Film-Tech Cinema Systems
Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE


  
my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Operations   » Digital Cinema Forum   » Upgrade HDD on DCP-2K4

   
Author Topic: Upgrade HDD on DCP-2K4
Christopher Pettersen
Film Handler

Posts: 9
From: Moss, Østfold/ Norway
Registered: Jun 2014


 - posted 02-20-2015 10:01 AM      Profile for Christopher Pettersen   Email Christopher Pettersen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Hi

I have 6 Screens with a Doremi DCP-2K4 Server, I currently have 4X1TB Raid of there is effective 2TB of storage.
I am in that position where i have to upgrade my servers, because the movies keeps growing in sice.

Changing harddrives is nothing new for me, but upgrading is. There is currently WD1003FBYX drives installed. Can i get some tips of approved drives for use in my server? And your experince of upgrading? Any problems or things to think about?

Sorry if my english is confusing.. (Norwegian) [Wink]

 |  IP: Logged

Edgar Prass
Film Handler

Posts: 32
From: Tartu, Tartu county, Estonia
Registered: Mar 2013


 - posted 02-20-2015 12:16 PM      Profile for Edgar Prass   Email Edgar Prass   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I'm in a similar situation, except that we have an internal Alchemy server with 3x1TB HDD's. Those HDD's are 2,5" not 3,5". Model HGST HCC541010A9E680. As an art-house/festival theatre that's far from enough. These HDD's are described as for "Digital Video and Surveillance Storage for 24x7 CE Operation". These drives are 9,5mm thick, but server has space for much thicker (15mm) drives as well.

But the basic question is the same. Can I replace these with any other 2,5" SATA HDD's or are there some preferred models? I'm looking for at least 2TB drives, which are the biggest 2,5" drives currently on the market.

 |  IP: Logged

Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001


 - posted 02-20-2015 12:29 PM      Profile for Dave Macaulay   Email Dave Macaulay   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
DCP-2K4: It's not really difficult, but you will lose all data on the RAID. I think the largest approved drive is still 2TB, but you can add a fourth drive to your 2K4 servers and end up with roughly 6TB in md0. Adding a fourth 1TB drive will also get you more space but installing a new 2TB drive if the others are 1TB will only use it as a 1TB drive.

1. Back up any content you want to keep using Content Manager. Copying to a USB drive is very slow but it will work. Don’t try to copy a feature unless you have a USB drive formatted as EXT2, or use a EXT2 or EXT3 formatted CRU drive (you could delete the content on a feature drive and use it temporarily).
The server can read NTFS drives but can not write to them. FAT and FAT32 formatted drives have limits on maximum file size that will not accommodate feature film files.
2. Power off the server
3. Install a fourth drive in the bottom caddy, or put bigger drives in all four caddies.
4. Power up the server
5. Open a terminal window, Menu/System/terminal, log in as super user:
• su <enter>
• password: ...... <enter>
6. Run the reinit command :
• sh /doremi/sbin/reinit_raid.sh <enter>
7. The wizard will show you the current raid size... (3), then the wizard will ask you how many drives you want to have. Enter “4”
• 4 <enter>
Double check the command is correct before <enter> - Linux will do exactly what you ask, usually without asking for confirmation, and as superuser (“root”) you can do anything to the system. A mistype might just bring up a help file for the command but if you entered something valid but nasty… it will just do as you asked.
This initialization process will take a long time. I estimate around 6 hours for 4x1TB drives, 8 hours for 4x2TB drives.
After the initialization finishes you will have to re-ingest all content you want to play:
• Trailers
• Ads
• Features
• Test Material
• Playlists
• Transitional elements (snipes etc)

If you just install three 2TB drives you can re-initialize from diagnostic tool, you only need the terminal command for adding a fourth drive. You must change all three drives before reinitializing - all drives in the RAID are set to the size of the smallest.

Contact Doremi for the current approved drive list, it changes as new drives are tested and ones on the list are discontinued.
They like you to buy drives from Doremi but a drive is a drive is a drive... you should send them a list of installed drive model and serial numbers for each server after you're done though.
Obviously drives you get on your own will not be under any Doremi warranty.

Alchemy: Contact Barco support for an approved drive list and instructions.

 |  IP: Logged

Christopher Pettersen
Film Handler

Posts: 9
From: Moss, Østfold/ Norway
Registered: Jun 2014


 - posted 02-20-2015 02:35 PM      Profile for Christopher Pettersen   Email Christopher Pettersen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Thank your for all this useful information!

I want to get price on "original" Doremi drives, do you recommend a vendor?
The one we have over here is way to expensive, and tottaly out of line when i ask for price.

 |  IP: Logged

Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99


 - posted 02-20-2015 03:14 PM      Profile for Brad Miller   Author's Homepage   Email Brad Miller       Edit/Delete Post 
There are only two that are certified and approved by Doremi. Others might work, but I would be leery using them as a software raid can be quite picky and you could end up with lots of playback issues.

The two certified drives are both Western Digital brand. Model WD2002FYPS and WD2003FYYS.

 |  IP: Logged

Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009


 - posted 02-21-2015 07:11 AM      Profile for Carsten Kurz   Email Carsten Kurz   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Christopher - when you changed your RAIDs to 4drives, did you experience the slowdown in ingest speed as other people did?

