10Gb NAS vs Post Oriented SAN

[David Roth weiss]

[Nat Jencks] “Can someone tell me why one of these new generation 10Gbps NAS arrays w/ 12 drives or more is not a good alternative to the traditional Post oriented SAN solutions from folks like Facilis, SNS, Promax, etc?

On the surface these seem to offer better price/performance that solutions from smaller companies which specifically target Post.”

Hi Nat,

You said it yourself when you said, “on the surface, these seem to offer better price/performance.” That’s exactly why do it yourselfers and IT departments fail all the time when attempting to cobble together servers for shared video storage.

When working with video you need more than just bandwidth, and not just any file server will do the job. Streaming raw footage from modern high resolution cameras requires very low latency, high throughput connectivity and extremely fast disk arrays that need to be specially tuned to provide the right kind of bandwidth.

Once you begin streaming that footage to multiple editors simultaneously you need yet to achieve yet another level of optimization and speed to ensure each stream arrives on demand and plays uninterrupted.

You’re looking to take a server designed to share Word docs, MP3s, and JPEG images, and wondering why it won’t deliver shared storage performance for video. If it were that easy, not one of the companies advertising shared storage here would be in business.

As an example, the ProMAX Platform Series (they are NAS systems BTW, not SANs) were designed from the ground up to deliver concurrent streaming video footage to your entire creative team, all while allowing you to monitor and control storage, permissions, and bandwidth limits in an easy to use interface. Our own extremely low-latency packet-lossless protocol makes it work, and enables us to guaranty performance. And, we don’t use just any old Ethernet cards, we’ve vetted every available card on the market to find the best performing ones, as all cards are NOT equal.

So, unless you’re prepared to write your own software protocols, and you’re up for testing loads of different Ethernet cards for performance, you’d best rely on professionals to do that for you. And remember, the most expensive hardware in the world is that which does not perform as required to accomplish the task at hand.

I hope this helps… If you need more assistance feel free to call me at ProMAX – 949/861-2709

David

David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.com

Sales | Integration | Support

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Nat Jencks]

[David Roth Weiss] “You’re looking to take a server designed to share Word docs, MP3s, and JPEG images, and wondering why it won’t deliver shared storage performance for video. If it were that easy, not one of the companies advertising shared storage here would be in business.”

I certainly appreciate that being true in the past, and perhaps your right about these two devices, but it looks to me like in the last year or so some of the “IT class” type devices on the market have really stepped up to the point where they are close to competitive with traditional post production market purpose built solutions.

But maybe I’m wrong!

But both the QNAP and the Synology devices I linked to claim over 3000MBps throughput (aggregate internal) and use SSD caching etc.

Is it really fair to classify these type of devices as something intended for word docs and jpegs?

Specifically what problems could one expect when using a device such as the linked Synology or QNAP rather than a purpose built solution?

Are you certain that an 8 drive Promax Platform would outperform either of these devices in terms of bandwidth and latency?

Does anyone out there have direct experience with either the QNAP or Synology devices in the class I linked to? Please note that obviously QNAP and Synology both make devices with radically lower internal bandwidth, and until recently even their highest end NAS devices capped at 1000MBps internal bandwidth as opposed to the 3000+ available in these type of next-gen devices.

Vendors please take note, I am not attacking the very fine products which you sell on these forums, just looking for specific concrete feedback!

Thanks!
-Nat

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Nat –
I may have to strangle you, as I know the bottom line here. Why ? Because you are asking “do I really need to buy Facilis, SNS, ProMax, etc., when I can spend SO MUCH LESS on QNAP or Synology ?”
That’s the real question – isn’t is ?

sorry for the attack now, but you deserve this –
1) you have NO IDEA of how little money is charged by Facilis, SNS, Promax, etc. for their systems – and ALL OF THEM (including all the “etc” companies) ALL SELL 10G Ethernet shared storage systems that do as good or BETTER a job of QNAP and Synology. They charge similar money, and they give you support (as you say “I don’t need support – I know how to read a manual”) –

2) QNAP and Synology (and Netstor, and Thecus and Other World Computing) all make WONDERFUL 10G based NAS systems that will in fact work – and guess what – THEY COST THE SAME or similar money that you will pay for one of the systems you mentioned (Facilis, SNS, ProMax, etc.).

