Best budget SAN solution??

[Bernard Lamborelle]

These are all good options, worth investigating.

SANmp and FibreJet can be purchased as software only, but Terrablock and EditShare are integrated solutions. In this case, you trade your ability to purchase off-the-shelf storage down the road for a simplified setup. But considering that storage requirements doubles every 18 months, this also means having to pay a premium for every TB of data you will ever need…

Other than EditShare, all of the above solutions fall into the “Volume-Level” category. This means you need to split your shared storage in multiple volumes. That’s because only one computer has the ability to write a given volume at any given time – the other computer(s) can only read files (they cannot write). Personally (and I am obviously very biased!), I feel that File-level sharing is the most natural way of working, and offers the truest collaborative workflow. Everyone can gain access to a global pool of data: they can read and write all they want; the available space can be used for any projects; there is no need to shuffle content from one volume to another; no risk of versioning errors, etc. In the end, isn’t this the very reason you are looking into SAN technology in the first place??

There are two software-only solutions available on the Mac that will give you file-level sharing over FC: Apple Xsan (OEM of Quantum StorNext) and Tiger Technology MetaSAN. While Xsan is a complex file system in itself, MetaSAN manages your existing volumes. Both will give you comparable performances. The difference is that with MetaSAN, you can easily take any volume and attach it or disconnect it from your SAN (all files and data is preserved). With Xsan, you have to format your storage before you can add it to the SAN, and you have to re-format it again when removing it (losing everything). Of course, not everyone needs to add or remove volumes on a regular basis, but it is nevertheless reassuring to know you can always take your RAID, disconnect it from the SAN, and plug it straight into your Mac to get your job out on a stormy Friday night…

The drawback of a file-level sharing solution is that it is slightly more complex to setup because you need a metadata master that will act as a

[Stephen Buchanan]

Other than EditShare, all of the above solutions fall into the “Volume-Level” category. This means you need to split your shared storage in multiple volumes. That’s because only one computer has the ability to write a given volume at any given time – the other computer(s) can only read files (they cannot write).

Really?!? Thanks for pointing this out!

It’s a fact that is not mentioned anywhere on the SANmp website or product information.

And it’s a very important point, because having everything in one big volume is kind of half the reason most production companies want to implement a SAN in the first place!

[Ramona Howard]

We have an announcement in regards to this (should see the official press release next week but here it is the workflow part of that).

The good thing is this gives options as StorNext is widely supported.

Cheers,
Ramona

“Working closely with current client Cineworks in Florida the focus was SAN as everything else with RaveHD fit exactly to their needs”, adds Howard. “Transferring from film in 4:4:4 RGB, 1920×1080 HD dual link video for independent features directly into the SAN thru RaveHD has saved them tremendous amounts of time”.

The Cineworks workflow – in a nutshell
“In the past, we were using another product to ingest the dual link video from an SR deck”, comments Mike Most, Chief Technologist at Cineworks. “We wanted to streamline this workflow for a number of reasons. Efficiency was one primary reason, but we also wanted to eliminate any video compression if possible, even though the compression used in the SR format is very light and has very minimal impact on the image itself. We also wanted to be able to share the files for things such as visual effects and title work, something that we were finding ourselves doing more and more of. It was clear that a high performance SAN was a central part of the solution, but we also needed a device that would work with our DaVinci based telecine controllers and allow the dual link video to be converted to a DPX sequence on the fly under the DaVinci TLC editing control. It was vital that the device look like a standard VTR to the DaVinci, but actually function as a real time DPX recorder. Ideally, the device could also be set up as a client on the SAN, allowing us to go directly from telecine to the SAN, writing the DPX files with proper time code embedding directly to a SAN
volume.

