expanding 1 to 3 FCP systems and need shared storage

[Earthworm]

I’ve done DIY fiber setups using SANmp. It keeps costs down and I think it’s an ideal setup for a small company (we’re currently running 5 Final Cut systems.)

Since you already have fiber storage, all you would only need to buy the fiber itself, a fiber switch and the SANmp fiber card/license bundle for each station.

There are a lot of different SAN solutions. SANmp has it’s drawbacks (mainly one one user can have write access to a partition at a time) but it’s solid and saves you the cost of a metadata server. I’ve used it for about 5 years and never lost data.

And, no I don’t sell it. I’m just a very satisfied customer.

[David Bogie]

Most of our suites are exceptionally sweet.
This could take the wonks a few days to post suggestions, patience.
Meantime, the topic comes up several times every month. You can spend hours researching it here on the Cow.
Reading between the lines of the many threads you will find, shared media and project storage is a huge nightmare. You throw money at it. One thing most of the installations seem to fail to plan for is the amount of geekiness required to maintain live networked storage. You will need someone on your staff who can take on the responsibility.

bogiesan

[Mike Varga]

I hear that! Aprreciate it.

[Shane Ross]

Here’s an option:

https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/build-your-own-affordable-san-that-iworksi

Bob demo’d a solution with Small Tree switchers and GigE card and macPro and Maxx Digital Raid, that fed 2K Red ProRes to a Mac Pro, G5 and iBook. Yes…iBook.

For about $15,000.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mike Varga]

Thanks Shane I’ll check it out

[Mike Varga]

Thanks, I’ll look into it.

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Shane Ross] “For about $15,000.”

Which is very cheap for shared storage.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Instead of having a truly shared and’in the centre’ storage, you can consider this.

1. Leave the existing FCP as is, and make it the capture station.
2. Add another FCP for editing station.
3. Add another as output/mastering station.

Connect all three via a dedicated switch over GigE and keep jumbo packets on.

In the two new FCPs add internal storage or external fast SATA storage. For internal I’d recommend Apple RAID card and 3×1 Tb drives as RAID 0 or 5.

Your workflow will be to capture in the capture station. Mount its drive on edit station and edit off GigE or copy media to the edit station.

After edit, mount the capture station’s drive on the output station or copy media there. And output to tape.

You may wonder why all this copying and whether that defeats the purpose of central storge. But you know what, no drive is immortal and even if your projects are backed up hourly, a media drive failure or even funkiness can mean many hours of recapture and FCP is not exactly the most reliable ‘relinker’.

Redundant copy of media is a sort of data security. For many small houses, this central storage is a huge expense in time and money and only the expensive solutions are truly trouble-free in the long run.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Rich Rubasch]

Neil might be in Mumbai, but I’m with him. I only wonder about the ProRes HQ on a Gigabit Ethernet network. We do DVCProHD all the time and love the workflow and cost. But once you get into the bigger codecs and more than one person accessing the drives things do get slower.

But we love it.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Walter Biscardi]

[MIke Varga] “What is the most cost efficient way to do this? Software?Storage? Wiring? Ect. “

We have 3 FCP workstations and 3 iMacs all sharing 16TB of shared storage via Ethernet using the Maxx Digital Final Share system. We can cut up to 1080i ProRes and ProRes HQ no problems. Been running the system since January and it’s been solid since we got the installation worked out.

Full article here:

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.

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