-
Ethernet based SAN article is up
For all those who emailed me asking about the Ethernet based SAN article, it’s now live here on the Cow. You don’t need Fibre Channel anymore to create a SAN. It’s incredibly cheap and we have 6 workstations all running off Ethernet.
Enjoy!
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/biscardi_walter/media_san.php
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
12 Replies
-
Walter,
Bob set up the same SAN set up for me– 16TB. Do you have any issues editing multi-clip? I have the Areca 1680x card and it mostly chokes the SAN when editing three feeds of 720 DVCPro HD in multi-clip mode. Every once in a while I can get it to work, but most often it chokes after every angle change.
Can you confirm this? Does it work for you?
Warren
Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905email: warren@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.babyboompictures.comhttps://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/AFX.html
https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/KnitWits_Movie.html
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0251670/EDITING REEL: https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/Editing_Reel.html
TITLE DESIGN: https://www.babyboompictures.com/BabyBoomPictures/Titles_Reel.html -
[Warren Eig] “Bob set up the same SAN set up for me– 16TB. Do you have any issues editing multi-clip?”
We do zero multi-angle work here.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
Walter
Great Article/Post/Blog thing! There are a couple of these Ethernet SANs out there, and it looks like you picked a good one
So I have seen facilities working on TV shows, and their approache to Shared Storage is a bunch of 500 gB My Book Studio drives that they move around from system to system. The My Books are fast enough to maintain dual streams of DVCPROHD that the show shoots in. Each drive has all the media for a segment and the project. A writer cuts together just the sound bites, then its given to one editor, and he works on the segemnt until its approved, then the drive is taken for sound work, Color, and Compiling into a show. I believe the popular vernacular is “sneakernet”
jut out of curious, why wouldnt that work for you?
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
[Bob Flood] “jut out of curious, why wouldnt that work for you? “
It’s slower and why move drives around when there’s always the possibility of damage along the way? Just a lot easier and faster to have everything networked. I can have my edit assist create graphics on the iMac while another editor works in Color while I’m still tweaking the final cut.
When you can have 6 workstations working together at the same time, you wonder how you got along without it.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
Cool
yeah, once a cut was locked, they went out of house to mix, color, and finish, so the portable drives worked for them
I would love to get a san here, but the ony way i could sell it is if we set it up for the whole company of designers, photographers, interactive programmers.
oh well, its to dream!
thanx again
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
I think it’s a great article that will help a lot of people. Couple things I want to point out:
– 10gb ethernet cards and switches are also available from Small-Tree. So you COULD do uncompressed HD. According to Zelin you can currently get 180MB/s over 10gb ethernet – not quite ideal as it uses only a fraction of the potential bandwidth, but I hear from several sources OSX Snow Leopard will drastically improve networking speeds.
– You do not necessarily need a switch. You can plug your machines directly into the server provided there are enough ports.
– Just so people are not too confused, this is technically not called a SAN. A SAN is block-level storage that requires XSan, MetaSan, etc. All fibre channel systems and some ethernet systems (that use “iSCSI”) are SANs. That’s not what this is. This is simply a high-performance Apple file-sharing server.
– Finally, this doesn’t seem to work for everyone. I myself cannot get reliable speeds and I’ve been trying to do this for 5 years. Don’t do it yourself without consultation. I believe Bob, Maxx Digital, and Small-Tree have come up with this “FileShare” branding in which they get into the terminal and tune the TCP to make gigabit file-sharing work well for video.
Sean
-
[Bob Flood] “I would love to get a san here, but the ony way i could sell it is if we set it up for the whole company of designers, photographers, interactive programmers. “
Why not? There’s 24 ports on the Ethernet Switch we have here. I would talk to the guys at Maxx Digital and find out what you would need to support your entire team. You might be surprised at the cost. Doesn’t cost anything at all to ask.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
[Sean ONeil] “- Finally, this doesn’t seem to work for everyone. I myself cannot get reliable speeds and I’ve been trying to do this for 5 years. Don’t do it yourself without consultation. I believe Bob, Maxx Digital, and Small-Tree have come up with this “FileShare” branding in which they get into the terminal and tune the TCP to make gigabit file-sharing work well for video. “
This is why I never do it myself. As I note the article, there were some issues during set-up that involved hardware and drivers which Maxx Digital took care of on their end. Since it was their system, they had to fix it.
And due to the testing and suggestions on our end, Final Share is even stronger now than when we first installed it. I would never recommend attempting Uncompressed HD on this system. It’s not fast enough. Fibre is what you need to do uncompressed HD across a SAN.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
[walter biscardi] “I would never recommend attempting Uncompressed HD on this system. It’s not fast enough.”
I meant with 10gb ethernet as oppose to 1gb.
Sean
-
[Sean ONeil] “I meant with 10gb ethernet as oppose to 1gb.”
We’re running 10gb. You can’t run 1gb and run Final Share.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up