OSX RAID setup to serve OS9 DAWs

[Protools5LEGuy]

I have 2 PowerMacs and I was thinking on use my 866 dual with a X system to serve via AFP files/projects to my DA Ghz dual.

The MDD with a DOM on the cd bay to be the boot drive + the 4 ATA disks (ATA 66+ATA 100) on a RAID 0 setup. It should be at least 133MB/s theoretically. That MEGADRIVE to be a AFP drive to serve projects to my DA with Logic/Kontakt/Halion hooked thru gigabit LAN. 

What you though about?

Can any DAW work with AFP drives?
Can any sampler work with AFP drives?

Maybe we can beat the DFD trouble with kontakt with a OSX partner serving files.

Or maybe access times make this whole idea a shit.

[Protools5LEGuy]

4 questions to summarize:

Can Logic play and record to a AFP volume?

Can Cubase play and record to a AFP volume?

Can Kontakt have its library on a AFP volume?

Can Halion have its library on a AFP volume?

[Protools5LEGuy]

In a OSX-less environment, using Target Disk Mode on the MDD and hooking that to my DA (yes, using the MDD as a firewire drive    ) should that be superior than a ATA-66 drive in speed?
I mean (ATA-133 to firewire-400)MDD serving files thru FW versus the internal ATA-66 of the DA?

I guess that also a MDD RAID OSX drive setup should be quicker than the ATA-66 from the DA, but I am not sure about DAWs implementing the use of AFP volumes in their workflow.

[supernova777]

the 4 ATA disks (ATA 66+ATA 100) on a RAID 0 setup. It should be at least 133MB/s theoretically

use RAID1.. dont use RAID0.. u get the same read speed benefit from RAID1 + protection of data.. both RAID1 + RAID0 use each disk partly to increase read speed + access time

[supernova777]

u dont want to record to an AFP volume..
not reccommended..
thats what local disk is for..
firewire disk or local ide only
think back to pro tools requirements + stay safe

afp drive is fast for large burst file like copying a dvd
but i wouldnt want to use it in that way

it would never be as solid as a real drive connected to your system

[supernova777]

In a OSX-less environment, using Target Disk Mode on the MDD and hooking that to my DA (yes, using the MDD as a firewire drive    ) should that be superior than a ATA-66 drive in speed?

ATA-66 is faster then firewire so no.. the mdd  used in TDM as a firewire drive can not be faster then any other firewire drive becuase the bottleneck is still firewire itself;)

firewire 400: 50 MB/s
ata-66: 66.7 MB/s
ata-100: 100 MB/s
ata-133: 133 MB/s

[supernova777]

Or maybe access times make this whole idea a shit.

exactly.. bad access time.. but once the transfer is initiated it goes fast
but slow access time compared to local drive

[Protools5LEGuy]

ATA-66 is faster then firewire so no.. the mdd  used in TDM as a firewire drive can not be faster then any other firewire drive because the bottleneck is still firewire itself;)

firewire 400: 50 MB/s
ata-66: 66.7 MB/s
ata-100: 100 MB/s
ata-133: 133 MB/s

I think NO app audiorelated can use AFP volumes. But maybe AFP "Megadrive" can be used to serve a sampler. Gigabit ethernet speed?
Firewire 400 MBits/s = 50 MBytes/s
Gigabit ethernet 1000MBits/s = X MBytes/s
X = (1000x50)/400 = 125 MBytes/s if my math skills are right 

That should serve a torrent of speed to any AFP aware OS9 app...

4 questions to summarize:

Can Logic play and record to a AFP volume?

Can Cubase play and record to a AFP volume?

Can Kontakt have its library on a AFP volume?

Can Halion have its library on a AFP volume?

Can Sampletank have its library on a AFP volume?

[supernova777]

anything that doesnt require fast access time 

[IIO]

gigabit ethernet would give you like 100 mb/s – in theory – but as you can see from these numbers this wont be a benefit compared to ATA-100 or ATA-133.

and it wont work with many applications, because TCP/IP breaks the buffer size settings of most audio and video apps.

