Hey. As I begin to assemble my computer I have a few choices. One is to RAID or not to RAID. I hear it's fantastic for CAD etc. But I worry about loosing stuff if the array fails. Has anyone had experience with RAID? Is it just as stable as a regular drive? Can you partition a RAID array? Can you add a thrid drive that is not in the RAID array and then set it up to back up the array to the third drive say, every 3 days or something? I know there are types of RAID that do mirror, but they require 4 drives. I want to do RAID, but have heard horror stories.
Who has experience with dual processors? Great benefit? I've read that a dual Opteron 244 set up is very competative with a dual 3.06 Xeon set up (the Xeons are a little better, but a lot more expensive). And I understand that the Opterons share resources better. Would a dual Opteron system be greatly superior to say a single AMD Athlon 3400+? Do dual processors greatly enhance CAD, Photoshop and Maya? To build a dual Opteron system only increases the price by $300, which isn't bad, so I'm curious if a dual processor system is worth it.
I recently set up a RAID-based server (file, Exchange, Internet proxy all in one) at work and know of a big engineering firm that runs Raid1 (mirroring) on their work stations and given the relative low cost of drives these days it makes sense.
You should do a search for RAID info on the web that explains the difference between the various array setups (RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1, RAID3, RAID5 and RAID10). I have a few sites bookmarked at work that I can post on Monday.
In a nutshell RAID can be configured (depending of the array type) for 2 reasons. First for redundancy which requires 2 disks (RAID1) where duplicate information is written to each disk in case one fails.
Second, for speed. Higher input/output rates are achieved by writing blocks of information to more than one disk therefore overcoming the read/write speed of a single disk (think multitasking).
For reliability I think you will want to use SCSI drives and a hardware RAID controller which will bring the cost of your machine up considerably.
Is this a “home†system or is it used for paid work? As a home system I personally would opt for RAID1 (mirroring) using IDE disks and run by software (I think you need XP Pro for that) which costs much less. If you just wanted the redundancy of a second drive you could just install 2 IDE disks and use a script to copy the main disk to the backup each night (I do this and can send you the script if you want).
If it is a worked based system and you need the speed fir video editing or something you should really consult a pro who has set these things up and knows the tweaks.
Our server at work runs RAID5. About 2 months ago I came in one Friday morning to a beeping sound and found that one of the drives on the array had failed. We have a next business day plan with Dell which meant the new drive would be in on Monday so we worked all Friday and through the weekend with the failed drive and saw no loss of performance.
When the drive showed up on Monday, without shutting the computer of network off we slid out the failed drive (hot swappable) and slid in the new one.
Basically I'm looking for speed. It's a computer for grad school. I did look at a site that outlined the various types of RAID, but I don't want 87234873 harddrives to get speed and redundancy, plus the cost of the extra controllers. I believe the Mobo I'm looking at supports 0,1 and 1+0. So I guess what I'm asking is, RAID 0 is striping correct? That dramatically increases read and write, but puts you at risk since one drive fails, and you are done. I would want to add a 3rd regular drive to just copy the data each night so if one of the RAID drives goes, I still have everything. Make sense?
i use a highpoint IDE controller that will make use of up to 8 drives, 2 per channel. but i use 4 small (60g) drives, each on its own channel. the setup makes use of raid level 0, which is the fastest setup, but also the most risky.
all disk operations are transparent to the os, and what happens is data is split up and distributed equally to the drives, writes and reads are essentially over twice as fast as a single drive.
the risky part about this configuration is that if you lose a harddrive, you lose all the data on the array. that is why i use a nightly backup on a separate drive to backup the os and the data. this makes full use of the array as i'm working and provides security on an external drive.
its been running for a over a year and i've tested a full backup recover operation... its flawless. also, i use norton ghost for super fast backup/recoveries. i mean it can do over 40g in under 10 minutes, but whatever... backups are done while i'm fast asleep.
When I was spec'ing a machine for the office, I was going with (budgets kept it from happening) RAID 0 for speed, as everything on the servers would be backed up every night.
For my own business, I am going with RAID 1.
As for the processors, from the little I've read, the Opterons and Xeons are about head to head as far as cost and performance. I'd be interested to learn of any tests that proved anything other than that. When things go 64 bit (meaning ages from now), the O's might be faster, but by then Intel will have their 64 out.
Dual processors are only good for software that was written for them. Here's what I know:
Photoshop: nope, will not help
ACAD: I highly doubt it
Maya: Certainly, but I don't know the specifics
FormZ: Only with Full Raytracing on
Max: Yes (I assume this is with raytracing also, as it's processor driven, whereas soft shadows are all ram)
Final Render (and the other GIs): These will show the most performance increases, as they can take advantage of the two processors for their gagillion calculations! It really does make a huge difference.
