Best hard drive set-up with new 2010 Mac Pro...

[Lee Blaske]

Trying to plan things in advance for when the new machines come out. I'm going to be getting a new 12 core Mac Pro, and load it up with maximum RAM (32 GB, or if OWC offers 8 GB 1333 sticks, maybe 48GB to maintain triple channel).

I'm going to be using this set-up with Logic 9 and two Metric Halo ULN-8s. My dream is to replace my current five computer set-up (Mac G5 2.5Ghz, PT Accel HD6 and four Pentium 4 PC slaves) with this one new computer. I'm thinking it's going to work, but if I need to, I'll add a second machine down the line.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what's going to be the most rational way to deal with hard drives. I have a huge amount of sample content (although I'm certainly not using all of it all the time). I have most everything that VSL has put out. Also have a lot of EW stuff. It seems to me that EW is pretty hot on RAIDed SSD's. I'm planning on incorporating some in my new system, but they're prohibitively expensive at this point. Also, I think I'd prefer the PCIe card SSD solutions, once the price comes down, and they become compatible with the Mac.

Anyway, at this point, I'm thinking of a RAIDed pair of SSDs as my system drive. I'll put some of my more used, more polyphony intensive libraries on this. Then, I'll also get two smaller SSDs as work drives (strangely, I don't use up that much space for music projects, and I archive and remove stuff when it's completed). Then, I think I'd like to get four external 600GB Velociraptors and hook them up via two SATA III 6G PCIe cards. Considering I have a mix of libraries, would it be wise to RAID these four drives, or maybe RAID them in pairs of two? Or, not use RAID at all? Also, what about port expansion enclosures? Any downside to them? Finally, I'm thinking I'll add an additional 2Tb FW800 drive for time machine.

Right now, from what I read, it looks like OWC has a big advantage in the SSD department. I wonder if it wouldn't be wiser to buy drives from Apple, though.  I've heard that a TRIM function is on the way from Apple, but I'm concerned that it might not work with third party drives once it's implemented.

I'm excited about the whole SSD thing, but OTOH, I'm worried that it might not yet be the time to go overboard with it. I've got an SSD in my new MBP, though, and I really like it. Once you get used to an SSD, the though of all your data whirling around at high speed on platters suddenly seem antique. ;)

Anyway, I'd be interested in any thoughts regarding setting up a 12 core Mac Pro for intensive audio and sample use. That's pretty much all I'll be doing with this machine. Any video use will be very non-demanding.

Also, I'd appreciate any wisdom on SATA III 6G PCIe. Right now, I only seem to see two port 6G cards. A four port card would be nice.

[jonathan collins]

Hi Lee,

I read with interest your plans to convert your 5 computer system to a single computer using the new 12 core Mac Pro.

 I am also looking to acquire a Mac Pro to use predominantly with VSL composing orchestral music. This for me though is a wholely new venture as my last foray into compostion was with a floppy disk based Atari back in the 80s! I Presume from your extensive array of computers that you have been running a lot of VSL instruments in parallel with a host of effects, and needed this much distributed computing power to avoid latency and timing issues? I have spoken to a number of people who seem to be convinced that a 12 core Mac Pro with 32 Gig ram would comfortably manage a very full orchestral score including effects with no latency and timing issues. I was advised that using VSL Mir (to emulate real stage settings) and/or surround sound may require additional computing power (although the advisor was a vendor of PC slaves!).

I am keen to get my system right from the word go so would appreciate any advice you may have from your experience of disks, soundcards etc. Thank you.

[mike connelly]

Your setup would definitely be on the cutting edge, I know people are using SSD but I haven't heard of anyone going as far as you're proposing.  I would probably upgrade things in stages, at least as far as the drives go, in order to see what works before committing to tons of it.

I don't know if raid is really necessary for SSD drives, it will give you more speed but the question is whether single SSD drives would be fast enough for what you need (and whether you'll end up saturating one of the other busses and not be able to use that much speed - unfortunately even the new mac pros only have SATA 2 and not 3).  Personally I'm inclined to just split different sections/libraries over multiple drives instead of raid - as long as you split up the sections wisely, you're going to be splitting the load over multiple drives anyway.  Also, if you get a raid 3 PCI card, you may want to use that for SSD and put hard drives on the internal busses - even a single fast SSD can saturate SATA2 but a fast raid may not.  Personally I'm skeptical how much benefit a raptor provides, especially since most sample streaming tends to be more about seeking to many different places than transferring giant continuous chunks of data - seems like an expensive stopgap waiting for SSD to get more mature.

Instead of raid ssd for boot drive, I would get a smaller SSD for boot (assuming it will make that much difference, I'd probably make that the last thing I'd switch to SSD on a sample playback system) and put samples on their own SSD (or SSD raid).  My guess would be that having samples on the boot drive is less of an issue with SSD than with moving platters and heads, but it still seems like it would be nice to keep them separate, especially with potential fragmentation issues or SSD specific quirks.  Unless you are doing zillions of audio tracks, I probably would keep my sessions and audio tracking on a conventional drive, and maybe just a 7200.  You might even want to consider USB for your time machine disk to keep it off the FW bus - the initial backup will take a while but once that's done the following backups are much smaller and faster.  I usually run TM to a networked drive on another machine and even that is fine.

