• Thanks for visiting the Kaleidescape Owners' Forum

    This forum is for the community of Kaleidescape owners, and others interested in learning about the system, equipment, services, and the company itself.

    It is run by a group of enthusiastic Kaleidescape owners and dealers purely as a service to this community.

    This board is not affiliated in any way with Kaleidescape, Inc.
    For official technical support, product information, or customer service, please visit www.kaleidescape.com

  • You are currently in "Guest" mode and not logged in with a registered account.

    The forum is free to use and most of the forum can be used by guests who are not registered....

    ... but we strongly encourage you to register for a full account. There is no cost to register for a full account.

    Benefits of registering for a full account:

    • Participate in the discussions! You must have a registered account to make posts on the forums. You will be able to start your own thread on a topic or question, or you can reply to other threads/discussions.
    • Use the "Conversation" feature (known as "private messaging" on other forums) to communicate directly with any of the other users here.
    • Access the Files area. The "resources" area of the forum contains many "Favorite Scene" and Script files that can dramatically increase the enjoyment of your Kaleidescape system. Go directly to great scenes in your favorite movies, created by other owners, and add automation to playback of your system with Scripts.
    • You won't see this annoying notice at the top of every screen!😊

    It's easy and free to register for the forum. Just click the "Register" button in the upper right corner of this page, and follow the instructions there.

Add Another 1U Server Now - Or Wait?

Kicker

Well-known member
Question for the group...

I'm 18 Blu-Rays away from filling up my initial 1U server. When Disney arrives in the Premiere line and especially if I can upgrade existing DVDs - that will take care of the remaining space very quickly.

I'm told by my dealer that partially populated systems aren't an option any more so I'd be getting a full 4TB drive 1U server and doubling my capacity. This might be fine but I'm wondering if a better option is coming soon (8TB drives or larger) and I'd be better off waiting to invest until then at a lower $/TB and more capacity for what will hopefully be a 4K option as content arrives.

I'm hoping others are in a similar position and curious about your perspectives.

What do you think?

Joel
 
My philosophy is that you're always better off waiting as long as you can because you might catch a price drop window. And you're always better off buying no more drive space than you need for that same reason.

But I can't help but wonder in your situation if it doesn't make sense to upgrade to a 3U with whatever *one* step up in terms of disk space is. Jim is probably the best person to answer that.


--Donnie
 
Well, I went through this dilemma and had 50 titles stacked up in the Kstore, so caved. Personally I like the idea of having separate servers. Also, given how cheap used 1u servers are ��, makes for an easy path, with redundancy. You CSN also do partial drive purchases that way.
 
First, there are no more than a few people within K that actually know anything about releasing larger drives. It has always been that way. K goes thru a rather extensive process evaluating drives for reliability before selecting a supplier to make the modifications needed to work in our Servers. Historically this process has taken many months, and during that time not much is discussed within K, so we do not have a clue when it comes to actual release dates, or drive sizes. That said, over the years we "thought" a price reduction of the then largest available drive available signaled an upcoming release of a larger drive, and in fact it did on several occasions, but that theory was recently negated when we experienced a 4TB price but not the expected new larger drive, so the wait goes on........

Point is, you can certainly wait for a larger drive, and it may be coming soon, or perhaps in 6 months, or next year, we just don't know. My guidance has always been the same....if you need additional storage capacity NOW, then add a new drive. If you can wait, then wait. If you believe you will eventually need a bigger Server, then upgrade when you are able, this tends to be less expensive in the long run. If a 3U upgrade is out of reach, then consider another 1U (new or used).

Put simply, there are a limited number of options for increasing storage capacity:

1. When a Server has an empty slot, add another drive.

2. When a Server is full of drives, replace smaller drives with larger drives.

3. When a Server is full of the largest available drive, and all of those drives are full, then:
a. add another Server
b. upgrade to a larger Server
c. delete content (perhaps movies you no longer watch)
d. delete HD (Blu-ray) content, substitute the DVD version if available

4. Wait for the release of larger drives




Jim
 
Here is the history of when previous hard drives were released by K (as announced on this forum):

4TB ? 30 Jan 2013
3TB ? 3 Jan 2012
2TB ? 3 Nov 2009

No telling what it will be going forward....

