[ PLEASE KNOW A CONCLUSION HAS BEEN REACHED. SEE BELOW FOR THE TL;DR ;) ]
I want to edit video a lot and my current AMD PhenomII shoebox is underhorsed; so I went and bought an overpriced MacPro 5,1. I'm not sure whether to appropriate it for ZFS or for Editing the Vidya's (videos).
First off, the machine's specs are: 2x Xeon X5550 48GB RAM // 1066 DDR3 ECC Radeon HD4870 (512MB)
Editing = Crispy w/ this PC. But, I hope to buy a Zen CPU pending launch (given enough PCIE for me). So, here's where I'm stuck; Do I use my TODAY or TOMORROW thinking hat?
TODAY: Great Editing Machine. Need GPU; Flashed RX480, Need Fast Edit Storage; M.2 via PCIE Adapter, Boot Drive; SSD.
TOMORROW: Great ZFS Machine. (Leave the editing to the Zen thing, this can host the files) 6x HGST 7K6000 (maybe 8 drives, not sure) 1x SAS HBA 1x dual-10G NIC, optical transceivers... and on end client (editing machine)
My Hypothesis: In the long run IMHO this Mac Pro consumes too much power and wastes its abilities for running ZFS only. Getting a dedicated Supermicro Board w/ a newer more efficient CPU, in a cheap surplus enclosure and buying all the RAM, efficient PSU, HDDs etc as a whole separate system will pay itself off in the long run by saving power, creating less heat, being (probably) quicker.
I would love to know what you think. Do you think you'd do something different if you were in my situation? [I think it is natively called RAIDZ2]. Please discuss in the comments as well as voting in the Poll!! Please let me know if there is not enough information for you to come to your own conclusion. I've tried to be concise yet also go into necessary details, if I've missed something please notify me so I can make ammenments.
I think some of it depends on what software you're using. If it can leverage the 24 threads of the Xeons it should theoretically blow Ryzen's 8 threads out of the water. If the software can only use a handful of threads then Ryzen's higher per-thread performance will readily outstrip the Xeons.
Personally I use macs for everything. I mostly have hackintosh's, but my mac pro does editing, webserver, all sorts. Your mac pro is actually really well spec'd. I wouldn't call it under horsed but I would put the newest OSX I could on it, probably El Cap but Sierra would be best if you can do it. The ZEN box I would install something like windows on it. Use it for a gamer. The mac will do well for editing and you can have it as a server for the rest of the time you don't use it.
\Thanks for contribution! Multithreading is strong in this one so Mac pro will be a good addition as an editing machine. Curious to see if anyone is going to tell me these Xeons may help ZFS, my personal opinion is not, but my knowledge has limits. Sadly 5650 only 4c 8t, 16thread total. Still not bad but might upgrade them in future if price goes down further.
Correction: You were right because my post was wrong! lol... The current system before the Mac is AMD PhenomII build. Fairly slow. \As for the mention of recent OSX, it will run Mavericks, as my software vendors are yet to release software for 10.10 or beyond. Also it is less "translucent" (something which offends me greatly).
Having used till I worked it to death a 5650 based Mac Pro for video editing you will not be upset and depending on what your doing WD blacks are fast enough for ProRess 422 HQ and 444 codecs at 1080p.
I too have a Mac Pro 2009 (5,1 because I flashed the firmware like Wendell did in a now old "Crit" video.) And will tell you, editing on that thing is amazing! You will not be disappointed at all. I recently upgraded mine to 2x 5675 6c 12t (12 c 24t) 64 Gb RAM and a non flashed GTX 980, CUDA works 100% and OpenCL is great for Final Cut. (10xx series has no drivers) I have used both Premier Pro and Final Cut and prefer Final Cut due to export times. If you use Premier, there is some modifications you have to do to make it work, but its really easy!
\WD Black sequential transfers are satisfactory+ on 2TB+ drives. I have 2x 4TB blacks + misc TB blacks. - random reads and writes are below par for my use. In complex work footage is played back at 0.25x speed thanks to most of the work placed on the disks. Raid 6 or some nifty SSDs are possibly the answer. I'm yet to experience the privilege of no bottleneck in storage, as my SSDs aren't fast enough (SATA 3Gb/s is too slow on current AMD Trashbox & Mac Pro). M.2 Feels like the only answer here, so that's what I'll do. A commercial editor I briefly spoke to showed me his RAID0 SSD pool which gave him 1200MB/s sequential, but also the Random Writes necessary to do what I am after.
Description ammended! Installed processor is an > X5550. I do owe you an "oops!"
If that is modifying the text file, then yes - a good trick! What model GPU is in your system, and what is the basic editing workflow like for you?
I have made a decision
This Mac hardware is nice. Whilst it would make an effective ZFS machine because of ECC RAM and a performance chipset, as well as two processors - there are many downsides of trying to use this as a server that outweigh the good.
Why I shouldn't use this for ZFS: Power Draw \ as mentioned in the closing of the first article; the processors draw a lot of power, and any processor upgrades in future will only consume more power. Apple Hardware/Parts \ The Apple ecosystem limits me; what happens if the PSU fails, or the motherboard? The RAM? A bug in hardware, firmware or a controller? These are unnecessary obstacles that come from purchasing a non-standard system. Putting 30TB of data on the tip of a Unicorn's horn isn't wise. Lack of Server Features \ Whilst I was aware of this trade off from the beginning, it is worth mentioning. Lacking features like IPMI, and other administrative things is a bit of a blow when it comes to using a machine like this. When these machines were networked it was done with proprietary Apple hardware like XServe systems etc. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, and it would probably be very difficult. MOAR PCIE \ PCIE slots are not plentiful on this machine. The thermals to the PCIE area aren't the best. Compatibility of HBAs and NICs may be a problem too! Don't need the drivers just taking a dump for no reason.
If I am to treat this computer the way I treat my work, I'd express "mission critical" as my motto. Attempting to host all of my work on hardware that's foreign to me, + not knowing it's "true history" makes this machine as a point of failure for all my Data a very reckless move to say the least. A dedicated machine using a board from a server board vendor, newer ram, a more efficient processor with all the optional things I need i.e more pcie slots etc is what is needed in this use case. That is my conclusion.
Thanks to discussing participants. This gave me the chance to imagine what both options would be like in the real world.