You definitely will want to spend some time figuring out which libraries (or sections) you use the most or put the most demand on the system to be strategic about what goes on the SSD and what goes on conventional drives.  Sounds like you're doing that already.  If you have stuff that isn't used that often, particularly if much of it isn't heavy on the computer or you only use a track or two of various things at a time, I'd try starting with it on 7200 drives and not worry about raid unless that's not fast enough.    I'm looking at SSD soon and I'm going with a smaller drive and fitting what I need by using 16 bit samples with libraries that have the option, fewer mic positions, and the sections that are the most taxing with the others on standard hard drives.  I'd definitely buy third party SSD instead of buying from Apple, it's just so much cheaper and way more choices.  The SSDs apple use are just standard hardware, if they finally add a TRIM solution, it will have to be in software to support all the machines they've already shipped.

As for memory, I don't know what libraries you have specifically, but 32 gigs is a giant amount of ram and you may not end up needing that much (especially if you have a fair amount on SSD and can reduce the buffer).  I would start with 12 or 16 (3x4 or 4x4) and see how that works and then add more if you need it.  Even with a 64 bit app and plugs, it may be hard for a system to use that much, and that's an extremely long load time.

The 12 core machine looks amazing but unfortunately Logic isn't even fully optimized for 8 cores yet so I'm doubtful that it would be used to its full potential, at least with the current version of the app.  Maybe VE Pro would help work around that, I don't know.  Hopefully apple will update Logic soon, but nobody knows - if they do update, the 8 and 12 core machines will absolutely scream (especially with hyperthreading support, which already works on the quad machines).  But if they don't, there's the possibility of cores just sitting there doing nothing, which is a bummer for a machine this price.

Overall, I'd get the base machine, one SSD and a couple big internal drives to start.  Start loading up libraries, create test sessions, and see where you need more capacity or speed (or not).  Even without full optimization for Logic, even the 8 core is a vast improvement over a quad G5.  I don't have much Vienna stuff, but on an 8 core MP with 12 gigs of ram and samples on a couple internal 7200 drives I'm able to load up a full orchestral template of EW platinum, keyswitches on every instrument, plus LASS and some other things.  I can get tons of polyphony if I need it and for most full orchestral things the CPU use is surprisingly low.  Obviously the big vienna libraries and things like HS are way more taxing, but I feel like this machine could handle a fair amount more with SSD.  Assuming Logic gets updated at some point, that's another major boost.

Hopefully all this rambling will be helpful in some way.  Let us know what you end up doing, I'm sure many users are looking at similar decisions.

[Lee Blaske]

Hi Mike and Jonathan,

Well, I've made a few decisions and bought some stuff already, and I'm pretty sure of what I'll buy to complete things. Again, I'm going to try to do everything with a single 12 core machine, but I'm leaving open the option of a second machine (perhaps splitting some of the things I'm buying between them).

I ordered a 12 Core 2.93Ghz Mac (due to arrive on August 30). I ordered it with a single 512GB SSD. That seems to make sense, because from what I've heard, Apple expects things to be restored to factory configuration if you need service. I then bought 48Gb of memory from OWC (six 8 Gb sticks). This will keep me at triple channel, running memory as fast as possible. I also got an OWC Blu-Ray drive for my second optical drive compartment. I bought two 200GB OWC SSD RE drives as work drives (more than enough storage for the amount of projects I like to keep on active drives). The RE drives have the SandForce controller, show lots of writing and rewriting shouldn't degrade their performance over time. I also bought a RocketRAID SATA III 6Gb/s, four port PCIe card (Apple has a competitive price on these). I also bought a four drive SATA 3.0 enclosure. 

Now to finish things off, I think I'm going to buy four of the new Crucial SSD SATA III 6Gb/s 256Gb drives. The performance of these seems pretty astounding (355Mb/s). I probably won't RAID them unless I get EW's HS which is 310Gb, and won't fit on a single drive. I'll easily be able to spread my 540Gb of VSL content over these drives. I'll also have room to put some libraries on my system SSD. Finally, in my remaining computer drive slot, I'll either put a 600Gb Velociraptor, or a 2Tb Seagate drive to hold all my additional, not so frequently used libraries. 

Anyway, I think this will be good to start, and allow me to do some torture testing to see how things hold up. I'm thinking that Logic doesn't use all the cores, but if I open additional VEPro instances outside of Logic, they will use those cores. Won't they? The other thing I'll undoubtedly need to experiment with is whether to run Logic at 32bit or 64bit. Hopefully, even if I'm running Logic at 32 bit, I can still run instances of VEPro at 64 bits. I guess I'll find out soon enough. ;)

Whether or not I add an additional machine will be determined by how easy it is to swamp this machine, and/or how stable the machine is with lots of stuff running. With SATA III SSDs and 1333 triple channel memory, I'd hope that loading large templates would be a lot faster. We'll see about that, too. 

