The D800 is equipped with eight 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar SATA 3.5-inch drives mounted in two rows of four each. The 6TB version uses eight 750GB drives, and the 4TB version uses eight 500GB drives. There is a separate power supply and a separate on/off button for each row of drives. Each drive can be ejected at the push of a button and release of a lever, and the connections are positive and secure. There are two power plugs, one for each power supply and row of drives. The rack unit weighs in at about 36 pounds, and is finished in a brushed stainless steel with blue status LEDs. It's quite stylish in looks and easy to place into position because of the rack-mount form factor and the small handles up front.

The rack connects to the RAID controller card, mounted in an internal 4 or x8 PCIe slot, via two multilane, secure locking cables, roughly four feet in length. The controller software, and the controller card itself are from ATTO, a well-respected manufacturer of such cards and one with a long history of top performing products. Hardware compatibility is with any Macintosh, Windows, or Linux box with a free PCIe slot. Software compatibility is with Macintosh OSK 10.4.8 or higher, Windows Vista, XP Pro, or Server 2003, and various varieties of Linux.
Installation and setup were straightforward. The RAID system, well-packed in dense foam, ships with small wedges under each drive in the array to protect against jars and jolts, and so requires that each drive be ejected, the wedge removed, and the drive re-inserted and locked back into place. The controller card slides into a PCIe slot, and controller software and drivers are installed from the supplied CD. Depending on how much box wrangling and cord taming you have to do, the whole install will take no more than about 15 minutes.

The ATTO software install provides device drivers, firmware updates, formatting software, and the tools necessary to manage the RAID. RAID management is pretty much point and click; RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD (Just a Bunch o' Disks) configurations. Configuration can also include visual and audible notification of drive failure.

My test host for the R800 RAID system was an early 2008 MacPro tower with 2 quad core, 2.8 GHz Xeon processors and 16GB RAM, running OS X 10.5.2. I installed the controller card in the top PCIe slot, connected it to the enclosure with the 2 Infiniband multilane to mini-SAS cables, installed the software, fired up the enclosure, and after a restart, the RAID, configured as RAID 5 at the factory, appeared on my desktop. By the way, an 8TB RAID formats out at 6.37 TB. The entire process, from unpacking to mounting the RAID took about 15 minutes.

I ran the AJA System Test to get an idea of throughput benchmarks for the R800 RAID. My results on a RAID 5 volume, using AJA's Disk Read/Write Tests with a 4GB file size and 2048x1556 10-bit RGB frame size varied between 501.7 and 535.6 Mbps for writes and 468 and 494.2 Mbps for reads, averaging a bit lower than Sonnet's published test results, no doubt because of some bottlenecks or inconsistencies in my system. The real-world tests, working on my Media 100 HD, Kona 3 based system showed me that throughput was more than adequate, to say the least, for any aspects of my projects I wanted to throw at the hardware.
I began by digitizing a lot of 1080/60i clips from a Sony PWM-EX1's SDI output for a documentary project I'm working on, using the ProRes 422 HQ codec. That proved to be no stress on the system whatsoever, needless to say. In edit mode, I stacked up 4 HD layers for a composite and threw a title on top, and still all played in sync with the stereo soundtrack with no rendering. Even adding a few more stereo audio layers didn't bog down the RAID. A RAID 0 configuration yields about 50 to 60 percent better performance, but at the potential cost of losing everything if a drive goes down.

Fan noise is unavoidable with units such as this, and the R800 is no exception. But I am glad and relieved to report that fan noise for this unit is noticeable but not overwhelming. The four-foot cables that run from the R800 to the controller card in the host computer allow a degree of flexibility in placement, for noise reduction purposes.

Sonnet's Fusion R800 RAID is solidly built of Enterprise-grade materials and drives, backed by a two-year limited warranty. The system is easy to install, configure, use, and maintain, and performs to high standards of fast transfer rates whether full or empty or somewhere in between. A very thorough overview on Sonnet's Web site will give you an idea of the technology as well as transfer rates and expected streams of video at various frame rates, sizes, and codecs you can expect to be able to play.
Storage and I/O are the name of the game in the modern edit suite. My one concern with the Sonnet system is its lack of expandability: each RAID system is a world of its own. To enhance your storage capabilities, you have to buy and install another RAID system and host card. To be fair to Sonnet, in the interest of speed and performance, most systems work this way, but not all.

Michael Hanish operates Free Lunch, a video/audio/multimedia production house near Guilford, Vt. He may be contacted at michael@freelunchmedia.com.

SCORE

Four diamonds

8TB rack-mounted version, $7,195; 6 TB, $5,695; 4 TB, $4,695.

Desktop versions are $200 less in each size.

Pros: Hardware and software compatibility with many computer systems; low operating noise level.

Cons: Lack of expandability.

Bottom Line: A solid, high-performing, reliable unit for a wide range of situations.

www.sonnettech.com