10G Network / NAS

[Bob Zelin]

Small Tree makes wonderful 10 Gig equipment. You can get this thru Small Tree or Maxx Digital, as a 10 gig Final Share system. Please understand that you are dealing with drive arrays that work at about 700MB/sec, so if you are running 2K dpx files at 292MB/sec, you are not going to get all 4 people working off of one drive array. If you are working at ProRes422HQ for example, which is 30MB/sec, then 4×30 is 120MB/sec, but 4 x 300 = 1200, and the only way to get that is with 2 modern RAID 5 arrays striped RAID 50 together. JMR and others for example offer a single array that can do this (because they have 2 ATTO R380 cards in the same chassis with 2 8 bay arrays in the same box). I cannot begin to stress to you that math is math – if you need 300MB/sec x 4 people, that is 1200MB/sec, and if you don’t have a drive array that can do this, then you will fail.
I don’t understand a company that has FOUR workstations that needs to do 300MB/sec that is on a “budget”.

There are alternate fibre solutions that are based on the ATTO Faststream (also from JMR, Sonnet and others) that can do this
but these are not “cheap” solutions, even though they are a fraction of the price of XSAN (for example).

You can do the Small Tree 10 gig solution right now for 40 grand with the 10 gig switch, but until 6 gig SATA drives are available, you are still stuck with a single drive array at 700MB/sec.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Alex,
let me be a little more clear for you. If you can deal with a 10 Meter cable limitation (30′) from the server computer and drives, the 10 Gig ethernet equipment from Small Tree or Maxx Digital will cost you about $8540, including four 10 meter Twinax cables that connect from the server to the 10 Gig cards inside each of your MAC computers. Add a MAC Pro as a server computer, and a big drive array, and you have exactly what you want. If 10 meters is not long enough, you will have to go to a 10 Gig fibre soultion with LC fibre connectors – unfortunately this will cost a LOT more than $8540. I don’t make up these prices.

You will use simple Apple FileSharing instead of specialty software to make this work. And what I said before about the drive speed limitation holds true. While you can get expensive SAS drives today for super duper speeds, if you go with a normal 16 bay SATA drive array, you will peak out at 800MB/sec (if you are lucky – more like 700MB/sec) total bandwidth.

Does this sound like an acceptable solution to you ?

Bob Zelin

[Alex Cheng]

Dear Bon

Thanks for the shares and your prompt actions
I agree that you suggested about the Prores solution, in fact we may also considering the neo3D codec to handle part of the 3D stereoscropic projects, how do you think of this codec ?

however in some reason, we must still think into the DPX format say..
the master is in film or DCP finish, and in fact the existing DI suit (Scratch and Resolve) dosn’t supported Prores codec…

besides, going back to the 10GB networking solution, since the four DI station were in the same VT room and the connection not more then 5 Meter
how does the performance comparing between Editshare and Maxx Digital? do Maxx Digital modifier the hardware driver to enchance the tranfer speed in TCP/IP protocol ? sicne this is what Editshare does, such that to handle the 2K dpx sequences.

Again, appreciated for your prompt actions

Best Regards
Alex

[Bob Zelin]

Maxx Digital, Small Tree AND EditShare offer 10 Gig ethernet solutions. EditShare uses Myricom 10Gig ethernet cards, and Maxx Digital and Small Tree use Small Tree 10Gig Ethernet cards.

The limitation of the cable length is based on the cable type you use. 10Gig copper (currently CX4 and Twinax) can run between 10 – 15 meters (30 – 45 feet). The more expensive cards are 10Gig fibre, which use SFP+ adaptors, and cost a LOT more money – but you can run very far away with this. If you can get away with 5 meters, this is no problem for copper cable and 10 Gig connectivity. May I suggest that you CALL EACH COMPANY, and ask them for their prices, and what they can do for you. All are fine professional companies, all offer working 10 Gigabit ethernet solutions. PLEASE REMEMBER that just because you have 10 Gig ethernet (which will operate at 350MB/sec with Jumbo Frames enabled) – this DOES NOT MEAN that your drive arrays can do miracles. A typical new drive array with 16 drives in it can do 700 – 750MB/sec. The only way around this is to use TWO drive chassis (like 2 8 bay drive chassis) with TWO host controllers (like 2 ATTO cards), and create a RAID 50 array (stripe 2 RAID 5 arrays together). This can be done manually, or you can get an elegant but expensive chassis from JMR that does this already in one box. Some people prefer to “build it yourself” – but this is up to you – it’s just 2 drive arrays and two controller cards stripped together for greater speed.

EVEN WITH THAT – if you need 4 guys running 300MB/sec each, that is 1200MB/sec. This is pushing the current limits of SATA drive arrays, even in the “fancy schmancy” configuration I just described – even if you use Fibre Channel (like Active Storage or Promise).

Until 6 Gig SATA drives are available (or if you are willing to splurge for much more expensive SAS drives), you can’t get speeds with SATA drives faster than this.

Bob Zelin

[Alex Cheng]

Thanks for the shares Bob, I would ask for each company to see, and look for the 6 gig sata, haha!!

[Bob Zelin]

Alex,
if you want to contact me directly, so I can talk with you about these different solutions, you can reach me at
maxavid@cfl.rr.com
or go to https://www.bobzelin.com

Bbo Zelin

[Caspian Brand]

Hi Alex,

What type of Fibre Channel storage are your systems using at present for Direct Attached?

You can easily alter this into a simple Fibre Channel based SAN by adding a Fibre Channel switch and SAN sharing software like SANmp. 2K DPX sequences are very demanding on MetaData requests which can be crippling to systems like XSAN and other high performance NAS devices. SANmp could enable you to share access to the storage in real-time and also enable you to lock out performance to a specific array or set of disks when needed with our Write Exclusive feature.

https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=8

Additionally, if you want to, you can re-share the volumes over GbE or 10GbE if you upgrade your network with 10GbE HBAs in your computers and a 10GbE switch from someone like Force10 Networks.

Furthermore, you could add a Storage Server to the network as well, providing additional shared workspaces to handle more connection options and protocols like our EVO system, which provides Fibre Channel and Ethernet connectivity to the same LUNs, comes with a built-in Fibre Channel to iSCSI Bridge, and can also be configured with a 10GbE Interface, as well. You can read more about it here:

https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/video-san.php

Let us know if we can be of any assistance in making a decision to upgrade your network.

Best Regards,

-Caspian

Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions