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Author Topic: Dolby DSS 200 Array Degraded and Interrupted Playback Tony Bandiera Jr Film God Posts: 3067 From: Moreland Idaho Registered: Apr 2004 posted 02-11-2016 11:48 AM                     I see..do you have the server on a UPS? AFAIK they are pretty much spinning constantly (perhaps at a reduced speed when data is not being read), I do know that the server constantly "polls" the drives as long as it is powered up. All things being equal, even of the drives go idle there will be little or no thermal cycling. Mechanically maybe. Brad and Steve would know, but if there is some sort of possibility of a contact issue developing, I wonder if an annual "pulling of the drives" might prevent it? So far in all the installs I have done and/or are aware of, have never had that issue arise. (Only a few random drives go bad and one (unrelated) case where a client cut power to the server and projector for a few months and bricked the enigma card in the CP2210).  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 02-11-2016 12:50 PM                     I've never had that issue (yet). We do normally leave servers on 24/7 unless the venue is a weekend only other infrequent use where there would be much more non-use time than use-time. The drives never spin down...they are at 7200RPM so long as power is supplied. The hardest thing for a HDD to do is spin up. In an Enterprise application and especially as a RAID...you wouldn't want the drives spinning up/down...etc. In a cinema server application you'd doubly wouldn't want them spinning up/down!  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-11-2016 01:23 PM                        Must have been constant vibration rather than cycling that worked at least one of them loose, then. It's been around four hours of operation since I cleaned the contacts and reseated them, with no hint of any glitch so far. Agreed with Tony that doing this at least annually is probably a good idea, probably in the same maintenance session that the fans are cleaned out and the CMOS battery replaced. The server is on a surge protector but not a UPS. I don't see any point, because if the power to the booth went out there is no way the show could continue (a UPS isn't going to keep a 6kW xenon bulb lit for very long!), and AFAIK there is no way to interface the DSS200 with a UPS, such that a failure of mains power would tell the server to perform an orderly shutdown in the time provided by the battery. We'd need a UPS that would keep the DSS200 alive for 20-30 hours to be sure of that (there are some nights on which we have no show and the theater is dark). Furthermore, there is no way (that I know of) to tell the DSS200 to perform an orderly shutdown. If I ever need to, I give it the reboot command, and then when I hear the PSU fans surge, I'm guessing that no HDD activity is taking place and that it's safe to pull the power at that point. I guess that if a power failure happened while one of us was in the booth, we could shut it down using this method, but if it happened, say, in the middle of the night, it is going to go through a disorderly shutdown anyways, and if we need to reinstall the system software and/or reingest the DCPs afterwards, then we'll just have to do that. So, given that a UPS on the DSS200 would not prevent a power failure from resulting in show disruption or loss, and we would probably have no way of shutting the server down in an orderly way even if a projectionist was in the booth when the power went out, I can't see any point in using one.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 02-11-2016 02:02 PM                     The reason for the UPS is so that brown outs/momentary blips don't "hit" the server and also cause you to have to ensure another 7 minute boot up. The same goes for the projector. The goal is not to sustain a show (because the sound and the lamp are going to go out and the emergency lights in the theatre are going to go on). In the theatres we set up, we have an automation and have issue a pause the moment the power drops so that none of the movie is lost either. If the power out happens in the middle of the night...so what...the Dolby server is perfectly happy to just drop out and when power comes back, it will come back on on its own.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-11-2016 07:09 PM                        Thanks Steve - I must admit that this angle didn't occur to me. Will look in to putting that server on a UPS. It's been working fine without any glitches or complaints all day, and so I'm convinced that a weak connection in one of the SATA interfaces was causing the problem I discovered this morning.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 02-11-2016 10:18 PM                    Also, if it's a full-time UPS, where power is constantly being converted to DC and the output is always from the inverter, it should provide isolation from power line glitches. The electronics side of my NEC NC1200C and the Dolby DSS200 are on such a UPS.  |  IP: Logged

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