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Author Topic: Dolby DSS220/pricing Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-21-2011 07:29 PM                     Dolby just introduced the DSS220 server for use with series-II projector-integrated Media Blocks. This is a similar product as Doremis ShowVault. What's interesting is that the new Dolby pricelist quotes this server, which consequently lacks an internal media block, at less than half the list price of the DSS200: http://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/Assets/US/Doc/Professional/Dolby_Cinema_Products_Price_List.pdf That pricelist also has prices for DSS200 spare parts - the DSS200 CT862 media block e.g. is quoted at 8.800US$ Has anyone seen target prices for series-II IMBs? - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-21-2011 09:04 PM                     Does Dolby actually have a working IMB yet or are they reccomending third party units. This seems to be somewhat common. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 08-21-2011 09:14 PM                     Hold on sir speedy. The DSS220 is not out yet...note the price sheet shows as a "preliminary" price. Dolby, to the best of my knowledge, is NOT manufacturing an IMB. They will be selling one with their badge on it but it likely is not made by them (but I would bet they had input into its design). USL is also making a Dolby compatible IMB. Clint may know what its status is. Both the DSS200 and the DSS220 will work with such an IMB. Note there are differences between the 200 and 220 beyond the IMB thing. I think the DSS220 is only a 3-drive system, the DSS200 is a 4-drive system...the DSS220 gets its storage size by using larger drives (2TB or 3TB vs the DSS200's 1TB). -Steve  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 08-21-2011 10:25 PM                     3 drive = bad. Stick with the DSS200.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-21-2011 10:46 PM                     To be honest the three drive thing doesn't bother me a bit and has shown better reliability. I've actually had way more failures in hardware driven four drive RAID systems than in any other type. This goes for both D-Cinema and Enterprise servers(SATA based). Nothng beats a SCSI drive for reliability... not even SAS! One thing I attribute more failures to is that hardware RAID SATA based systems seem to keep the drives working constantly, even when the player is stopped. The software raid units are also generally easier to deal with when it comes to adding, importing or rebuilding a RAID, especially under Linux. I've seen one broken software driven RAID still do 250 mbps transfer with a drie physically removed and it could still ingest AND play back at the same time. Software RAID has advanced in giant strides for sure! Sure you can say Dolby put the RAID rebuild function out front... but there is a dam good reason they did! Accessing and setting up some hardware based RAID cards for the average booth person can be a convoluted experience at best. The UI in many is seemingly written by programmers only for other programmers to understand!! As to the IMB cards there are just a few really good third party and only one I know for sure that is FIPS APPROVED. At least one IMB also offers two HDMI inputs but is only available in Europe so far. Jack has been workng on a JPEG 2000 card for a long, long time and I look forword to what USL finally has to offer.... but I do hope it also has some other form of input, either HDMI or DVI or you'll also be getting a standard inout card as well!! Most IMB cards should allow the use of literally any server (even Enterprise type) with appropriate software and GUI and it cold be via eSATA or fiber link. IMB software is always seperate and loaded seperate. Having other easily accessable IMB options would be very nice as it is the only sure route to 4K... Mark  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-22-2011 06:32 AM                     Well, if Dolby would not be able to meet that price target, they would not have put that price up in the first place. I'm not talking +/- a few hundred bucks. I'm talking half the price of a DSS200. The question is: With possible 4k DLP upgrades, higher framerate plans, etc. in the making, would it be advisable already now to go the 'dumb' server + IMB path if that combo doesn't cost more (or even less) than a classic server with internal IMB? - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-22-2011 08:30 AM                     I also have to wonder if that price includes IMB which is typically 3 to 5 k USD by itself. If it does it's got to be very basic IMB card. But at a minimum should allow 12 bit color for 3-D. You can bet they will charge extra for 4k firmware upgrade if it is able to do 4k. Mark  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-22-2011 08:45 AM                     No, IMB is not included in the DSS220 price. If you say 3-5k for IMB, then a combo solution currently seems to offer more future options at a lower price. Does anyone know wether Doremis Showvault is in the same ballpark as the 8500US$ for the DSS220? Only slight risk is that the IMB combinations are fairly new and might have some quirks to be solved. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 08-22-2011 10:06 PM                     quote: Mark Gulbrandsen To be honest the three drive thing doesn't bother me a bit and has shown better reliability. I've actually had way more failures in hardware driven four drive RAID systems than in any other type. Absolutely the exact opposite in every respect is what I have seen. I think you would be hard pressed to get IT specialists to agree with you as well.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-24-2011 08:50 AM                     Brad, That is absolutely true if you are constantly reading AND writing to the disk. In our case however we are only reading 95% of the time and the data is secure enough for our D-Cinema application because all the data still exists on DCP's stored on site and in an LMS in many cases during a run. If a raid in say a GDC completely fails there is always live play right off the DCP because the OS resides elsewhere. In a critical enterprise situation they wouldn't even trust a RAID 6 because of a possible RAID card failure. Their data is always backed up at very regular intervals to some other secure site. Mark  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 08-24-2011 01:43 PM                     To use your example, there is a far better chance for a GDC to fail due to a non-raided OS drive. ALL hard drives fail and there is no backup whatsoever on a GDC. It doesn't matter if the 3 drive raid fails or not when that one lonely OS drive dies.