Lets talk about QNAP, since they cost less than Synology –
You want a 12 bay ? The only one that will work will be the
QNAP TS 1279-U-RP
the 16 bay is the QNAP TS 16790U-RP
for the 12 bay, the expansion chassis is the REX-12-U-RP
and you need the X540 10Gig module on any of these to get the 10G to work.

So when you buy the 12 bay, you are also buying the 10 Gig option card, the drives, and a switch to make this work. This all adds up – and guess what – most of the companies are selling shared storage systems that start UNDER $10,000. SNS sells the 4 user Prodigy for $4700 ? Gee – isn’t this less than the QNAP – and they will give you support ?

I had a client of mine call me the other day, who owns a fully functional Final Share system, and said that he wanted to setup a system in his house that he could share 3 computers with (all Mac) and his MAXIMUM budget was $1350 for the whole this. I told him (not kidding – but I was kidding) that I was going to drive over there right now, and just kill him. You cant do shared storage for $1350 with some useless piece of crap Drobo.

What you CAN do is get a working shared storage system – and you can get it from QNAP or Synology IF YOU BUY THE RIGHT BOX FROM THEM. And for the SAME money, you can get it from the companies that you mentioned – Facilis, SNS, Promax, etc. without the aggravation.

I have often ranted about many companies (Lacie and Other World Computing comes to mind) – well these days – both Lacie and Other World Computing make WONDERFUL HI END PRODUCTS (like the OWC Jupiter series) and guess what – they charge just as much money for these products as the regular companies do – because it costs a lot of money to build GOOD STUFF, and companies like QNAP and Synology do make good stuff – and they charge appropriately for them.

Bob Zelin

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

[David Gagne]

Can we just sticky one of these posts from Bob? It seems everyone asks this question over and over, and then runs away when Bob answers.

It would be great if Bob just had the money laying around to lab and benchmark all these bad solutions out there to compare with the good ones.

I mean, you *can* do a file share out of a mac mini using an external disk and play back a single 1080 ProRes… but will it be reliable? What about when spotlight decides to reindex randomly? What if you try to connect more than 5 clients?

The point that Bob and others make is that if you’re charging money, you should be investing money so that you can CONTINUE to charge money. Clients don’t like it when you miss deadlines or worse, lose footage because you’re too cheap to back up.

[Nat Jencks]

Listen, everyone calm down 🙂 Except Bob. Thats fine.

I am not on a crazed quest to take the bread out of the mouths of the vendors who provide custom post production shared storage. I’ve purchased, used, and supported countless shared storage systems, avid unity’s to fiber jet, facilis, the works, some of them area amazing.

I appreciate the hard work that vendors put into creating solutions.

But i’ve also watched countless areas in post which used to be dominated by purpose built hardware change over time, and get to a point where commodity off the shelf hardware can do the job.

Maybe 10GB NAS solutions are not such an area yet.

But you cannot simply discount commodity hardware unconditionally.

Like I said, there may be specific reasons why one of these types of solutions is a bad idea, but thats exactly what I”m looking for, is the specific reasons why it wont work. E.g. sustained throughput is OK but latency is terrible so there will be annoying pauses when you press play… Or the management interface is horrible… or SMB connections like those used are not suitable and will lead to data corruption… or whatever.

Lets look at the example of the QNAP I linked and which Bob called out:

QNAP TS-1279U-RP populated with 2TB drives (24TB) = ~$6500
LAN-10G2T-U 10GB card for QNAP = $~700
Netgear XS708E = ~$900
Thunderbolt to 10GB Sanlink2 Boxes: ~$600 each.

Being yelled by Bob Zelin for wanting to do things on the cheap with commodity hardware instead of the tried and true gear that will actually work = priceless.

Like I said, I get it that this is probably a bad idea, and there ain’t no free lunch is this business. But what I want is the WHY? Like an annoying 3 year old.

A total of $9300 for entire package including 10GB NICs for clients and NAS, and 24TB of storage is pretty darn good. Its not ridiculously less than the turnkey purpose built post solutions but it is less.

