10 gigE question for mac

[Andrew Richards]

Same hints everyone else has. Drivers for AMD Tahiti GPUs in 10.7.3, E5 Xeons are reportedly “in the channel” and that means they will launch any day now. That is the chip Apple would be building a new Mac Pro around, if there is to be one.

There may not be one, and that would be a shame. So let me rephrase:

I would not be shocked if there is on-board 10GbE on the new Mac Pro, assuming Apple is making a new Mac Pro now that the new Xeons are imminent.

At any rate, we’ll know well before NAB if there is going to be a new Mac Pro assuming the reports of E5 Xeons in the channel are true.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

The new Xeons are officially launched.

Of particular interest from that article:

“In conjunction with the processor, Intel also announced the Ethernet Controller X540, a separate chip for 10Gbps networking. Intel projects that the chip will help make the faster networking an ordinary rather than premium feature.”

Keep your eyes peeled…

Best,
Andy

[Matt Geier]

HI Paul,

NAB will certainly prove to be a good time to see what vendors and other folks in the industry are doing.

I read this and wanted to ask…

Are you opposed to using RJ45 Copper (CAT6a) instead of SFP+ based adapters?

If you are leaning toward SFP+, perhaps you should equally consider RJ45 as an option since there are a few immediate advantages to running with CAT6a RJ45 connections now…if nothing else, just do so for anticipation of what will happen down the industry road later.

Connecting the two Mac Pro’s with any Ethernet is the easiest part.

Getting them to work a certain way depending on what kind of environment you are trying to build long term will be the tricky part for you. I’m referring to building a Shared Video Editing (Real Time) Network vs just a more data center Copying / Sending Files Back and Forth (Push / Pull) Network.
— Whichever one you choose, set up and the way it works after it’s configured will vary depending on what was decided, but either one of them can be done very successfully with Ethernet 1Gb and / or 10Gb only environments, or along side an existing solution environment, like Fiber Channel for example.

So why 10GbE RJ45 copper vs SFP+ optical?

1: — It’s Twisted Pair copper, it’s RJ45, it’s what you have right now for your 1Gb ports on the Mac Pro’s —
This card option offers you 2 x 10GbE RJ45 ports for the ability to have a faster transfer take place to more then one 10GbE network, or link aggregate into a switch to serve multiple 1GbE clients, or some other low bandwidth needs on the network.

You may already have wired up copper in the facility anyway, and this would allow you to utilize the adapters you choose.

2: — There’s no performance gain or loss to running fiber light/glass vs copper twisted pair —
In most of the cases, when it comes to choosing one or the other in terms of cost, copper runs save on money, are common in building directly to the desktop, and are usually whatever is between your desk and the wall and server room anyway.

3: — Limitation of 1 port vs 2 —
Imagine if you do so well with your networking of this, and now you need to add another Mac Pro with 10GbE, or some other 10Gb capable system…..great, but you don’t have anything with another 10GbE port on it to use…..ho hum…..Now you may be forced to buy a very expensive $12K-15K ALL 10GbE based switch just to support the three of you on the same network….at minimum, if you decide to opt out of the switch, your 3rd system still needs a 10GbE connection, so you’ll need to consider buying an additional, dedicated server, and an additional QUAD or SIX port 10GbE adapter just to get the three systems connected to the same network point to see one another…..
(now your savings up front…..just became an expense later in the future)

Final thoughts to consider….

I personally expect to see a higher port count Copper RJ45 10GbE Card come out and one that will be supported under Mac OS X….it would only be sensible since there are equally port count qualified 1GbE versions now.

The idea of being able to share and move data easily on a network is that you will in turn spend less time trying to get each other access to the data, and hence be more productive….in turn the increase productivity will institute new growth, and the new growth means the need for more connections as new people come in, more networking bandwidth, greater expandability, etc etc etc…….

Why limit yourself now with and upgrade of a single port / fiber Ethernet adapter, and instead upgrade now using a Dual Port RJ45 adapter and keep in mind your plan of growth later because you will use the extra port / or find a use for it….

Ultimately your growth depends on your dreams coming true in the future of your business? Why limit that if you don’t have to?

Just my $00.02

Matt G

[Paul Mitchell]

Thanks Matt for taking the time to share your thoughts, and everyone that’s contributed so far

You are correct with everything you’ve said, I’m still new and green to the world of networking so I don’t know much about the different types of connections, etc

I’m a colorist

At this point I’m trying to put together a small, low budget, 1 person system. To run avid mc6, final cut, adobe premier, but mainly to run davinci resolve, no other person involved, people come to me with their projects on drives and then I just copy to my internal raid and work from that.

I Already have a 2010 2.93ghz 12 core with internal 10 tb raid 0 , 24 gb ram

And it runs beautifully, I can see myself running like this for a while, the system does everything I throw at it.

To maximize resolve’s performance I’m getting blackmagic Ultrascope, to use instead of Davinci’s internal scopes.