“The RaveHD and BrightDrive systems use Quantums StorNext file system, which makes it completely transparent across multiple operating system platforms. This was critical for us, as we use both Windows PC’s and Apple Macintosh computers, and it was critical for operation of the RaveHD, which is a Linux based device. The BrightDrive system is designed specifically for dealing with large file” sequences and is “sequence aware,” allowing for optimization and maximum performance for things like the DPX file sequences that are at the heart of our workflow. In addition, the RaveHD has 6 TB of its own local storage, allowing us to use it as a standalone VTR replacement as well as a gateway to the SAN. When space on the SAN needs to be conserved, we can record to the Raves local storage and do a very fast copy to the SAN volume when needed. And finally, the RaveHD can be used to play back sequences that are stored on the SAN, giving us another way to record rendered sequences from projects to tape without having to use other systems and applications”.

” The combined efforts of SpectSoft (RaveHD), Cinesys (integration, installation, and support of the SAN and all connected devices), Bright Systems (SAN supplier), and Quantum (StorNext) made this workflow possible for us”.

[Alex Desrial]

My post super and I have been investigating (reasonably) affordable shared storage systems and these are some of the options we’ve come up with. Do you have any experience with any of these systems? We are not anticipating expanding beyond two edit bays, but would like to understand how/whether expanding would be possible, if necessary. We are OK with granting permissions if necessary. And, while we are editing this project in SD, we’d like to understand how we might be able to expand the system to accommodate much more storage for our next project, if we choose to go HD.

Hi OtherPaw,

With 1O K, I think you can not go with Brigth Drive or other turn key solution.
Volume level SAN is your close to reality FibreSAN solution.

Having 2 FCP edit suite running 10 bit SD Uncompressed is indeed easy to solve. I have already implemented the solution 3 years ago. We set-up for 4 edit suite , each edit suite require 2-3 real 10 SD bit uncompressed. Three of them are still using PM G5 , but you have a better computer spec.

You said you already have the FC HBA on your MacPro. ( make sure your HBA is NOT ATTO EL Series, as this is not friendly with FJ)

Now you only need to buy :
– 2 licence FibreJet SAN software
– Infotrend Eonstor A16F or S16F ( single controler) and fill it up with 1 TB SATA II Drive.
– 2 FO cable.

As you only have 2 edit suites, you don’t need to buy FC Switch at the moment., because on the Infortrend come already 2 channel 4 Gb port and you can utilise them replacing FC Switch.

You will be fine with it. Now you can work faster than before, there is no media need to copy any more. Each editor can read all volume. You can utilize all media on any volumes . As we have our own volume, why we need to write to other volume !!.

Hope this Help.

Alex Desrial
MediaIntegra – Jakarta

[Alex Desrial]

My post super and I have been investigating (reasonably) affordable shared storage systems and these are some of the options we’ve come up with. Do you have any experience with any of these systems? We are not anticipating expanding beyond two edit bays, but would like to understand how/whether expanding would be possible, if necessary. We are OK with granting permissions if necessary. And, while we are editing this project in SD, we’d like to understand how we might be able to expand the system to accommodate much more storage for our next project, if we choose to go HD.

Hi OtherPaw,

With 1O K, I think you can not go with Brigth Drive or other turn key solution.
Volume level SAN is your close to reality FibreSAN solution.

Having 2 FCP edit suite running 10 bit SD Uncompressed is indeed easy to solve. I have already implemented the solution 3 years ago. We set-up for 4 edit suite , each edit suite require 2-3 real 10 SD bit uncompressed. Three of them are still using PM G5 , but you have a better computer spec.

You said you already have the FC HBA on your MacPro. ( make sure your HBA is NOT ATTO EL Series, as this is not friendly with FJ)

Now you only need to buy :
– 2 licence FibreJet SAN software
– Infotrend Eonstor A16F or S16F ( single controler) and fill it up with 1 TB SATA II Drive.
– 2 FO cable.

As you only have 2 edit suites, you don’t need to buy FC Switch at the moment., because on the Infortrend come already 2 channel 4 Gb port and you can utilise them replacing FC Switch.

You will be fine with it. Now you can work faster than before, there is no media need to copy any more. Each editor can read all volume. You can utilize all media on any volumes . As we have our own volume, why we need to write to other volume !!.

Hope this Help.

Alex Desrial
MediaIntegra – Jakarta