As it turns out, network attached storage (NAS) may be good for archiving, but NAS is not for a real time database solution. Direct attached storage (DAS) options were needed. Unfortunately, there is not that many for Mac Pro. The Apple RAID card only uses the 4 internal drive bays. There is no other connectivity options with it. Not to mention it is too expensive, so it was ruled out almost immediately.
While digging, I came across MaxUpgrades web site. While the site is terrible, the company has interesting products. It is worth checking the the site if you happen to be a Mac Pro owner. One of the products that deserve attention is SAS/SATA back plane attachment. The attachment allows connecting internal bay drives to a third party RAID controller instead of the main board. There was hope.
After some more time online I came across HighPoint Technologies. They offer RAID controllers with external, internal or both SAS/SATA connectivity options. The cards have support for Windows, Mac OS, Linux. They also seem to perform better than the Apple RAID card according to http://www.barefeats.com/hard120.html. The price is reasonable: end up getting a 4322 card for ~$430 from newegg.com:
The next thing to do was deciding on a hard drives for the controller. It would not have been easy if it was not for this high-end drives comparison chart. I was looking for a hard drive with capacity around 1TB. While not the best option for a RAID, I just did not want the additional expense and storage space for a second hard drive enclosure. After considering both price and user feedback, I end up getting 4x SAMSUNG HD103SJ drives from different online stores in attempt to minimize the likelihood of two drives in the array doing down simultaneously.
The last (I thought) piece of equipment was the drive enclosure. This one was though. A lot of time wasted. All the enclosures I found were way overpriced for what they were. After all, the enclosure it is just a box with fan (or two) a power supply unit. Despite this fact, the price tag is from $150 going up to $300-$400. Thinking in retrospect, I might have done far better getting a small computer box instead of a drive enclosure. Anyway, after hours of browsing I ordered the only good looking not so expensive one: SATAVAULT Ultra Fast Quad Bay Open Bay 5.25Inch Aluminum Case!
Since I orderred the last item in the store, the store offered a $50 discount for scratches on the box outside. All that prior to having the order shipped (the store has me; shopping again at USBGear). When the box arrived, I went to the local Microcenter looking for 5 1/4' to 3 1/2' brackets. Found some ugly plastic ones for total of $20. Not so bad, but again somewhat overpriced, considering it was plastic and it takes seconds to manufacture one. With the drives in the enclosure, the RAID controller connected to the drives I turned the box switch on...
The box was noisy. It sounded like my 9 years old DELL Pentium III PC. It was a huge disappointment after the absolute Mac Pro silence. But I did not do anything for a week. I was happy. The driver installation and the array configuration was extremely easy. The performance seemed good, though there were surprises after booting under x64 Windows 2008 Server. Figuring out how to best use the RAID with a SQL Server running in a virtual machine was not straightforward, but after a lot of reboots, different file system partition formats it was all going fine.
In a week time, I decided I could not stand the noise anymore. After some digging, found endpcnoise.com. Ordered a 80mm PAPST 8412NGLLE fan (measured at 9dB when working) and some acoustic noise absorbing foam blocks for the box inside. It worked fine, but still there was something troubling: the two 40mm power supply fans. There was a follow up endpcnoise order. This time was for two 40mm Scythe SY124010L fans (14dB) . Withe the fans, after disassembling the box, losing the warranty on the power supply, and assembling the box there it was: the perfect hard drive enclosure! It is a little bit noisier than the Mac Pro, but still goes unnoticeable when powered on.
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While replacing the original drive enclosure fans, my concern was airflow. Quiet fans generally have lower RPM and lower airflow rate as result. The acoustic foam installation may further disrupt the airflow for some or all drives. So, when keeping an eye on the drive temperature I wasted few minutes looking for a healthy hard drive temperature range. An interesting paper with somewhat unexpected results was published by Google and can be found at
http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf. Hope you enjoy reading it.
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In conclusion, I wonder how much time would have been saved if the manufacturer had the obligation to report the overall noise level of each mechanical unit shipped. Seems beneficial. Can it be enforced somehow?!
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All the links in this post have been recorded/extracted with my local PeerBelt ranking and retrieval browser module.
