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In Review: 3ware Sidecar RAID
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By Ned Soltz, May 6, 2008
The 3ware Sidecar is a funny-looking box. But its performance, sturdy construction, data security and versatility are no joke.
The Sidecar is a bare enclosure that holds four SATA I or II drives with advertised capacities up to 750GB per drive bay. 3ware has assured me that 1TB drives will work in the enclosure. It includes a dedicated PCIe card for use in any PowerMac G5, MacPro or PC system with PCI express bus. Drivers are available for Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Administration of the RAID is via a browser-based interface. It supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD. And at a price of $895 for enclosure and card, it brings high-performance storage and redundancy to the desktop at a very reasonable cost. Add your own drives from your favorite vendor, and it is possible to configure a 3TB (4x750GB) hardware RAID for around $1,500. That’s amazing!
The Sidecar and its relative size compared to two typical towers.
There are advantages to buying a pre-configured system from a vendor. Drives will come installed and the RAID will be created. Users merely need to install the card and the drivers. The RAID will then mount and you are ready to go.
The Sidecar does require a bit more technical acumen, but configuration is straightforward and the documentation for all platforms is clear.
Open the drive bay latch, remove the carrier and attach the drive to the carrier with a screwdriver. Securely latch the drives in the enclosure. Install the card and then install the driver for the host platform. Connect the card and enclosure with the locking secure mini-SAS cable (no more eSATA cables easily pulled out when the cat gets into the computer wires). Attach an included DIN8 cable between card and enclosure. This cable transmits monitoring data to and from the unit. Follow the directions to initialize drives and then configure them via the configuration utility.
The software utility controls everything about your RAID. Most users these days are tending toward RAID 5, which combines striping across drives with parity providing an excellent combination of speed and redundancy. It is possible to configure all four drives into a RAID or three drives plus an empty drive as a “hot spare.” It is this latter method that, while reducing overall capacity, is the most secure policy and is my recommendation. A degraded RAID can be rebuilt by replacing the defective drive but there still is a chance for some data loss. The hot spare allows for the failure of one drive in the RAID 5 array and a rebuilding of the RAID immediately to the empty drive. The software can be set to rebuild automatically, rebuild manually and to notify an administrator via e-mail of a RAID failure. The software also includes ability to administer the RAID remotely. I attempted to test this feature but could not get it to work. Documentation was a bit sketchy on this topic.
Now, a few words about the controller card. 3ware is a manufacturer of dedicated eSATA, SAS and PCI RAID cards. Sidecar is not, then, a product from a startup but rather a product from an established designer and manufacturer of RAID solutions which has chosen to bring an affordable alternative to users. The company has designed its own card with its own chipsets and have opted to use a PowerPC processor as the heart of the card. The card itself contains 128MB of memory and employs a proprietary architecture that 3ware calls “StorSwitch” to ensure data flow. There is an optional battery backup for the card that can cache data up to 72 hours in the event of a power loss.
I tested the system in a MacPro 8-core dual 3.2 monster with 14GB of RAM and running Mac OS X 10.5.2
. The Leopard driver was available on the 3ware Web site and installed without a hitch. My test unit came with four Western Digital 10,000 rpm 150GB raptor drives. Thus, I did not have a huge capacity but did have the added speed of these WD speed demons.
The first benchmark test is the AJA System Test utility, simulating various video frame and file sizes. In a read/write test, a 1920x1080 8-bit option with a 4GB file size produced avery respectable 208.3MB/s write and a read rate of 237.9MB/s. Similar results were achieved with 10-bit uncompressed settings.
Benchmarks and real world are yet another matter. With the drive half full of data, I tested editing in Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 video frame sizes of 1080i60 8- and 10-bit uncompressed, 720p24 1280x720 8- and 10-bit uncompressed, ProRes 422 and 422HQ at 1920x1080 60i settings.
Despite a data rate from the AJA System Test that would theoretically support 1080i60 10-bit uncompressed, I was unable to play a clip without dropped frames. Eight-bit uncompressed fared a bit better with the occasional dropped frame. I do believe that four-drive RAIDs are right on the cusp of ability to handle uncompressed video, and I’m more comfortable with a minimum of five drives or more to deal with uncompressed 1080. The uncompressed 720p both 8- and 10-bit edited without a snag, and I was even able to achieve up to seven layers of real time in FCP with 720p 23.98 8-bit uncompressed files.
I expect similar results with Avid DNxHD even at the 145MB/sec data rate.
The ProRes 422 and 422HQ footage captured and played back with ease.
The main concern I raise, then, about the Sidecar is the four-drive capacity, which does limit its usefulness for uncompressed footage. Yet I also should note that users working in uncompressed or even 2K environments may opt for higher end storage solutions. Furthermore, the high-quality images produced by ProRes 422 or DNxHD are adequate for a number of users. Secondary to this concern, though, is the presence of only one four-lane multiport mini-SAS connector on the interface card. This limits the expansion of the unit for those who might want to utilize two 4-drive Sidecars to create an array of eight drives. The only option is to buy a second Sidecar/interface card package and consume another precious slot in your computer.
The Sidecar does not support RAID 6, which provides even greater redundancy with double parity and the potential of two hot spares, allowing the failure of two drives. This does not make sense, of course, with a four-drive array and might be a deterrent to those who wish this higher level of redundancy. But as in the case of the size of the array relative to uncompressed video, Sidecar is addressing a different market.
The bottom line for editors seeking speed, backup through redundancy and sturdy construction: 3ware Sidecar is worth the added steps of buying and installing your own drives. It delivers speed, capacity and allows a greater number of editors to move from slower, less-reliable storage up to the world of hardware-based RAIDs.
3ware Sidecar
$895 (including empty enclosure, interface card, mini-SAS connector, DIN8 cable)
DV Score:
Pros:
Sturdy construction. Fast dedicated hardware-implemented RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD. Excellent software.
Cons:
Only four-drive unit available. Lack of expansion beyond four drives.
Bottom Line:
Consider it as you upgrade your existing system or design a new one
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