HD Optimized Performance

Whether you’re editing a project on your own or running a facility with multiple edit stations, if you’re working in HD, you need fast and reliable storage. Sonnet’s Fusion™ R800RAID storage systems meet your needs with breakthrough performance and data safety, provided in affordable, direct attached disk arrays for the desktop or rack. The award-winning Fusion R800RAID 2U rackmount system are designed for work environments where performance and fault tolerance are critical. Fusion 800RAID storage systems are fast enough to easily handle uncompressed HD while protecting the data at the same time, yet flexible enough to be configured for any workflow.

Under real world use (drives 85% filled and fragmented) with its drives formatted as a RAID 5 group (eight 1TB drives striped with parity across all group members), a Fusion 800RAID system is capable of single-stream 2K (2048 x 1556) LOG RGB capture and playback. A Fusion 800RAID system can achieve up to 690MB/sec (AJA Kona 1080HD test), fast enough to handle a single stream of uncompressed 10-bit 1080 4:4:4 HD, or multiple streams of ProRes 422, uncompressed 8-bit 1080 HD, DV, HDV, and DVCPRO video.

With drives formatted as a RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 6, or DVRAID group, Fusion 800RAID systems offer protection in the event of a drive failure. You can set up your system to provide visual and audible alerts, including e-mail notification. A drive can be swapped out and the RAID group rebuilt in a few hours, or you can continue to work at reduced bandwidth while the RAID group rebuilds in the background.

Built-In Flexibility

Do you need pure, unadulterated speed, ultimate redundancy, or something in between? It’s your choice—Fusion 800RAID systems support RAID 0 for pure, unadulterated speed; RAID 1 for ultimate redundancy; and RAID 4 (DV RAID), 5, 6, and 10 for balanced performance and protection; JBOD support is available, too. Fusion 800RAID systems even support hot spares—a designated hot spare drive waits unused in the background to automatically replace a failed drive without you having to lift a finger. All this flexibility is accomplished without switches—a simple to use configuration utility enables you to optimize your setup for specific workflow requirements.

Brains and Brawn

The heart of a Fusion 800RAID storage system is the Sonnet PCI Express® RAID controller. This powerhouse is based on the latest-generation Intel® IOP348 RAID processor, which can handle the throughput from all the drives with plenty of overhead. The Sonnet RAID controller is configured with 256MB of ECC-protected RAM, especially important to maintain data stream writes as the disk array nears capacity.

Producer/Director David Basulto interviews Sonnet Technologies' CEO Robert Farnsworth about Sonnet's Fusion RAID storage systems.

FMC Podcast Episode 11, 2008. Running time: 11:36 mins. Subscribe to this Podcast on iTunes®.

Driving Force

Fusion storage systems employ Enterprise/RAID Edition hard drives or select, Sonnet certified desktop drives⁽²⁾ that have been selected for their superior performance, error handling, and reliability characteristics, especially when used in RAID groups. These drives are subjected to hours of additional, stringent testing to check for soft errors, vibration, and other reliability predictors. Just the sturdiest drives pass these tests and are prepared with special RAID-optimized firmware to become the building blocks of a super-reliable Fusion storage system.

Versatile Performance

These systems are ideal for use in mixed environments—various operating systems, editing applications and output demands requiring the flexibility and interoperability that Fusion 800RAID storage systems provide. Fusion 800RAID systems support Mac OS® X, Windows®, and Linux operating systems. They are compatible with capture cards from AJA, Blackmagic Design, Matrox, and Bluefish444, and work with all mainstream video editing applications including Apple® Final Cut Pro®, and Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS4.

Fusion D800RAID and Fusion R800RAID Benchmarks

CONFIGURATION: Fusion D800RAID (or R800RAID) with eight 1TB drives configured as a RAID set, connected to Sonnet Tempo RAID controller installed in Quad 2.66 GHz Mac Pro with 3GB of RAM and an AJA Kona3 capture card.

Blackmagic Design Disk Speed Test for Fusion D800RAID/RAID 5 (and Fusion R800RAID/RAID 5)

Blackmagic Design Speed Test performed with 500GB hard drives.

AJA Disk Speed Test for Fusion D800RAID (and Fusion R800RAID)

About stream count testing:
We've conducted in-depth, real-world testing to provide you with realistic results. Testing was conducted after weeks of use, during which time projects were captured, parts deleted, more parts captured, rendered, and so on, leaving the drives 85% full and fragmented. The stream counts we present here reflect the reduced performance that results from day-in, day-out use. Many storage systems work well the day you get them, but the true test is whether one will continue to serve you when you push the envelope. Fusion storage systems won't let you down.