$+.

so a NAS maybe not that far fetched. sth. on the upper end like the RS series from Synology maybe even coupled with the RP addon units, they also can be set up with ssd cache... it gets expensive on that end quit fast though.

Hi, thanks for the suggestion, a NAS is a good idea, and I may have to end up going for it, but as I would only be accessing the data from my main PC I would effectively be paying around £1,000 for the caching software, to then be limited in terms of upgrade options and by whatever network connection its got. I had hoped to find an isolated hardware or software solution to allow the same set up inside my PC.

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

On 22.11.2016 at 8:30 PM, 259844_1454182107 said:

Hi, thanks for the suggestion, a NAS is a good idea, and I may have to end up going for it, but as I would only be accessing the data from my main PC I would effectively be paying around £1,000 for the caching software, to then be limited in terms of upgrade options and by whatever network connection its got. I had hoped to find an isolated hardware or software solution to allow the same set up inside my PC.

hmm. I'd look at it at from a more fundamental angle. you are looking for a rather big home storage solution that needs to be safe as it reasonably can get. (at least that's what I understood so far).

 

My answer would be a NAS. Allthough a NAS is by no means any kind of backup solution (unless only used for that), you might end up with one, cause the alternative would be to build one yourself in another chassis. Wouldn't go that way though, not worth the trouble since there are good NAS systems out there. They come at a price though.

 

Here is what I got which serves a rather similar need that you might have:

DiskStation DS1515+ - it can take 5 drives total - and can be upgraded with 2 additional units (DX513) that can hold another 5 drives each. I'm only running one DS1515+ with 5 WD red pro drives 4 TB each that provide a raid 5 plus hot spare netting a total of 12 TB, since I don't do backups a lot a hot spare seemed like a good idea. (Backups go to a LTO4 drive that I got cheap from work).

The NAS systems these days for enthusiast home users come with tons of features that might benefit you especially, since you said something about photos and some other stuff. Check out the Synology page for more info (streaming / cloud / dhcp server / download client / ...... the list is endless and the community is great). They also got smaller or bigger units, even rack mountable if that is an option, although they are rather not what I would call cheap, but you get a lot for your money.

The base DS1515+ is about 600$ / The expansion unit DX513 is about 400$

 

I use 2x WD black raid 0 in my main system as work drives and when the files I worked with are done / exported, I copy them to the NAS. Don't worry about speed, assuming gigabit LAN, that NAS can write faster than my 2 WD blacks can read, so no issue there. There is no SSD involved, the data I work with is too big and would wear them down way too fast.

 

Hope this helps you figure it out.

 

regards

Duck