• 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.

Will we ever see SSD's instead of HDD's in new or repaired systems?

RobT

RobT

Member
SSD technology is very mature, very economical, and highly reliable, yet all the K systems still use Winchester hard drives with an average 5 year life span. Sure, they're "Enterprise" grade, but that amounts to little practical difference in lifespan terms. It makes no sense to me that I've been able to have SSD's in my Macs for a decade but not in my K. Are there any plans to start shipping new Terras with SSD's, or to offer this as a repair option when a drive fails in a current system? Cheers.
 
There are a few issues with SSDs which makes them not suitable for a movie server application.

1- They don’t come in large sizes. I believe the largest SSD is 8TB whereas 22TB for HDDs.
2- They are significantly more expensive GB/$ than HDDs. 22TB HDD for $600 vs 8TB SSD for $800.
3- They have limited read and write cycles. For someone who constantly deletes and downloads movies, SSDs won’t last much longer than HDDs.
4- You have leave 10-20% provision (unused) space for SSD to function best which reduces its capacity even further.

Yes, they are faster but this is a moot point for a movie server. Enterprise grade (or even regular) HDDs have read/write speeds upwards of 200mb/s which saturates the gigabit ethernet twice. These enterprise HDDs have enough cache in flash memory so their seek times for such large files (like movies) is relatively low.

So overall, from engineering point of view, SSDs have no advantages but many disadvantages for Kaleidescape hardware.
 
Substance said:
3- They have limited read and write cycles. For someone who constantly deletes and downloads movies, SSDs won’t last much longer than HDDs.
Click to expand...
I don't think they have limited read cycles, but the write-cycle limit can be a real pain when it strikes.

The other item, which will impact some more than others, is that because of how they store the data they aren't good for archival. The most likely place this would come-up is if you have multiple systems in separate locations, where they might be turned-off for extended periods. SSDs crave attention and can blank if not powered on for long stretches, so they wouldn't be a good fit in those scenarios.
 
Transepoch said:
I don't think they have limited read cycles, but the write-cycle limit can be a real pain when it strikes.

The other item, which will impact some more than others, is that because of how they store the data they aren't good for archival. The most likely place this would come-up is if you have multiple systems in separate locations, where they might be turned-off for extended periods. SSDs crave attention and can blank if not powered on for long stretches, so they wouldn't be a good fit in those scenarios.
Click to expand...
Isn’t the current best practice on the K to always leave it in standby and avoid powering off as much as possible?
 
Transepoch said:
Yes. Like anything else that moves, starting & stopping is the most stressful mechanically.
Click to expand...
The same goes for SSDs too. Microelectronics don’t like temperature changes, warm while on vs. room temp while off.
 
If were are talking enterprise-class drives, they are much more expensive than previously listed. Example off of Dell's server site, where I built up a recent server quote: 8TB SATA HD 1313.33$, 18TB 3232.38$, 3.84TB SSD range between 4066.02$ to 5830.02$ for read-intensive. They should last a very long time if properly cared for, left on, on UPS to avoid abrupt power loss, cool room, etc. Dell sells warranties up to 7 years at purchase time, which includes NBD onsite support, or, if needed, 4hr mission critical, but that adds about 1600 to your cost. You can add additional years after that. As I suggest to my customers, around 3 to 4 years, we should bring in a replacement for any mission-critical application. There are only 3 HD makers worldwide, and DELL buys in bulk with firmware tuned to their hardware specs and puts a Dell sticker on it. I have placed hundreds of servers in service with my clients. HDs rarely fail spectacularly and typically start the error cycle and indicate they need replacement before it’s catastrophic. Does K have self-service kits, and does our CP on the Terra tell us when this is happening?
 
That's a big price difference between standard and Enterprise drives. Tangential question: do K drives need 20% swap file room like drives in a PC or Mac? I've noticed when my drive is close to full that I get brief audio dropouts in movies I'm watching.
 
I have not done the math but my 54TB terra says it has a capacity of 47.5TB. That's quite a lot of overhead, a fair bit of that is loss due to raid configuration they use. RAID5 is my best guess, but that would be 9 6TB drives and equals 48TB, so 500gb of swap? Proprietary hybrid?
 
Last edited:
Mossback said:
I have not done the math but my 54TB terra says it has a capacity of 47.5TB. That's quite a lot of overhead, a fair bit of that is loss due to raid configuration they use. RAID5 is my best guess, but that would be 9 8TB drives and equals 48TB, so 500gb of swap? Proprietary hybrid?
Click to expand...
If your 54TB says the capacity is 47.5TB, there may be an issue. My 4TB Alto says 3.9TB capacity, and my 40TB Terra says 39.5TB capacity.

AFAIK Terra don't use any of the redundant RAID options, as there is no data on them that warrants the loss of storage: Everything on the Terra can be downloaded again from the cloud.

I believe Terra servers use 4 drives, so 54TB seems a bit odd (13.5TB per drive). Are you sure your system is 54TB? I thought Terra started at 24, 40, 48, 72 and 88? Can you check the label on the device?
 
Oh gosh, how embarrassing, I have misremember the size of my Terra, you are correct its a 48, not sure why the 54 is what I remembered. So they are RAID 0.
 
Mossback said:
Oh gosh, how embarrassing, I have misremember the size of my Terra, you are correct its a 48, not sure why the 54 is what I remembered. So they are RAID 0.
Click to expand...
That makes sense, and the 500Gb overhead seems normal in that case.
All's well in the universe again ;-)
 
There is a small partition for the K OS. Half a T spread over 4 drives makes sense in case one or more drives fail.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top