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-24-2011 02:51 PM                        I am not familiar with the Dolby products discussed here. I am, however, familiar with storage technologies, RAID levels, etc. (My day job is in the IT industry.) The Dolby web site says that both units use RAID5. A RAID5 array can tolerate the failure of one disk in the array before data loss occurs. Given that, and with all other factors being equal, a 3-disk array will have a lower risk of data loss than a 4-disk array because the chances of a single disk failure increase as the number of disks increases. However, if the 4-disk unit is configured with 3 disks in the array and with the fourth disk as a hot spare (is this even possible with the hardware in question?), then it would be preferable to the 3-disk unit because the array would be able to rebuild itself after a failure without human intervention, which would lessen the chance of a second failure occurring while the array is in a degraded state. That said, a 4-disk RAID5 array will, all other factors being equal, provide better I/O performance than an equivalent 3-disk array. For this application, I am not sure that performance matters much once a particular threshold (the ability to read a movie file without risk of interruption in the worst possible case where the RAID array needs to be rebuilt at the same time) is reached. In general, RAID5 performance is not very good, but, again, we may not care in this case. I will add the usual disclaimer that RAID is not backup. RAID exists to provide improved performance and reduced downtime in the event of hardware failure. It does not replace regular backups to tape or some other medium that can be taken off-site and stored. Again, this is not likely an issue for this application, but it still needs to be said. Brad--there is really a D-cinema server that has a nonredundant OS disk? That's insane. This is 2011. Disks are cheap. Edit: in general, software-based RAID5 is not safe. In the case of a power failure during a write operation, the array can be left in an inconsistent state. This is why hardware RAID controllers have battery-backed memory to cache all write operations.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-24-2011 04:16 PM                     Brad... Loosing the OS disk is no big deal. You can boot from a USB OS drive just like the Doremi can... Scott... D-Cinema servers as of yet have not used a hot spare RAID setup. Although the card in the original Dolby DSS-100 can be set up to do it! As that unit originally came it was but 1.2 TB of storage and they probably needed that extra drive more for storage space increase. The IBM server being used in a major VPF program has a hard disk array attached to it that is on average 12 terrabytes. It does have one global hot spare available that can be swapped in and quite easily by using the cinterface card's built in web browser. You are also correct about the efficiency factor. Once you are able to sustain a certain read speed... which is all that really matters here then all is well. That read speed in the server I mention which is software RAID based did not suffer at all from the loss of a drive. Most hardware based RAIDs I have worked with seriously degrade on read speed if a drive is lost and the write speed goes to the dogs! In fact we were still able to play back AND ingest with the degraded RAID. Remember that 95% of the time here we are just reading back data to play a movie... so no hardware based RAID is really needed and hence no RAID battery nor worry about loosing write back data. I just lost the battery in one of my Dell 2950's and decided to replace both since they are the same age. They are just over 5 years old... IMHO I believe that ALL servers should offer RAID 1 for the OS and keep the OS seperate from media storage. A high quality SSD will also increase reliability dramatically on a single drive based OS for a price. If the storage RAID fails for what ever reason there is still "live play" and no show interruption at all. If one knew the GDC well enough you could loose both the OS drive and RAID and boot from USB and still use live play! Mark  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-24-2011 04:49 PM                        If I were designing these things, I would probably go with a mirrored pair of disks for the OS+swap and a separate mirrored pair of 3TB disks for the movie files. At least under Linux, software RAID is fine for this, and 3TB of space would probably be enough for the majority of cinemas (how many movies would one normally want to keep on the server, anyway?). Does anyone make use of the predictive failure SMART information from the hard disks? I'm really surprised that any of this is even an issue. Even top-quality SAS disks are cheap and getting the storage stuff right would add almost no cost to the server while significantly increasing reliability. As for SSDs, there is no real benefit to using them in this application. They are not more reliable than mechanical disks and should not be used for swap space due to the limited number of write cycles. They would be a win for performance, but that is a nonissue here.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 08-24-2011 08:23 PM                     Mark, I'm not concerned about the 95%. I am concerned about the 5%. That last 5% is called uptime. Scott, I've seen all of the 3 drive raid servers skip and stutter during playback when other things are going on such as pushing/pulling content. Your comment on I/O performance is right on the money. Again, uptime. Scott, as an IT professional for your server would you rather have: OPTION #1 4 drive hardware-based raid with OS on it. OPTION #2 3 drive software-based raid with separate non-raid OS SATA drive. Mark, the one thing I do agree with you is that in an ideal world the OS would be on a 2 drive raid1. However nobody has done that and until somebody does, the 4 drive raid with OS on it is the most reliable. Never forget that 5% because those are paying customers that may never return. Being concerned about that 5% of the time when a server is having to do other things is the proper way to select a server. You don't spec lamphouses to barely meet light levels based upon a brand new screen with no port glass and the first 2 hours of a bulb's life do you???  |  IP: Logged

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