Computer Upgrade Question

[Douglas Learner]

Andre,

It sounds like it should work, but I’d suggest talking to the folks at FibreShare as they probably have the most experience with the setup you’re considering.

You might also want to step back a bit to look at your workflow and ask if this is the best setup for your needs before investing in a new FC adapter and a new version of FibreShare. You have old equipment that may not have much more life, and it’s also possible you don’t need Fibre Channel to meet your requirements. Are you editing over the network or moving assets from the Xserve to the Power Macs for editing? What format are you editing in? How much storage do you have on your Xserve? Are you planning an expansion of storage or the number of edit stations in the next six to twelve months? All things to look at and consider.

Finally, Final Cut Studio 3 will not work on the G5, so you’l be running different versions on the two Macs. That may not be an issue, but it’s worth considering going in.

Good luck.

[Caspian Brand]

Hello Andre,

[Andre Kelman] “Will I be able to replace one of the G5s with a brand new Mac Pro with out upgrading any of the other hardware components ?”

Technically the answer is yes, while you do have old hardware it can continue to be used with newer HBAs, which have support for older Fibre speeds, in a newer computer.

Should this be the priority is another question worth considering. Old drives will only spin together for so long, and no drive manufacturer that I know of warranties their drives for longer than 5 years.

What are the immediate needs you have, which require a new computer and the latest version of Final Cut Studio, versus, having a fresh batch of hard drives which you rely on for all of your data day to day. At this point, a storage upgrade of some sort should become part of your upgrade plan as well.

Budgets and priorities being what they are, feel free to contact me directly if you’d like to discuss more details about your environment. We can provide you with an HBA / SAN software upgrade path, as well as storage solutions which are accessible over Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet.

https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=13

Best Regards,

Caspian Brand
cbrand@studionetworksolutions.com

Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions

[Andre Kelman]

Thanks for your reply Douglas,

I will reach out to Fibre Share and consult with them for sure.

We don’t really work over a network to access or edit any of the files on the Xserve. The 2 computer stations are both connected directly to the switch, and the switch is connected directly to the Xserve. All connections are over FIbre Channel. We never have to move the files to the computer first.

The Xserve is about 5 yrs old now and has a total capacity of about 6TB and uses IDE/parallel drives. I don’t think we will be upgrading the storage capacity anytime soon for budget reasons. When we edit or do any transcoding of our assets we usually read and write directly to the Xserve. Only one machine has write privileges at any given time. Both can read at the same time. I think this is a fibreshare thing.

When editing we usually work with SD material. Sometimes it’s DV, sometimes it’s 8-bit uncompressed, sometimes it’s Prores. We never edit uncompressed HD material as our machines are outdated and the data chokes up when playing back. This is true when the files are on the computer locally, playing back of the internal, non boot secondary hard drive. If we do, we have to convert it to a HD Prores codec first.

File conversions or transcoding is the real major reason we are upgrading one of the G5s. We usually get HD Prores files that need to be converted to SD 8 bit-uncompressed and it usually takes from 8-10 hours to convert, depending on the duration of the files. We are always on a tight schedule and a new Mac Pro will help us speed things up a bit.

-andre

[Andre Kelman]

HI Caspian,

Although I agree that getting a new batch of drives for our Xserve is important, it’s just not in our budget. All the drives on our Xserve are striped in a RAID 5 configuration so we don’t lose any data when one of the drives goes down.

-andre

[Guthrie Andres]

Just from personal experience, we’ve had some issues mixing PPC and Intel computers on our Xsan. Sometimes if a project is captured on an Intel, and then opened on a PPC, we will have to reconnect all the media. We are currently running all PPC except for one Intel client. We’ve tried all sorts of things, even backing up the entire SAN, reformatting all the clients, and starting fresh, and these issues still persist. This FY I’m trying to pass through a proposal to upgrade everything else to Intel.
-Guthrie

[Ryan Stoutenborough]

“I’m trying to pass through a proposal to upgrade everything else to Intel”

Good luck Guthrie, we’re all pulling for you 🙂

-ryan

https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/

[Douglas Learner]

Andre, I believe you have an Xserve RAID, which was Apple’s fibre channel-based storage device, as opposed to an Xserve, which is a server that runs Mac OS X Server software and has room for only three internal hard drives.

Given the work you’re doing there might be a different way to accomplish it without upgrading the FibreShare software or getting a fibre channel adapter for the new Mac Pro. Essentially, you’d be moving away from fibre channel and using Gigabit Ethernet instead. This will likely work because Gigabit Ethernet has enough bandwidth to support your SD and DV editing.

Here’s roughly how everything goes together. One PowerMac G5 has a fibre channel connection directly to the Xserve RAID. You add a multi-port Gigabit Ethernet adapter from the folks at Small Tree, which connects to a Gigabit Ethernet switch that supports link aggregation. Small Tree can help you with that as well. File sharing gets turned on on the Power Mac G5. The second Power Mac G5 and the new Mac Pro connect to the switch via Gigabit Ethernet. You’ll then be able to share files from the Xserve RAID to the second Power Mac G5 and the new Mac Pro

This is a quick and dirty overview of what connects to what. The folks at Small Tree, or a Mac consultant if you have one available, can help you with the specifics. Give Small Tree a call to find out more and to make sure your hardware will be compatible with theirs.

One final note. We’ve been seeing more and more Xserve RAIDs fail. Not the drives, but the RAID controllers and the mid-plane assemblies. Last time I checked Apple does not have replacement parts, so the solution is usually hunting for used equipment. Please make sure you are regularly backing up of your data. You should also begin looking for a replacement for the Xserve RAID so you have a plan in case it fails. In the approach I described above the Xserve RAID can be replaced by an eSATA-based array. That’s another conversation for you to have with the folks at Small Tree.

[Douglas Learner]

Guthrie, sounds like you may need to have your metadata controller running on an Intel Mac. Quirky doings with Xsan. Send me a note — douglas [at] macguynetworks [dot] com — and I’ll try to get you more specific information.