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Topic: Any experience with Qube Cinema equipment?

Phil Blake
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 558
From: esperance western australia
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 12-25-2009 06:36 PM

thanks Geena ,
i do have a good tech support on the qube , all fixed now and going well , guess i am just disappointed that so many issues have happened to me with a new server in such a short time.

I have since heard the new qube is even worse.Pity the Cinex 20 is only ecinema we have been running those for 2 years without a problem.

phil

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Phil Blake
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 558
From: esperance western australia
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 12-31-2009 08:06 AM

i spoke too soon [Frown]

after refitting the qube with new hard drives about 3 weeks ago today the server failed me , looks like one of the new drives fell over, having a spare i changed it out but it would not validate the playlist , thinking the playlist may be corrupt i deleted it and tried to re ingest the file however the player will not re ingest either telling me original dci harddrive file is corrupt.

real bad timing , playing avatar 3d to full house holiday crowds now its down .

i guess the other bad thing about the qube is it is not big enough to be a successful boat anchor .

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Demetris Thoupis
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1240
From: Aradippou, Larnaca, Cyprus
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 12-31-2009 08:33 AM

Phil are you running it on a UPS or a power surge protector?
Demetris

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-31-2009 09:07 AM

Did you try rebuilding the array instead of merely replacing the supposed bad drive itself? In most cases the RAID rebuild repairs the bad drive in the array. I have not heard of anyone having this many problems with a Qube (or any server) before...
Also, be sure you're using HDs that are rated for server duty (Enterprise grade)... Regular ole HDs from Wal-Mart or the local computer store may not last very long.

Also, do you have it on a UPS or not? The server and T.I. boards in the projector should be set up on a common UPS to eliminate the need for re-boots caused by power surges. The NEC 1600 has a mod available and can be set up to power the T.I. boards from the same UPS.
Mark

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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008

posted 12-31-2009 09:53 AM

Sorry to hear about the problems.

Welcome to the world of perfect digital cinema, I guess.

Hard drive failures, whether they are new drives, old, heavily used or not, on UPS or not, enterprise class or not, are being very common nowadays. For every 10 drives that you buy, it's not unusual to get 1 or 2 to fail miserably w/o warning way before its normal time and few will last more than 5-7 years when you hit a good one. If they don't fail in the first 4 months of use or so, they tend to be good for a 2-4 years, though.

Google, who buys thousands of hard drives every single month and uses them extensively, published a couple of studies on their reliability some time back and basically reached the conclusion that some models were "failures waiting to happen" and that power cycling/usage/heat weren't overly significant factors and age was only significant in that very young drives or very old ones tended to fail more (infancy death or end-of-life wear). The ones in-between stayed mostly trouble free.

I'm just making up the numbers, but it goes something like this:
-A drive less than 4 months old has a 10% chance of failure
-A drive between 4 and 12 months old has a 2% chance.
-A drive between 1 and 3 years old, a 3% chance.
-A drive between 4 and 6 years old, a 4% chance.
-A drive older than 7 years, a 15% chance.

As I said, power/heat and other factors had little effect in the chance of failure (it did have SOME effect, just MUCH smaller than one would be inclined to believe). So a lot of expense in power conditioners and air conditioners/ventilation made VERY little difference. Sometimes, it was WORSE.

Choosing the right drive, though, is a total hit-and-miss. By the time a hard drive has been sufficient time in the market (say 1-2 years) to figure if it is a "good drive" or one with a high rate of failure, it has already been replaced by the next model/revision and it's no longer manufactured.

quote:
Google studied a hundred thousand SATA and PATA drives with between 80 and 400GB storage and 5400 to 7200rpm, and while unfortunately they didn't call out specific brands or models that had high failure rates, they did find a few interesting patterns in failing hard drives. One of those we thought was most intriguing was that drives often needed replacement for issues that SMART drive status polling didn't or couldn't determine, and 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags (and that's interesting, of course, because SMART exists solely to survey hard drive health); other notable patterns showed that failure rates are indeed definitely correlated to drive manufacturer, model, and age; failure rates did not correspond to drive usage except in very young and old drives (i.e. heavy data "grinding" is not a significant factor in failure); and there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates than might have been expected, and drives that are cooled excessively actually fail more often than those running a little hot.

