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External Storage – what’s the latest?
I’ve been running off of a 5.7 TB X-RAID for the past 5 years. I need something new since I’m with a new company. What I like about the X-RAID is the rock solid stability–I had the backup drive, controller, and power supply available but I never needed any of them since nothing went down. And I worked that hardware hard. I know it’s antiquated though, so what’s the latest out there? Is eSATA as reliable and robust as fibre channel? I need something maybe double in size I think, but I could start with less as long as it’s expandable. I’m seeing the 4 drive RAID5 setups, is that enough drives for good stability and especially redundancy? My X-RAID was setup as RAID-50.
Also, I know that it’s been said that drive speed is the most important factor in editing. I know that you have to have enough to keep up your sustained transfer rates for however many simultaneous steams of whatever codec you need to run, but beyond that is having a higher maximum speed useful for rendering and such? i.e.- if I went from a 250MB/s sustained array to a 500 MB/s sustained array, how much faster would encoding and rendering be?
Lastly, I’ve been setup with the top speed iMac. I’ll be ordering a Mac Pro since it’s needed for the external storage. Is there a way to use the iMac as the screen for the Mac Pro while keeping the iMac running to use as a distributed rendering computer for Compressor, After Effects or Cleaner (not sure if that does distributed rendering)? My issue in the past with distributed Compressor rendering on an intranet has been that the speed of transfer over the ethernet with large video files took longer to go back and forth to the other computers than it saved on processing time locally on my octacore.
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4 Replies
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What capabilities do you need?
What format/resolution?
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I’m primarily working with ProRes/HQ, converted from DVCPRO and AVCHD footage from an HVX200 and a planned AF-100. The HVX I’ve always used 720 24p, but I’ll likely be using 1080p for the AF-100. I tend to do a heavy amount of graphical overlays, alpha layers, etc. and use a lot of color correction and 55mm plugins. Generally, I’m not running more than 10 simultaneous tracks at any point in a timeline. Outside of Final Cut, I’ll also be doing some very heavy motion graphics work in AE and compositing in Shake (can you even buy used licenses for transfer legally anymore?). With that work I’ve tended to use uncompressed or animation codec, or sequenced tgas in the past, but I’m transitioning to ProRes 4444.
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Small Tree is coming out with the ST-RAID Mobile that we’ve been testing for two weeks now. It officially releases at the end of the month. It all operates off Ethernet with 6 workstations all cutting from the same unit. It’s a variation on the Final Share SAN system we’ve been cutting with for two years now.
We currently have 32TB off the Final Share system. That has 7 workstations all tied together via an ethernet switch. ProRes, DVCPro HD and AVC Intra all day long. Biggest project we’ve completed with it is the first of three feature documentaries with over 200 hours of ProRes 720p material. That’s been on the system the entire 2 years. We also cut two weekly series on there and all manner of projects.
The ST-RAID Mobile brings the entire system into a single box. The Mac Pro Computer and either 16 or 32TB of Storage in an all in one box. 6 workstations connect directly to it and if you need more workstations, add an ethernet switch. They call it the Mobile because the original idea was to mount it in a shock mounted case for us on location or by rental companies where you need a quick, plug and play SAN on set. But it’s also perfect for Post Production facilities as I’m learning.
So it’s like Fibre Channel RAID for about 1/3 the cost. The beauty of it is that it’s not rocket science. Took about 10 minutes to set it up the first day and that’s it. Just turn it on each morning and go.
You can also daisy chain one addition RAID box so if you already own some a RAID, you might be able to reformat it and use it as additional storage on the back. That’s what we’re going to do with one of our 16TB RAIDs so we’ll have 48TB of shared storage when we move into our new building.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” Winner, Best Documentary, LA Reel Film Festival.
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Thanks for the response Walter. I know that a lot of shared edit facilities have been using these, but I’m surprised to hear that you’ve been using it that long without running into any issues–especially given the nature and extent of your work.
I first started considering an ethernet storage device when I read Bob’s article about how to set one up. I think at the time my concern was that there was a limit due to the maximum of having quad ports, which ultimately limited the access speed of each individual workstation to 70 MB/s (correct me if I’m wrong). Is this still the case, and has anyone run into a problem with these rates? That seems really slow to me, I mean obviously you can’t run a single stream of uncompressed HD, and isn’t that about the same sustained rate that you can get off of a single internal secondary drive, even just a fast 7200k?
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