(ducking as infuriated resellers and vendors hurl rotten tomatoes)…

best-
-Nat

[Bob Zelin]

But Nat –
you don’t need to duck angry vendors that advertise on Creative Cow. Guess what –
most of these companies, including the ones that you mentioned can sell you a shared storage
system for $9300. You are right – this is a good price, and because the market is competitive,
you can call the “usual players” and say “listen – this is my budget – just under 10 grand – what can you do for me” – and almost EVERYONE will have a solution for you.

Now that I said this – I am sure that all the vendors will do exactly this – “this is what we can offer you for under 10 grand”. And yes – the QNAP solution that you specified will work as well.

Bob Zelin

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

[Nat Jencks]

[Bob Zelin] “Now that I said this – I am sure that all the vendors will do exactly this – “this is what we can offer you for under 10 grand”. And yes – the QNAP solution that you specified will work as well. “

Thanks Bob, I really do appreciate the feedback. Its been a while since I shopped SAN, and I didn’t realize that it was possible to get anywhere near the QNAP or Synology level of performance for the just under $10K level.

Thanks for the feedback, time for me to talk to some vendors.

I’m hoping to be able to hit the SAN/NAS with two clients each pulling up to a single stream of 2K DPX (~275MBps), so an aggregate of ~700MBps with some overhead with up to 275MBps heading out over each 10Gbps connection… Do you think its reasonable to expect this level of performance from a SAN/NAS under $10K? A year or two ago I would have said of course not. Looking at the specs of a box like the QNAP or Synology with a claimed aggregate bandwidth of 3000MBps and dual 10Gbps connections I would hope yes, and perhaps other vendors have solutions that can do the same.

Or maybe this is a pipe dream 🙂

best-
-Nat

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Nat –

you are looking at crazy specs. Nothing is doing 3000 MB/sec – not from a single 16 or 24 bay drive chassis – I don’t care how much money you spend (well, maybe if you are using all SSD drives).
Top 16 bay chassis are doing about 1500 MB/sec. I don’t know where these crazy numbers come from.
A dual port 10G card will easily give you about 300 MB/sec per client – but thats the 2 ports on the QNAP or Synology server (or even my server) – so you need either a switch for more clients, or multi port cards, as offered by lots of the companies on this forum. AND THEN you need expensive 10G cards in your client computers to get this bandwidth. You don’t buy the QNAP, with the 10G card in the QNAP, and then plug it into your client computer’s 1G native ethernet port, and get 275 MB/sec. And these cards cost MONEY !

Everything adds up. Even with QNAP, even with Synology. Nothing is free. And when you start buying
Toshiba desktop drives instead of HGST Ultrastar or Western Digital RE series drives, and you start losing all your data, well, then your boss will fire you, and you will cry.

Bob Zelin

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

[Nat Jencks]

[Bob Zelin] “you are looking at crazy specs. Nothing is doing 3000 MB/sec “

I’m sure this crazy number comes from filling the 12 drive array with high end 6G SSDs. obviously this is “internal” bandwidth as well not practical bandwidth to a single client. Even so maybe this number is bogus, but i’m not sure. 12x high end SSDs in a RAID0 with 6G backplane might hit 3000MBps. In any case thats not what I would do, I would be using 12x 7200rpm in RAID5 or RAID6, but hopefully that would still cover up to 1000Mbps in internal bandwidth.

[Bob Zelin] “You don’t buy the QNAP, with the 10G card in the QNAP, and then plug it into your client computer’s 1G native ethernet port, and get 275 MB/sec. And these cards cost MONEY !”

Understood, in the hypothetical setup outlined earlier I was using the netgear switch and two sanlink2 thunderbolt to 10G adapters.

[Bob Zelin] “buying
Toshiba desktop drives instead of HGST Ultrastar or Western Digital RE series drives”

FWIW the price I threw out there for the QNAP was based on it being filled with western digital RE enterprise drives.

[Bob Zelin] “your boss will fire you, and you will cry. “

I’m my own boss, but I won’t rule out crying 🙂

Thanks
-Nat

[Bob Zelin]

Hey Nat –
I cry almost every day for making the wrong decisions on equipment I tell people to buy – and then they are ready to kill me. With so much mis information out there, it is very easy to make a mistake on what works, and what doesn’t work. And believe me, I get screwed all the time.

Bob Zelin

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