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DVCProHD over Ethernet with existing gear…
Just finished reading the fantastic article by Walter Biscardi regarding the Final Share solution. I would love to be able to adapt our system to do this, without buying a bunch of new gear. I welcome any advice on how to get up to speed on a shared system in our shop.
We have three FCP seats.
We have an XServe with a Promise RAID for backup, and an LTO tape backup drive as well. This is connected via ethernet to the three FCP suites.
Each edit room has a MacPro and a CalDigit HDPro. We edit to these locally, since we’re editing in HD, although it is nearly ALL DVCProHD, which is why this article has me so excited, as I was under the impression that we would have to upgrade to Fibre to consolidate our storage.
Reading the article, I’m trying to figure out if we can adapt our system to do what Bob Z. has done with Maxx Digital, with our current equipment.
How close are we to being able to rackmount all our hard drives in one rack, and truly share projects?
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1 Reply
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Hi Drew –
as we have discovered, different products have different results. I will not go into details on this forum about the different equipment that you currently own. You can always call Maxx Digital, and they will get me on the phone to discuss this with you further.This is the process.
You can do DVCProHD all day long over ethernet. It requires 13.9 Mb/sec, and since ethernet with jumbo frames enabled gives you 70Mb/sec, there is no issue.You need a MAC Pro running OS-X 10.5 as your server. These are currently just over $2700 on the Apple site. You need 8 Gigs of RAM, which makes the new MAC Pro’s just over $2700. You need specialty ethernet equipment, which include a managed hi speed ethernet switch, and multi port ethernet card. This costs about $2000. And you need disk drive storage. You currently own disk drives storage. Will it work for you – call Maxx Digital and find out. You certainly can try it – it can’t hurt, since you already own it. I’ve done systems like this using just the internal SATA drives in a MAC Pro !
On the switch, you enable jumbo frames, you enable flow control, you link aggregate several ethernet ports, and tie these back to your
multiport ethernet card in your MAC Pro server computer.Will it work for your 3 FCP edit systems – will all 3 FCP systems be able to read the same DVCProHD media all at the EXACT SAME TIME, over simple ethernet – YOU BET YOUR ASS IT WILL WORK.
Please remember that the current Cal Digit HD Pro drive arrays (fantastic SAS/SATA drive arrays) currently do not support SAS expansion. However, you can purchase the fantastic Dulce ProEX PCI Express port expander, that will allow you to put all of your drive arrays on one MAC Pro computer. If you just want to try this – to make sure it works, before you spend too much money, you can simply stick one of the Cal Digit HD Pros on a MAC Pro, and get it configured with the switch and multiport ethernet card, and test it out, before pouring too much money into this. It’s always best to prove to yourself that this works, before dumping too much money into a project, only to realize that you are wasting your money.
Do you HAVE to get a multiport ethernet card and managed ethernet swtich. YES, and this is not $100. We recommend Small Tree hardware, becuase it works. You aint’ gonna find this at Office Depot or Staples, and you dont’ have one lying around your office.
If you want more detailed info, call me.
Bob Zelin
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