Building a SAN with a G5

[Bob Zelin]

I am told by Small Tree that you will get limited performance from a G5 and the Small Tree PXG6 card, and they advised against it. Believe me – I get asked this question all the time. You can certainly try it, and if it doesn’t work, if you then buy the new MAC Pro, and I bet Small Tree will “trade in” for a PEG6 card which is for the PCI-e buss.

You will face the same problem with the Cal Digit – the interface card for the old G5 is PCI-X, not PCI-e, so I don’t know if Cal Digit will have a host adaptor card for what you want to doin your old G5.

It’s not my money, but $3000 is not a lot of money to have the right computer for a shared storage system.

Bob Zelin

[Matt Geier]

Keith,

What Bob was describing is true.

Here’s the rule of thumb you want to use. This would allow you to determine if you’re going to have enough stuff to power your server configuration properly.

1Gb of Memory for every one client connected to the server
1Ghz of processor for every one gigabit port connected to the server.

This G5 you have, would be hard pressed to fully power a 4 port gigabit ethernet card, since that would be 5 total ports on the server.

In your case, the best thing to do is use this as an Edit bay, and put money into a new mac pro 8 core which is more then capable!

Thanks,

Matt G

Matt G.

[Eric Hansen]

i definitely agree with Matt here. before i used a G5 as a server, i tested a Dual 2.7 G5 with similar specs to yours with a direct attached Fibre Channel RAID. it was able to capture DVCPRO HD while 2 attached laptops were editing DVCPRO HD and i was amazed it worked in the first place. leaving Activity Monitor open, the processor was pinned the whole time. yes it did work, but it was running at 160-190% all the time. we decided this was not a good idea (and they wanted to attach more computers). the chances of a crash, or just burning out the computer were too high. and your computer is a Dual 2.0, so it probably wont be able to do what my computer was able to do. the fact that it was PCI-X was the nail in the coffin. so we used a G5 Quad 2.5, which has plenty of processor headroom for multiple connected systems, and it’s PCIe.

so if you have a G5 Quad sitting around, go for it. but otherwise follow Bob’s advice – $3000 is nothing where reliability is concerned. go for a new Mac Pro.

on a side note, the facility where i installed both the G5 server and a Mac Pro server is quickly running out of space. their Mac Pro is only one HDElement away from being maxed out. if i was installing it again, i would go with a card similar to the RocketRAID 4322 and a RAID enclosure with a built-in SAS expander. so if you think you’ll ever need more space than 15TB, skip the CalDigit card. otherwise, its a great card and has been trouble free for me.

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Steve Knattress]

Hi All

I have recently started reading the articles and threads on the “low cost” SAN

I am researching for a system that we can use as a flyaway edit, to reduce excess baggage, the idea is to ingest/edit/dub on 3ish FCP (laptop) computers for tx the same day. (with another computer providing graphic files. (SD XDcam footage (?) although I assume that eventually the programme will go HD)

Is there any way that a non-desk top computer (ie smaller weight and size than a mac pro) could be used as a server, to supply the 3 workstations. ( Only one possibly would be editing all of the time, one ingesting/viewing, and one doing a final voice over dub and playout.)

Any suggestions for shared storage? ( I already have a Proavio 1.5TB raid 5, (Esata+FW800+USB2) which would provide enough storage, and a 17″ MacBook Pro (usually with a smaller 1TB GRaid2, I have used for programmes with a more relaxed tx.)

Thanks Steve

[Eric Hansen]

sorry steve, it wont work

you need 3 things in a video media server – 1. Ethernet ports for your connected systems, 2. enough processor power to move media around, and 3. fast storage. the only answer here is a Mac Pro or Xserve. nothing else has enough slots to do what you need to do. i dont think your current storage is fast enough. even though you’re using smallish files (XDCAM SD, which i have no experience with), you still need to handle lots of I/Os. a dedicated card-based RAID using SAS, Fibre Channel, etc is the only way to go. Firewire and even eSATA will probably choke (you could try eSATA, but i really have my doubts – a lot depends on the eSATA card you’re using). you COULD use a PCIe port expander on a MacBook Pro. but they cost as much as a new computer, and the MacBook Pro’s bus probably isnt fast enough anyway.

you can certainly edit with MacBooks and MacBook Pros. i think even if you have to get a Mac Pro as your server, your entire rig will still be pretty small.

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com