Freenas, AFP and a lot of time

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m inclined to go with Bob about the elegantly simple solution of making a MacPro as a ‘server’ and using link aggregation and basic networking that’s built into the MacOSX. This plain works.

I work at a facility that has, apart from editing systems (Avid/FCP) a veritable cocktail of networking. PCs (300+) doing CG and VFX, Linux systems running smoke/flame, DI systems – iQ, Resolve, Lustre hanging off a Bright SAN, an old SGI SAN, and our own DIY NAS boxes. We do Linux, Irix, Win 2k3 server. TCP/IP, SMB, NFS, wiretap, and God knows what else. We have a team of over a score very bright IT guys to keep all this running.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging, but the point is, networking for editing and post can get complex.

But in all this cocktail, the one solution we found worked, even as far back as 2004, is simple AFP sharing. Except for Avid back then, it worked wonderfully. Now, with Leopard and link aggregation and managed switches, it rocks.

Mark my words, you can FreeNAS all you want, but if you’re editing with FCP, you’ll eventually find that this solution is the most elegantly simple and positively working. When you leave a long timeline to render all night and a DVD encode on the side over AFP networked machines, you can go to bed secure with the knowledge, that if the world hasn’t been destroyed overnight by a meteor impact, your render will be done the next morning.

AFP is not unique in this guarantee, its the cheapest.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m inclined to go with Bob about the elegantly simple solution of making a MacPro as a ‘server’ and using link aggregation and basic networking that’s built into the MacOSX. This plain works.

I work at a facility that has, apart from editing systems (Avid/FCP) a veritable cocktail of networking. PCs (300+) doing CG and VFX, Linux systems running smoke/flame, DI systems – iQ, Resolve, Lustre hanging off a Bright SAN, an old SGI SAN, and our own DIY NAS boxes. We do Linux, Irix, Win 2k3 server. TCP/IP, SMB, NFS, wiretap, and God knows what else. We have a team of over a score very bright IT guys to keep all this running.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging, but the point is, networking for editing and post can get complex.

But in all this cocktail, the one solution we found worked, even as far back as 2004, is simple AFP sharing. Except for Avid back then, it worked wonderfully. Now, with Leopard and link aggregation and managed switches, it rocks.

Mark my words, you can FreeNAS all you want, but if you’re editing with FCP, you’ll eventually find that this solution is the most elegantly simple and positively working. When you leave a long timeline to render all night and a DVD encode on the side over AFP networked machines, you can go to bed secure with the knowledge, that if the world hasn’t been destroyed overnight by a meteor impact, your render will be done the next morning.

AFP is not unique in this guarantee, its the cheapest.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.