John
 
Good stuff guys. Thank you very much. I tend to agree that adding space as needed makes sense. And based on the past release schedule, I would say they are due for an upgrade soon but just because it's a lower $/TB, it would be a lot more TBs and thus a lot more $$. So I think adding another 1U server soon will make the most sense.

As someone who sells storage for a living, it's nice to see everyone's capacity demands continue to increase. :)
 
.....As someone who sells storage for a living, it's nice to see everyone's capacity demands continue to increase. :)


Now we know who to blame.......:D



Jim
 
Here is the history of when previous hard drives were released by K (as announced on this forum):

4TB – 30 Jan 2013
3TB – 3 Jan 2012
2TB – 3 Nov 2009

No telling what it will be going forward....

John

Taking the 2TB to 4TB time to double as about 3.25 years, if we add that to the 3TB date, we are at April 2015, so we would be due for that one.

If we jump straight to 8TB, then we would be on pace at around April 2016.

This is just using the past as a basis to guess, so who knows when we will seem bigger drives, but I expect eventually we will see them. Probably just in time to need more space for 4k content.
 
I am working from memory here, but this is what I recall for hard drives and capacities:

5u server:
250GB
300GB
400GB
500GB
750GB
1TB

Original Cinema One
500GB
1TB

3U/1U
750GB
1TB
2TB
3TB
4TB

New Cinema One and Alto:
4TB

If I am missing a drive size, let me know. I suppose if somebody was really bored, they could put initial release dates on all those drive sizes to trend the expansion rate better. I am bored, but not that bored.
 
I've always thought of K as a storage company first and a movie company second. If I remember correctly some guys from NetApp (another storage company) were behind it from the beginning. Especially when they always had a $5 sale going (I miss those a lot). It used to seem that they didn't care about making money on selling movies - they just want you to buy more disk.

Hopefully they bring the sales back as that was a major capacity consumption accelerator for me.
 
The NetApp connection is correct, but they really were trying to create an innovative way to store and playback movies.




Jim
 
I am working from memory here, but this is what I recall for hard drives and capacities:

5u server:
250GB
300GB
400GB
500GB
750GB
1TB

Original Cinema One
500GB
1TB

3U/1U
750GB
1TB
2TB
3TB
4TB

New Cinema One and Alto:
4TB

If I am missing a drive size, let me know. I suppose if somebody was really bored, they could put initial release dates on all those drive sizes to trend the expansion rate better. I am bored, but not that bored.



That seems correct Mike, I got in when we had 300's in our 5U's! Missed the 250's, and very happy at the time to gain the extra 50GB's!! (and now we have 8TB's in the discussion, amazing!)



Jim
 
I suppose if somebody was really bored, they could put initial release dates on all those drive sizes to trend the expansion rate better. I am bored, but not that bored.
They would also need to include the commercial release of those drives.

I don't necessarily care about waiting for the 10s, but would just as soon we skip 6s and go to 8s. Whatever is the largest, commercially available for vetting drive. 3s ended up being just a speed-bump, and figure that is engineering time better spent elsewhere. Being down to one HDD-slot (and having the discs to nearly fill it) doesn't help my mindset much.

I usually get space as I expect to use it, so if I'm about to run out, and have a slot, might as well deal with it rather than have to track discs-to-be-imported.
 
Well they are testing away. An interesting read of a longer term test of Seagate and western digital 6tb drives for an end user replacement of 45,000 Drives! The WD actually reduces platter rotation speed to 5200 rpm, while has access times similar to the seagate at 7200 rpm. Interesting that at the end of the test Hitachi showed up with a 8tb option, using helium to reduce friction and lower operating temperature. I wonder how many have done similar tests, only to delay to test the 8tb releases. Has K ever used anything other than WD or Seagate

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/6-tb-hard-drive-face-off/


An interesting read on hdd performance
https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive.html
 
Hey Yetis,


Yes, that certainly was an interesting read. Very interesting that consumer HDD's actually were more reliable than the enterprise drives, at least in their particular use scenario. Thanks for the links.


Matt
 
Back
Top