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DIY SAN Advice.
Greetings All,
Our production company is looking to join the wide world of centralized digital storage, and the task of researching and designing this system has fallen to me (by default, as the more tech savvy of the group). We’re currently running 2 MBPro’s and 1 iMac, with plans to add a 2nd in the near future. Ideally, we’d love a SAN solution that would allow multiple (4) editors to edit from a central source, but I understand our budget might hold us back. Trying to stay under (runs for cover) $3k.
The current system I’m looking at:
New Mac Mini (running OSX Server) via TB 2 to ThunderBay 4 Raid 5
Two Ethernet lines from Mac Mini (built in port and TB to Ethernet adapter) bonded, running to Netgear ProSafe M4100-D12G, then out to our various Macs.
I would welcome any and all insight into this set up. We’re a predominately ProRes facility running Adobe CC. Some motion graphic work (which doesn’t need to be completed on the server side), but mostly vanilla editing (although multi cam functionality would be a huge plus).Disclaimer: I’m not a network/IT guy by any means, just a graphic artist with some hardware knowledge and Google (heavy emphasis on the Cow’s forums). If this is straight looney, and will in no way work/meet our needs, I fully expect to hear it/get an ear full.
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5 Replies
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You will get connectivity and may be able to run a couple of streams. You’re going to run into two bottlenecks. 1) Latency due to using standard network connections 2) You’re limiting yourself to 2Gb of total bandwidth, which isn’t a ton. You’d be best off with ProResLT in this set up and will likely run into a fair amount of push-pull of files locally for editorial.
If you can push budget to $6k, we just released Platform Portable a new server that allows you to utilize your existing external hard drives without those bottlenecks. You can see more info here
Either way, good luck!
Nate Cooper
ProMAX
(949) 861-2725
nate.cooper@promax.com -
Thanks for the info Nate. I’m going to see if we can’t stretch the budget to accommodate your solution, as it seems like a great fit for us!
For my own info (and pardon my ignorance), does the latency issue lie with the mac mini connections, the switch, or a combo?Thanks again,
André
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It’s generally a combination.
On the network connection side (AFP/SMB) those protocols are designed for packet transmission that accommodates for connectivity loss, this is great for 99% of the world, and it’s a hassle for streaming non-buffered high bandwidth video (keep in mind, in the scheme of formats, even a light/efficient professional protocol is massive compared to what consumers are using). This is why local storage or any blocklevel protocol works so much better for us (Thudnerbolt, Fibre Channel, SAS, eSATA, USB3.0, etc.) because there is no packet transmission – just raw data streaming between a workstation and a file system.
What our product does is creates a low latency connection utilizing standard networking connectivity, this allows the GigE connections to look, feel and work like blocklevel protocols. Essentially fixing the latency issue.
The switch side can be problematic, but honestly with 3 workstations probably won’t be. The bottleneck there is in that you are limiting the connection between the switch and the server to 2 x GigE ports. Again, this just limits you to a theoretical line speed of about 2Gb/s, which is lower with overhead.
The other thing to consider is bonding still does not allow for a single workstation connection to split data over both bonded connections. Meaning, if all 3 workstations are being use 2 of them will be sharing a single GigE connection, factor in overhead and you will have no control over which workstation has 1GbE speed and which workstations have half of that. Meaning, at random 2 of your workstations will have a 40-45MB/s limit.
Add the two together (Latency + band limit) and you’re going to be limiting editorial performance. The only way you’ll know exactly how much is by setting it up. Again, not trying to scare, this will work, but at a limited capacity when compared to something like Platform Portable.
Hope this helps!
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In the mean time, Nate Coopers former employer, Studio Network Solutions makes the SNS Prodigy, that will allow you to connect 4 users and accomplish what you are trying to do for $4700.
If you actually expect to have 4 people working at real resolutions, and especially with multiclip or multicam, I don’t care what system you buy or build yourself. If you don’t have 8 drive spindles running in a single RAID configuration, you will get crap performance.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Thanks Bob! That is defiantly a viable option, and much less of a budget stretch.
André
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