Besides the WDC RE drives, HGST HUS724020ALA640 is also on Doremis approved drive list. But the RE4 are simply the best choice.
It's quite intriguing that not a single Segate drive is on Doremis list of approved drives. [Wink]

Did anyone ever try to fetch all content from a Doremi through ftp? Export even to CRU is painfully slow, a typical full backup could take a week or so, and then while the new RAID is rebuilding and the server busy playing a few hours per day, that can take ages...

FTP is really fast on the Doremis. Fastest way for a content transfer would be to mount the 'old' set of drives into a second Doremi server and re-ingest through FTP from there. As Christopher has 6 Doremis in operation, he should have no problem to reingest content.

I also recently digged into LINUX Raid config options in order to find out how to mount the 'old' Doremi drives into a common linux machine and have it detect the Doremi raid properly. Then reingest content over the network. I don't have a set of Doremi drives at hand to test it.

Will the Doremi have content arranged in directories on it's RAID so that it can be reingested? Dolby has the generatedPackages folder - it seems the Doremis do not have something like that.

- Carsten

 |  IP: Logged

Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001


 - posted 02-21-2015 09:35 AM      Profile for Dave Macaulay   Email Dave Macaulay   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Doremi content is stored as folders named with the UUID of the CPL. These are a tremendous pain to match with the titles. If you delete everything you DON"T want, then ftp out everything left, that would work pretty nicely I think.

Although the system can work normally while rebuilding (after replacing one drive) and the rebuilding progresses much slower with content ingesting or playing...it is unusable until a full RAID reinitialization is complete.

Doremi approved 2TB drive list from Dec 2014:

2TB Western Digital WD2000F9YZ WD2000F9YZ-09N20L0 WD2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, SV4
2TB Western Digital WD2000FYYZ WD2000FYYZ-01UL1B2 WD2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, SV4
2TB Western Digital WD2000FYYZ WD2000FYYZ-01UL1B0 WD2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, SV4
2TB Western Digital WD200MFYYZ WD200MFYYZ-01D45B0 WD2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, SV4
2TB Western Digital WD2003FYYS WD2003FYYS-02W0B1 WD2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, SV4
2TB Western Digital WD2003FYYS WD2003FYYS-02W0B0 WD2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, SV4
2TB Western Digital WD2002FYPS WD2002FYPS-01U1B1 WD2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, S
2TB Hitachi HUS724020ALE640 0F14685 HT2TB-SATA DC3, DC4, SV3, SV4

 |  IP: Logged

Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99


 - posted 02-21-2015 12:21 PM      Profile for Brad Miller   Author's Homepage   Email Brad Miller       Edit/Delete Post 
Dave, either Doremi has 2 lists, or in the last couple of months Doremi dropped some of those drives off the list, as I just inquired a week ago and it was only those 2 drives in the 2TB size.

(Then again it's also possible the other drives you listed are old and simply no longer available new.)

 |  IP: Logged

Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001


 - posted 02-21-2015 03:16 PM      Profile for Dave Macaulay   Email Dave Macaulay   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I dunno. The list changes regularly. This came from doremitechno.org. I know that's not really Doremi but they are reasonably accurate about most things.
Since Dolby took over their diags checker has been changed radically and I need more time with it to say if it's as useful as the old one.

 |  IP: Logged

Christopher Pettersen
Film Handler

Posts: 9
From: Moss, Østfold/ Norway
Registered: Jun 2014


 - posted 02-22-2015 02:27 PM      Profile for Christopher Pettersen   Email Christopher Pettersen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Carsten- I wont say that it is slow.. The rest of my screens are Sony SRX machines (i have 13) and they are slower than the doremi..
Typical transfer from my NOC is 65-103Mb/s to the doremi, and to the Sony it is about 35Mb/s - 60Mb/s.
(When idle)

Ingesting to a doremi while it plays goes slower:
 -

 |  IP: Logged

Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001


 - posted 02-22-2015 02:34 PM      Profile for Dave Macaulay   Email Dave Macaulay   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I think he's referring to exporting via USB or even SATA CRU using Doremi Content Manager. That is indeed dreadfully slow, unless it's changed in recent software versions. Using FTP to pull out content is much, much faster (on a 1000baseT connection). I think you need to use the manager login to see the content folder, admin won't.

 |  IP: Logged

Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99


 - posted 02-22-2015 04:31 PM      Profile for Brad Miller   Author's Homepage   Email Brad Miller       Edit/Delete Post 
And yet on the DSS-200, it's full gigabit in and out, regardless of whether it is playing or not.

Sad to see them gone. [Frown]

 |  IP: Logged

Pete Naples
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1565
From: Dunfermline, Scotland
Registered: Feb 2001


 - posted 02-23-2015 05:15 AM      Profile for Pete Naples   Email Pete Naples   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
The benefits of a real RAID controller!

Likewise Brad, we were surprised and saddened at Dolby's announcement.

It came to light that most of the Dolby Europe staff found out the same way we did, from a broadcast email.

 |  IP: Logged

Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999


 - posted 02-23-2015 06:18 AM      Profile for Steve Guttag   Email Steve Guttag   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I know we certainly are not happy about.

 |  IP: Logged



All times are Central (GMT -6:00)  
   Close Topic    Move Topic    Delete Topic    next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:



Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM 6.3.1.2

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.

© 1999-2020 Film-Tech Cinema Systems, LLC. All rights reserved.