To do this, Ultrascope needs to run on an external Pc or another Mac, being a Mac guy I thought I would stick the Ultrascope Pcle card inside a 2008 8 core Mac, then I thought I could populate that second Mac with another 10 tb raid 0, i thought i could turn the second mac as an external raid, getting 2 birds with 1 stone to run Ultrascope and gain a second raid in one box, instead of getting a separate external raid box and card I would simply end up with 2 Mac towers

That second Mac would only be used to run the Ultrascope program and run the 2nd 10 tb raid 0

My idea was to then access the media off the second Mac from my main Mac , mainly DPX sequences, large files

I was hoping that I would be able to see the media as a mounted drive from within any application in my main Mac ,so I could load a DPX sequence and play it real time. 5 x 2 tb drives in raid 0 are fantastic for achieving HD DPX playback realtime

At this point I don’t see myself needing more than 20 tb total of storage ( 2x 10 tb on 2 macs) once a job is done after some time goes by I just delete it if I need room, if for any reason a year later client wants something changed then they would bring their drives back

It’s a 1 person operation or mini facility, that’s why the 1 port only idea, only 2 macs needed

But it looks like I was way off in how it thought this process would work. In other words don’t think this would work

So I’m thinking of waiting for a possible new macro with thunderbolt and then just get a thunderbolt external raid

And I’ll run Ultrascope on a cheap Pc

We’ll see what develops in the next couple of months, I’m ok waiting

[Matt Geier]

Hey Paul,

Thanks for posting more info. My pleasure to share my opinion.

I think you should certainly stop by the Small Tree booth at NAB and see what you can see there.

DPX sequences can run in real time on Mac OS and equally on a Windows or Linux system as well, and do so over 10Gb Ethernet.
The bandwidth of 10bit sequences like DPX are in the area of 130-160 MB/sec per sequence…..10GbE is certainly the way to go if you want to work with Ethernet. I would start being careful about the choice of hardware to play the video out over the network then as well.

The real trick to getting it working to go real time, using uncompressed, all the time, and always being able to support “X” number of sequences concurrently.

Depending on your specific needs….maybe you only need 1 happening, or maybe you need 3 or more happening at once…

Personally I would not set my heart on being comfortable with the use of something like an internal software RAID configuration to get this working the way you’ll expect it to either.
Software RAID configurations that I’ve been privy to, always add a lot of extra operating overhead to the operating system and the overall design of the configured system.

Software RAIDS tend to be inefficient for good, sustainable and reliable real time capabilities…….not saying something doesn’t exists…..

I’d be curious to hear some other opinions on this software RAID idea and running uncompressed real time to see what they think, or if they concur.

I’m sure at NAB this year, you’ll find the answer you’re looking for.

I highly encourage you (and anyone) to stop at Small Tree’s booth to discuss these types of topics. Ethernet is certainly viable for you.

I know some amounts of uncompressed video streams are supported on the new shared storage solution as well.

It runs a Linux based operating system BTW…..

I have no doubt you’ll be impressed with the response you’d get!
I hear that the booth is going to be pretty spectacular this year as well!

I’m looking forward to watching this thread develop for you.

Thanks again!

Matt

[Neil Sadwelkar]

So basically you needed another system to put your UltraScope in. And BM’s spec said it needed to be a MacPro. So you thought if I’m using a MacPro why not let it do some storage too rather than just scope work.

Bear in mind the the UltraScope will also eat some CPU cycles, so no matter if you have 10GigE between the two MacPros, when the Ultrascope MacPro goes into ‘server mode’ when you run files off it, particularly DPX sequences, you may see some performance difference between UltraScope running or not.

A better bet is to use a cheap PC for the Ultrascope and a good SAS RAID for additional storage.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Paul Mitchell]

Hi Neil

thanks for the information, I will get a PC to run Ultrascope alone

thanks again

[Jeff Baker]

Hi Bob, I just read your Maxx Digital testimonial and had them send me over a quote. I ended up feeling like someone who had accidentally waked into a Ferrari dealer intending to buy a Honda. My bad. I work at a small non-profit liberal arts college so I need to figure out the cheap way to do this.

We have 3 editing mac pro editing stations all in the same room, and I just want one of them to handle all the storage and hold all the video and video project files for the other workstations, and still be an editing station.

I was thinking a multi-port 10gb Ethernet card in that station, but don’t know if I could just use the 1gb cards that come with mac pros or if they would need single port 10gb cards for them. I also need internet access for the machines, so does that mean I would need a switch, or could the 2nd Ethernet card in the mac pros handle that?

We edit with premiere pro, so we ingest avchd and P2 HD (720P30) footage and use it without transcoding.

I am about to order the third mac pro so any help would be appreciated so I know how to configure it if so (or if) we can use it as a video editing station and the primary video storage system.

[Cesar Cabrera]

Good morning. It is possible to install a small tree or atto 10gig E to already running Xsan with a Rorke Galaxy 3g and change the network from fiber to ethernet 10gig and leave the Galaxy and the server in fiber?

[Steve Modica]

[Cesar Cabrera] “It is possible to install a small tree or atto 10gig E to already running Xsan with a Rorke Galaxy 3g and change the network from fiber to ethernet 10gig and leave the Galaxy and the server in fiber?”

Not sure of the layout here. If the clients currently have FC cards, you’d have to switch them over to FCoE and purchase an FCoE switch to handle the conversion between the MDCs and the storage’s FC ports. Cisco Nexus switches do this (that’s what we use internally for development).

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications