10G to SAN

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Neil –
I didn’t even know the article was up.
It’s the exact system that I build all the time. There is a dedicated SERVER (in this case for Universal, and old Mac Pro). This has a 10G card inside it (I am using the ATTO 10G card). Each client has the new Sonnet Twin10G, but this can be any 10G product on the client computer. You don’t have to have 10G – you just get the slower speeds. The server 10G card connects to the 10G switch, and now all the clients connect to the 10G switch.

You just can’t daisy chain a bunch of dual port 10G boxes, and have a working SAN or NAS. The rules are the same.

Want a tiny system – Mac Mini (tiny, correct ?) – with one of these Sonnet boxes. Don’t forget your Thunderbolt drive array ! This ain’t gonna work on an internal drive inside the Mac Mini ! There are lots of companies (Maxx, G-Tech, Promise, etc.) that are making fast 8 bay Thunderbolt arrays. Now plug that sonnet box directly into each client computer, or if you want the fast speeds, plug into a 10G switch.

SO, you want portable – the mac mini is tiny, the switch is 1 rack unit. These Sonnet boxes are tiny. The only thing NOT tiny is the 8 bay DISK DRIVE ARRAY. But is this drive array any larger than the camera rig ?

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Thanks, Bob.

Of course, lots of those who read the piece are going home thinking, “Hey this is easy, just connect any 10G switch to 4-6 machines, each with a 10G Sonnet, and have one ‘server’ and you’ve got a shared storage”.

But this Twin 10G opens up possibilities for DITs on set where, increasingly, MacBook Pros are being used and often one needs to deploy two or more and share storage for multi cam feature shoots.

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

[Bob Zelin]

It is easy.
Use a Mac Book Pro as your server. Connect a Thunderbolt drive array to your Mac Book Pro.
Connect a 10G Thunderbolt Box. Connect a 10G switch to your Thunderbolt box.

That’s it.
Plug in your client computers (let’s say all Mac Book Pro Clients). Want 10G speed – plug in a 10G Thunderbolt box to that client Mac Book Pro. Yes, at a certain point you will start to choke the bandwidth because you only have one thunderbolt buss on your server Mac Pro (unlike a new Mac Pro with three thunderbolt busses, or the old Mac Pro tower with PCIe slots).

But you can use just Mac Book Pro’s for this. The only non portable item is the disk drive array, which needs to be an 8 bay drive array. And that is smaller than the suitcase that you carry your clothing in.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Thanks Bob.

Now I need to find a large enough place on a movie set with aircon, to try this out.

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

[Nat Jencks]

Does the extra ethernet port on the sonnet box provide anything useful? Not sure how one would use it.

Can you run two ethernet cables to the switch and do port trunking to get more bandwidth? Seems like it would be hard to saturate even one line of 10GBs ethernet although I guess technically TB2 does 20GB but I thought that just meant 10GBs each way.

So why the second ethernet port on these sonnet boxes? Are they better than the promise sanlink2?

best-
-Nat