Dual is the way for high end 3D. For graphics, like acad and photoshop, it's a waste of money. This is just what I've learned, and I'll make my disclaimer here "all info is subject to corrections" .
Cheers.
Let us know how it goes, I am interested in the RAID 0 + a third drive.
hey mbr,
maybe you should read this discussion forum im going to post here...
dual processors do not come to use when you are specifically using a single program, say photoshop --- they are useful when you are using photoshop, illustrator, maya and autocad all at the same time, which i think we regularly do..
as someone in the discussion has also mentioned, for maya, max and other rendering programs, if you have an animation, you can render frames 1,3,5...on one and 2,4,6 on the other, and i think thats pretty sweet!!!
all that said and done, the only duals ive used were the ones in the UCLA studios (dual xeons, actually) and they were really nice to work with, though im building one with dual amd opteron 246's -let see how it goes, and i can then share some issues on them...
They do come into work IF the program was written for them. PS is not, but Max, and others are.
I NEVER use PS when I am rendering. RAM is crucial for fast rendering, and I don't want to take up the resources (not to mention risking crashing. I also have more than one machine, though. I am not sure what the advantage would be to use one processor for some frames, and the other for others. Not sure if that's possible, I certainly have never heard of that before. The issue there is that you would be using the same RAM for each rendering.
Distributed Rendering is another matter, but that requires more than one computer, dual or not. Then you are talking some speed! That's next on the list ;-)
I have a dual Xeon 2.2 with 1.5 gigs of rdram. When I render with Max and Final Render, it uses both (you can just watch the Task Manager to see the usage of all the resources). With PS it does not.
It will use almost 100% of both processors, and close to the max ram for larger renderings (GI eats a lot of ram).
For lots of rendering, duals are the best way, but for acad, ps, and others, it's going to be overkill (get more ram and faster drives).
Jun 20, 04 10:17 pm ·
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RAID and multiprocessors
Hey. As I begin to assemble my computer I have a few choices. One is to RAID or not to RAID. I hear it's fantastic for CAD etc. But I worry about loosing stuff if the array fails. Has anyone had experience with RAID? Is it just as stable as a regular drive? Can you partition a RAID array? Can you add a thrid drive that is not in the RAID array and then set it up to back up the array to the third drive say, every 3 days or something? I know there are types of RAID that do mirror, but they require 4 drives. I want to do RAID, but have heard horror stories.
Who has experience with dual processors? Great benefit? I've read that a dual Opteron 244 set up is very competative with a dual 3.06 Xeon set up (the Xeons are a little better, but a lot more expensive). And I understand that the Opterons share resources better. Would a dual Opteron system be greatly superior to say a single AMD Athlon 3400+? Do dual processors greatly enhance CAD, Photoshop and Maya? To build a dual Opteron system only increases the price by $300, which isn't bad, so I'm curious if a dual processor system is worth it.
I recently set up a RAID-based server (file, Exchange, Internet proxy all in one) at work and know of a big engineering firm that runs Raid1 (mirroring) on their work stations and given the relative low cost of drives these days it makes sense.
You should do a search for RAID info on the web that explains the difference between the various array setups (RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1, RAID3, RAID5 and RAID10). I have a few sites bookmarked at work that I can post on Monday.
In a nutshell RAID can be configured (depending of the array type) for 2 reasons. First for redundancy which requires 2 disks (RAID1) where duplicate information is written to each disk in case one fails.
Second, for speed. Higher input/output rates are achieved by writing blocks of information to more than one disk therefore overcoming the read/write speed of a single disk (think multitasking).
For reliability I think you will want to use SCSI drives and a hardware RAID controller which will bring the cost of your machine up considerably.
Is this a “home†system or is it used for paid work? As a home system I personally would opt for RAID1 (mirroring) using IDE disks and run by software (I think you need XP Pro for that) which costs much less. If you just wanted the redundancy of a second drive you could just install 2 IDE disks and use a script to copy the main disk to the backup each night (I do this and can send you the script if you want).
If it is a worked based system and you need the speed fir video editing or something you should really consult a pro who has set these things up and knows the tweaks.
Our server at work runs RAID5. About 2 months ago I came in one Friday morning to a beeping sound and found that one of the drives on the array had failed. We have a next business day plan with Dell which meant the new drive would be in on Monday so we worked all Friday and through the weekend with the failed drive and saw no loss of performance.
When the drive showed up on Monday, without shutting the computer of network off we slid out the failed drive (hot swappable) and slid in the new one.