Storagereview.com also conducted reliability surveys for many models for many years. All findings lead to the same conclusion: some drives models, from all manufacturers, turn out to be lemons with much higher failure rates. Hard drive infancy is a factor in high failure rate. SMART monitoring is not as effective as it should. Very old drives (say 6-8 years old) also fail more (duh!). If you find a drive model that has a low failure rate (say under 1%) after two years, buy all the ones you can [Wink]

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Phil Blake
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 558
From: esperance western australia
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 01-01-2010 07:29 AM

Yes we do run the qube off a UPS and a very high quality one.

When the original hard drive failed we replaced all 4 hard drives with larger 750gb ones supplied by the qube dealer , they included a spare which was the one i changed out.

In the bios menu i rebuilt the array and after rebooting the bios message stated all drives to be ok. which did not explain the qubes failure to validate playlist or failure to ingest.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 01-01-2010 09:05 AM

You may have hit the nail on the head when you said that all 4 drives were replaced at the same time. You may have gotten drives that are prone to failure, from a bad batch, etc. Generally you don't want all the drives with similar date codes on them so they can all be linked to a certain batch failure. Same model is fine but different manufacturing dates is preferred. Otherwise IMHO you have a lemmon and the local Qube dealer or Qube themselves should exchange it for you with another unit.

Mark

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Phil Blake
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 558
From: esperance western australia
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 01-01-2010 09:53 PM

you may be right there Mark, Qube are looking into the corrupted software. in the meantime we have had another hardrive fail , it may be a crook batch.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 01-02-2010 10:19 AM

Thats got to be it Phil... Look at the date codes on the drives... I bet they are all the same or very close.

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David Stambaugh
Film God

Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 01-02-2010 10:24 AM

Are the failing drives Seagate ES.2 models?

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Phil Blake
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 558
From: esperance western australia
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 01-03-2010 12:40 AM

They are Seagates not sure of the models will check it out.

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Brendan Penny
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 121
From: Bundoora, Australia
Registered: Dec 2008

posted 01-04-2010 05:55 PM

quote: Phil Blake
When the original hard drive failed we replaced all 4 hard drives with larger 750gb ones supplied by the qube dealer , they included a spare which was the one i changed out.

In the training that I did, I was told that you CAN install larger hard drives at will but was not recommended and was at your own risk. Would recommend you just install the same model/size drives that Qube ships their servers with.

This of course could be a load of [bs]

but if you don't really need the extra storage space then why risk it?? Not all dealers do everything strictly by the manufacturing book. (not always a bad thing!!!)

I agree its a lemon and not worth risking anymore cancellations. I'm sure the manufacturer would have no issues just sending a new one.

If it does it again, insert a windows xp install cd, reboot the server, load xp, and use the system to check your e-mail [beer]

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Phil Blake
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 558
From: esperance western australia
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 01-04-2010 09:51 PM

Failing drives are Seagate Barracuda ES 750Gb ..... is this not good [Confused]

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Brendan Penny
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 121
From: Bundoora, Australia
Registered: Dec 2008

posted 01-05-2010 12:44 AM

Mate, don't know. What drives were installed when the unit was new?

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Phil Blake
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 558
From: esperance western australia
Registered: Nov 2003

posted 01-07-2010 01:57 AM

The qube dies again today yet another hardive failing.

the original drives were Seagate ES.2 models 500gb , replaced with seagate 750gbs sent from qube distributor.
with no spare drives on hand i refitted 2 of the old 500gb drives and reconfig the raid over 2 drives and reinjested the show.
it injested ok and is playing ok at the moment i do have 35mm running alongside incase.

the qube people wondering if i have a faulty main board or sata cables.

and on it goes ..................

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