[IIO]

Can Sampletank have its library on a AFP volume?

any "direct-from-disc" sampler application will have the same problem than cubase and protools. but simply loading the files from a networked volume should work all the time.

[supernova777]

im still amazed by my speed on my afp network.. but there is definately a small lag in initially starting the transfer... but once it goes, it goes very quickly + steadily.. transfering cd images always is alot faster then i expect it to take.. making transfering between the server + client a breeze.. even large dvd images of say 4gb, always take less time then i expect them to.. thank god for gigabit ethernet maybe this is more related to my specific server softare (nas4free/freenas) and maybe osx could outperform this, i dont know for sure i havent tested...i prefer to keep my macs for using the gui in the os;) and i stick this pc on fileserving duty it also might have to do alot more with the specific type of disk storage im using.. which is raid1 or raid10 + ZFS file system... i think maybe if u had for example SSDs on the AFP server not using this filesystem designed for maximizing storage capacity + adding redundancy at the same time.. similar to RAID5.. RAID1 + RAID10 are alot faster seek + Access time i think..

[Protools5LEGuy]

Knezzen told me on chat he is got a Xserve G5 with Xserve Raid (connected thru lightbridge) on tiger for his MDD in OS9. I hope he will explain its setup.

[supernova777]

u mean fiber channel (8x1gbps) not lightbridge

[DieHard]

From an Old Post I made...

1) I have used the Built in AFP with NT Server SP4... works pretty well... a few speed issues but good overall (Never ran it over gigabit)
2) I Have used Novell Netware 3/4/5 and they all totally kick ass with AFP and Mac Name space... no issues whatsoever... fastest software RAID ever created with full hard drive elevator seeking and Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ). And you only need a PIII... I have seen a PIII host over 30 Mac Clients and 40 Windows clients on the same server simultaneously.

We installed Novell servers in Many major label studios and were able to playback sessions from any of 4 production rooms, this was very convenient. 

We did NOT record tracks, but did playback tracks with no issues; remember, the DAW has no idea it is a AFP Volume, it assumes it is just another mounted volume, so the question is not if the DAW will Read and write to AFT volumes (or course it will)... the question is whether the speed of over the wire or fiber is fast enough to be usable.

[IIO]

mind you, it is called direct from disk.

[Knezzen]

Fiber is fast enough to be used. Huawei got 3TBps transfer speeds over regular fiber just a couple of weeks ago

We have a couple of machines in a cluster at work, and they host 200 virtual machines.
All the storage for the VM's is located on two Dell EqualLogic SAN's. ALL the storage. 200 virtual computers (with a lot of workload) has all their storage (boot drives, file storage etc) located on these.

The machines and SANs are connected to a FC switch (8GBps). It's fast enough to keep 200 machines going for all their storage needs, so I'm very sure that it will be more than enough for recording audio to.

A 7200rpm drive (without any type of RAID array configured) works just fine to record 60 tracks at 24bit & 48khz at the same time on the faster ATA100 bus in the MDD. No need for RAID arrays. The bottleneck will always be the PCI bus and all the data on the tiny bus.

I for instance can't "bounce" a project in Pro Tools 5.1.3 to my boot drive. It will just choke in 3 seconds and complain about too much PCI activity. Bouncing to the same drive the project files are on works great, though. I guess it's because the data don't get moved around that much compared when bouncing from the project disk connected to the ATA100 connector, to the SSD connected to the ATA33 port. It clogs up the system.

This is when bouncing 60-track projects with 10 AUX sends, 3-4 plugins on every track and a lot of automations. So it's no hobby stuff

[supernova777]

Hawaii ??
Huawei ??

[Knezzen]

HUAWEI

http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=476A9AC1-58A4-44EE-A067-871356A12950

[IIO]

in the given case the bottleneck might be the network connection.