Promise Technologies R6 Thunderbolt Direct Attach Storage

[Charles Wirth]

The box weighs 25 pounds with six drives installed.
The R6 comes configured as RAID 5, formatted for Windows and management software on the drive.
I will swap Hitachi drives and install 120GB Force GT's to see what the maximum transfer rate possible.

http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?region=en-US&m=151&rsn1=40&rsn3=47

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The system did not see the drive out of the box, MSI was quick to dispatch a new driver and BIOS file to fix.
This is the drive properly configured in Device Manager.


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I am setup on the new MSI Z77A-GD80 w/Thunderbolt
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z77A-GD80.html#!mm=about
Intel 3770K ES Processor
4x Kingston LoVo memory 1600Mhz C9
Corsair H100 CPU Cooler
Corsair Force GT boot drive
Corsair AX750w PSU
Thermaltake SwordM case


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Promise Technologies WebPAM management software.
With correctly loaded drivers the software is light and quick.


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This R6 was configured with six drives, they are Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000.
http://www.hgst.com/deskstar-7k3000
I will ask if there are other drive options, I would feel better with WD enterprise drives.

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I ran AIDA 64 HD benchmark to get some quick numbers on RAID 5 before I switch it to SSD RAID 0
Pretty good numbers, close to the Hitachi specs of 150MB/s x 6 = 900MB/s in RAID 5


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Promise Technology makes their own PCB.
The processor is PMC Sierra and cache memory is Hynix


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WebPAM is the R6 management software. It runs in the browser.
Here are a few more screen shots from the stats and more.


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[Movieman]

Very nice! :up:

[Buckeye]

These units look very sweet :clap:

I have two Buffalo TERRA Stations here running in Raid 5 that I have had for a long time, they work very well but are slower then crap. Maybe time for a upgrade vs building a Storage Server as these are just plug and play and nice and fast.

[itznfb]

What kind of power is this thing sucking from the wall idle/max? Looks like a solid device.

[lowfat]

Like I said in the other thread I wish they offered it w/o drives. I already have all the hard drives. :shrug:

[mike]

@ Fugger - when r u putting SSDs in and run some benchies?

[Computurd]

I would be very interested to see the performance in regards to latency over the thunderbolt interface. 4KQD1 should tell us the story...but with SSDs of course :)

[thegt1]

I really looking forward to the ssd raid0 on this with thunderbolt, let's the good times roll.

[Charles Wirth]

Sorry for the delay, I had a chance to run two different kinds of SSD's and came to the conclusion that the stock drives are perfectly matched to the capabilities of the Promise R6.

I didnt have much time for extensive benching but I was able to get a pretty accurate assessment with AIDA 64 HD tests.

These are the Force 3 GT's, 555/495MBs the fastest 2.5" SSD's on the market today. I was not concerned with capacity as I just want bandwidth numbers.

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I set them up all six drives in RAID 5, this did not effect performance at all. RAID 0 numbers were identical.
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AIDA 64 HD test with RAID 5 on Force 3 GT SSD.
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This is what Centon offers for performance SSD's 400/300MBs

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I setup in RAID 0, running all six drives.
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Centon 120GB Diamond Series SSD's in RAID 0
And the survey says...
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[Charles Wirth]

With the SSD's installed we can see the maximum performance of the Promise Pegasus R6, even when I switched it to RAID 5 it did not hurt performance at all.
The original configuration with the Hitachi drives was a close match to the maximum performance when you have all six drives installed.
I am waiting on a updated "boot" firmware from Promise, in this configuration I was not able to get this drive to boot. I used the USB boot method, several boot loaders installed on a booting SSD, and poking at both MSI and Promise for updates on a regular basis. I cannot see the R6 as a boot devise in BIOS yet I have good F6 drivers for windows installation.

When installing the F6 drivers you must install both halves, you cannot see the second half unless you load the first and come back to look. If you try with one half you get a BSOD during install.

I expect the Promise J4 in July, it should have much higher performance as it is configured with 4x SSD's.

[eva2000]

Hey Charles been a while :D

What's write speed like ?

Nice show case of thunderbolt performance.. love to see this make it's way to server/workstation motherboards too - would make one fast remote backup server :D

[Charles Wirth]

I was asked not to do write tests on some of the SSD's as they were not all mine. But I did run once. I will post the results.

I will have the Pegasus J4 in July, that wil have a new controller and should pull double the performance of the Pegasus R6.

[eva2000]

Even write speed results for regular Hitachi SATA would be nice in raid 5 at least. Intended purpose for backup server so sequential read/write only of importance for me :)

[RottenMutt]

anyone got more pictures of the main board? I'm interested in the architecture, is it basically a raid card connected to a bridge chip for the thunderbolt in/out?

what raid card would be the equivalent?

[RottenMutt]

bump

anyone got more pictures of the main board?

[alfaunits]

Hey, FUGGER, any update?:) We're drolling here ;)

[Movieman]

Hey, FUGGER, any update?:) We're drolling here ;)
Charles is out at IDF in San Fran right now so you mayt not hear a lot from him for awhile.

[Computurd]

actually he was at the Flash Memory Summit with Mike setting some PCMV world records :)

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/25470/xtremesystems_and_tweaktown_set_pcmark_vantage_wor ld_record_at_fms_2012/index.html

[Movieman]

actually he was at the Flash Memory Summit with Mike setting some PCMV world records :)

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/25470/xtremesystems_and_tweaktown_set_pcmark_vantage_wor ld_record_at_fms_2012/index.html
I know, but you don't think I tell you all my secrets do you?:rofl:

[Charles Wirth]

I brought back a new never seen before J2 box from Promise.

This thing has two MSATA cards in it and they claim it has a 750MB/s read, forgot what the write speed is.

It also connects to the Thunderbolt port. I pulled it apart for pics and to test the MSATA in a PC. The cards inside are socketed so they can be upgraded. I am really surprised the speed of the SSD's in this thing.