Obviously, the other thing that would entice me to add a second machine would be if VSL comes out with a version of MIR for the Mac (hopefully one that can run audio and MIDI via LAN, with no additional interfaces). 

FWIW, my audio interfaces are two Metric Halo ULN-8's (which I have yet to turn on). The ULN-8's have a lot of onboard DSP which will take pressure off the Mac. It's been years now since I've done a major update. Still running my PT Accel HD6 system with four 192 interfaces on a G5 DP 2.5, plus one additional DP G4 and four Pentium 4's in server racks. Antiques!!! All that stuff makes a lot of racket in the machine room, uses lots of electricity and causes my HVAC to run hard during the summer. The quiet of the new system is going to be eerie. I think I'l get used to it pretty fast, though. :) I'm also looking forward to being able to put my whole system to sleep. At the moment, getting my current system turned on, booted up, shells loaded, and content loaded is a major chore. 

[mike connelly]

Wow, that's a heck of a system.  It would be much appreciated if you could report back how it works and what parts of the system get taxed and if any end up being overkill.

[Lee Blaske]

Yeah, but still pretty reasonably priced considering the technology, IMO. I remember the days back when a 10Mb cost $10,000 in 1980 dollars (yes, Mb, not Gb). I remember paying around $9,000 for a Mac Quadra 900 and monitor (and that was through a school discount). The same money sure buys a LOT more today.

[Cyril Blanc]

I load all the articulations of full SE Plus + Appassionata  and a few "download instrument" in a 13 GB, 3 Ghz early 2008 Macpro (but my buffers are set to 1024)

I use a Raid 0 of 6 x 32 gb raptors.

My VSL instruments are in 6 x VE in a VE PRO SERVER 64 Bit

I use Logic.

The 8 CPU of my MACpro are equaly used

As Logic does not have much to do (a few EQ and 2x Space designer), it is reporting very little load 

I will come back to what Mike said about Logic and the 8 core.

Logic is buggy on that side because it is dedicating cores for specific operations.

Before using VE pro server I was using IAC and a VE of 80 instrument. I was routing the audio in/out of the VE thru Adat out/in

Using Inputs in Logic the load is on the 8th core, same with a Space designer on a 5.1 output

in some configurations other user are reporting overload on the 7th Cpu other on the 4th (not sure if it is the 3rd or the 4th)

Raid v.s. JBOD :

I gain 10 minutes (20 mn instead of 30) when I load my VE PRO server from raid 

As VE PRO server is loading it's samples sequentially putting VSL on different disk will not help at all.

I dont know if you gain polyphony using a Raid 0

SSD :

I am also looking at that, but I am scared that it wont help much, because VSL is taking ages to load its samples as they require a lot of processing before been able to be used by VE PRO

The big problem is which one, (see my post at : http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/26070/172603.aspx#172603 )

Best 

Cyril

[Lee Blaske]

Interesting information, Cyril. I wonder what would happen if you had more than one instance of VEPro concurrently loading from multiple (i.e. non-RAIDed) disks.

I really want to get around having to wait 10-20-30 or more minutes to load large templates. That's a real productivity killer.

In my current set-up, my four PCs load modest sized templates from two drive RAID 0 configurations. It takes a while, but not an absurdly long time. Then again, the templates aren't that big. I use the wait time to practice trumpet. If I need to start waiting a half hour for things to load on the new system, I'm going to get REALLY good on trumpet. ;)

[Lee Blaske]

Cyril,

Reread your post. Just so I'm clear, are you using one machine or two? Is your VE Pro on the same computer as Logic?

[Cyril Blanc]

@Lee Blaske said:

Cyril,

Reread your post. Just so I'm clear, are you using one machine or two? Is your VE Pro on the same computer as Logic?

I have One Macpro that is running Logic and VE PRO server

I have tried to launch 2 x VE Pro server duplicating the app renaming it, I did not manage !

I have suggest Karel from VSL to explore parallel loading of the different VE, no answer !

In a recent mail Karel said the VI PRO will improve loading and will load in background

Best

Cyril

[mike connelly]

@Cyril said:

The 8 CPU of my MACpro are equaly used

As Logic does not have much to do (a few EQ and 2x Space designer), it is reporting very little load 

Do you know if your combo of Logic and VEP is using the hyperthreading cores?  Logic seems to have the ability to use them but is limited to eight cores total.

In general, the inability of multiple plugins to load at the same time (particularly coming from different drives, that may be one case where raid speeds things up a bit - SSD definitely will) is an annoying limitation.

[Cyril Blanc]

not sure about hyperthreading ; does it comes only on 2009 Macpro ?

[mike connelly]

You're right, HT is only on the 2009+ models, sorry I didn't read your post carefully enough.

I would be curious if VEP uses the HT cores on macs that have it, if anyone knows.

[Cyril Blanc]

I have order today 3 x 64 GB Crucial to make a raid 0 for VSL and a 256 GB Crucial for VM en working area

I will post benchmarks end of next week

[Cyril Blanc]

As promised I have post my ssd results

It is using  VE PRO 2010

http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/t/26205.aspx

As soon the installation  of 6776 is fixed I will do another trial

Best

Cyril