Basically I'm looking for speed. It's a computer for grad school. I did look at a site that outlined the various types of RAID, but I don't want 87234873 harddrives to get speed and redundancy, plus the cost of the extra controllers. I believe the Mobo I'm looking at supports 0,1 and 1+0. So I guess what I'm asking is, RAID 0 is striping correct? That dramatically increases read and write, but puts you at risk since one drive fails, and you are done. I would want to add a 3rd regular drive to just copy the data each night so if one of the RAID drives goes, I still have everything. Make sense?
To my understanding, RAID does not do anything unless you have more than one harddrive.
Therefore, the speed enhancements associated with RAID are nullified if you only have one harddrive.
My suggestion is for you to get a harddrive (like the raptor) which processes at over 10k rpm (regardless of whether it offers RAID or not).
Anyway, for more information, I suggest you consult the forum members at www.pcpitstop.com
ok... here's what i did and its FAST.
i use a highpoint IDE controller that will make use of up to 8 drives, 2 per channel. but i use 4 small (60g) drives, each on its own channel. the setup makes use of raid level 0, which is the fastest setup, but also the most risky.
all disk operations are transparent to the os, and what happens is data is split up and distributed equally to the drives, writes and reads are essentially over twice as fast as a single drive.
the risky part about this configuration is that if you lose a harddrive, you lose all the data on the array. that is why i use a nightly backup on a separate drive to backup the os and the data. this makes full use of the array as i'm working and provides security on an external drive.
its been running for a over a year and i've tested a full backup recover operation... its flawless. also, i use norton ghost for super fast backup/recoveries. i mean it can do over 40g in under 10 minutes, but whatever... backups are done while i'm fast asleep.
by the way... toms hardware has a great article with all sorts of speed tests and such which will help you make the money/speed decision.
When I was spec'ing a machine for the office, I was going with (budgets kept it from happening) RAID 0 for speed, as everything on the servers would be backed up every night.
For my own business, I am going with RAID 1.
As for the processors, from the little I've read, the Opterons and Xeons are about head to head as far as cost and performance. I'd be interested to learn of any tests that proved anything other than that. When things go 64 bit (meaning ages from now), the O's might be faster, but by then Intel will have their 64 out.
Dual processors are only good for software that was written for them. Here's what I know:
Photoshop: nope, will not help
ACAD: I highly doubt it
Maya: Certainly, but I don't know the specifics
FormZ: Only with Full Raytracing on
Max: Yes (I assume this is with raytracing also, as it's processor driven, whereas soft shadows are all ram)
Final Render (and the other GIs): These will show the most performance increases, as they can take advantage of the two processors for their gagillion calculations! It really does make a huge difference.
Dual is the way for high end 3D. For graphics, like acad and photoshop, it's a waste of money. This is just what I've learned, and I'll make my disclaimer here "all info is subject to corrections" .
Cheers.
Let us know how it goes, I am interested in the RAID 0 + a third drive.
hey mbr,
maybe you should read this discussion forum im going to post here...
dual processors do not come to use when you are specifically using a single program, say photoshop --- they are useful when you are using photoshop, illustrator, maya and autocad all at the same time, which i think we regularly do..
as someone in the discussion has also mentioned, for maya, max and other rendering programs, if you have an animation, you can render frames 1,3,5...on one and 2,4,6 on the other, and i think thats pretty sweet!!!
http://www.highend3d.com/boards/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=hardware&Number=177988&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=
all that said and done, the only duals ive used were the ones in the UCLA studios (dual xeons, actually) and they were really nice to work with, though im building one with dual amd opteron 246's -let see how it goes, and i can then share some issues on them...
They do come into work IF the program was written for them. PS is not, but Max, and others are.
I NEVER use PS when I am rendering. RAM is crucial for fast rendering, and I don't want to take up the resources (not to mention risking crashing. I also have more than one machine, though. I am not sure what the advantage would be to use one processor for some frames, and the other for others. Not sure if that's possible, I certainly have never heard of that before. The issue there is that you would be using the same RAM for each rendering.
Distributed Rendering is another matter, but that requires more than one computer, dual or not. Then you are talking some speed! That's next on the list ;-)
I have a dual Xeon 2.2 with 1.5 gigs of rdram. When I render with Max and Final Render, it uses both (you can just watch the Task Manager to see the usage of all the resources). With PS it does not.
It will use almost 100% of both processors, and close to the max ram for larger renderings (GI eats a lot of ram).
For lots of rendering, duals are the best way, but for acad, ps, and others, it's going to be overkill (get more ram and faster drives).
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