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Any thoughts on Compellent SAN in production environemnt?
Currently we run a 40Tb SAN on Xsan 1.4.x. It serves four FC7 edit bays, our two ingest servers and two playout servers. Due to recurrent issues with XSAN and its dependence on Open Directory I am looking at move us to StoreNext ( parent code of XSAN, no Open Directory dependence). My IT department is pushing to wrap Production into a Compellent SAN that they are purchasing for the corporate network. Currently our two networks are independent.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with Mixed IT/production SANS and particularly with Compellent SANS in a mixed environment?
Thanks for your input.
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6 Replies
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I would have to say this might be a bad idea. What will happen is that you will have a san built for IT and document sharing, not video. If this will be stornext you will be required to tune it manually to work with video. It does not come out of the box for video like XSAN does. I don’t have anything against Stornext, it just takes some hand holding to make it rock like you expect it to.
A couple questions: What is your setup? How many editors do you have? What is your bandwidth requirements? Also, why do you think your xsan is dependent upon Open Directory; do you mean DNS? Open Directory is a means to manage users and permissions, not your XSAN. XSAN can function just fine without Open Directory running, just takes special care to watch permission issues.
I would fight to separate the SANs. Keep your video data in your world where you can keep a close eye on it. In my experience, IT really doesn’t care if video drops frames. (just my experience)
-Jordan
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Hi Jordan thanks for your thoughts.
Currently we have four FC7 edit bays on 2.2 gig 8 core Mac Pros with 8 gigs of RAM connected to the SAN by 2 gig Fiber Channel with a redundant FC back up. The arrays are comprised of 2 Rorke galaxy chassis and three Apple XSAN array chassis. Total storage is approximately 40Tbs
In addition to the edit bays the array also serves our two Xserve playout servers and two Xserve ingest servers. The Open Directory server is indeed handling permissions. Everything in the network is hard IP coded, we get DNS for outside services (Internet) from our corporate DNS server.
I wish XSAN was functioning just fine, it is anything but. Whether its forgetting permissions or falsely reporting FC connectivity problems or dropping authentication to clients on the MDC servers. Its just not happy!
Since XSAN is built on StoreNext code I was planning to move to the original file system and return the edit bays to local admin status so permission issues should go away entirely.
The Compellent solution being proposed would give me a separate drive pool with shared controllers between Production’s drive pool and IT’s drive pool. My pool would connect all FC and IT would be going iSCSI to their pool.
The Compellent system has a slick storage management schema and it would make off site backup a no brainer, expensive but easy. I could even run StoreNext on top of Compellent but that seems silly.
They are promissing 650 Mbits/sec bandwidth but with all my clients having a fixed 100mbit/sec pipe and there currently being 8 of them if I put the throttle all the way to the stops I’ll go screaming past the 650 mark. And there is the possibility of adding additional playout/ingest servers since this solution would free up my two MDC servers and the Open Directory server to be re-tasked.
Rodger that on your dropped frame comment, that has been my experience too. Maybe not that they don’t care but that they don’t understand why we are pushing so much data constantly.
Thanks again for your input!
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Doug,
I’d suggest that BEFORE you start ripping everything out and reinventing your SAN, that you spend a few bucks and hire in an X-SAN expert to take a look at your system. You should NOT be getting the kind of performance problems you’re describing, and unfortunately, the reasons why are hidden in tiny little details.
I will guarantee that if you turn this SAN over to your IT department, you will have much WORSE peformance. No offense to your IT folks. I don’t know them, and I’m sure they’re great at what they do… which is NOT video.
Call some of the people that frequent this list: Shane, Bob Z, Matt… they will all tell you the same thing.
We’re driving our X-SAN much harder than what you’ve described WITHOUT the kind of “dropped frames” or permissions issues that you’re describing. You really need a pro to help set this stuff up. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about X-SAN, but I still call in the experts when needed.
Good luck.
Mark
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Hey Doug, I just wanted to weigh in late and agree with Mark and Jordan on this stuff. The devil is in the details, and tuning an Xsan (like any complicated system) can be a challenge. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water before having an expert take a look.
As for the bigger question about working with your corporate IT folks to build or share a unified SAN system, I’d shy away from it.
I’m working in a video production department embedded in a larger corporate environment. Our core business is NOT video production — we’re a utility that happens to have a video production department. Our corporate IT folks, rightfully so, prioritize the core needs of the business over the needs of our creative department. We manage our own Xsan and only rely on our corporate IT folks for infrastructure things (like public network support, DNS and Static IP reservations).
We have some really talented IT people here, but (with a couple exceptions) they don’t know a lot about a few key topics:
-Macintosh Computers
-HD video
-Creative workflowThose would all be really key things to understand in order to build and support a SAN used for video editing — especially using Final Cut Pro. Typical corporate environments need to support things like ERP, SQL, e-mail, Word documents and spreadsheets. The management methodology to build and support systems tuned for those needs are often incompatible with the needs of a fast-paced, HD, creative video production shop.
I’ve heard about two places in town that have tried (after much insistence from their centralized IT body) to integrate creative and core business systems — neither with Compellent, but both involving some level of SAN. Neither have gone well. In one case, after years of head-butting, the centralized IT body recently said, “We don’t get you guys. Go buy what you need on your own.” They’re the lucky ones.
There really is something to be said for experts who specialize in the management of SAN systems in creative environments. Find one you trust, and your life will be better.
Good luck with everything!
Dave
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My 2 cents;
In my experience, you’ll get much better performance from the lower-mid range HDS solutions (such as the AMS line) than from Compellent. Yes, their management software is nice and simple, but HDS is fast and very scalable.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
Dan
https://www.storageplatter.com -
It’s good advice to have experts come in and tune your current system and solve performance issues… Always the first option since rip and replace or even adding a new SAN can cost you a lot in both in capital and in man hours…
I work in the financial industry and have had similar pressure for system performance and consistency with a Compellent. You can make a Compellent your central SAN but, like any SAN you buy, you will have to keep a close eye on IOPS (etc) to keep ahead of the curve. If your budget makes it difficult to maintain a good performance buffer (including spikes) then I would say keep your SAN’s (whatever brand) separate.
Compellent is specifically built to let all connections use all disks and is optimized for it. As long as you keep enough spindles going and allocate your data migration appropriately, you will get the performance you need. You can tell the compellent that all video systems are to be kept on high speed disks longer (or permanently) than backoffice an IT systems.
Stressing again – if performance is a key business driver and you still want to share resources make sure you have the budget and control to service the money makers.
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