HS San

[Chris Miller]

Never mind all that I posted, It will work, spoke with a network expert.

[Chris Blair]

Bob Zelin is probably better suited to answer most of your questions, but I’ll give you the short answer:

This might work…but it probably won’t. The only way it will is if students keep everything at DV quality.

You’ll also likely run into problems sharing Final Cut projects and media, and even with DV footage, you could still have data throughput issues.

What you propose would probably be fine for a fast shared storage system for normal file sharing. But video editing can be a beast.

An HBA is just an acronym for the network cards that you list. It stands for host bus adaptor and it’s a pretty generic term that can be used for just about any device that facilitates communication between two ports…but it’s sort of been adopted by the SAN community to define the fibre channel cards that connect to the SAN. So you already have those in the form of the Gig-E network cards.

The most glaring issue I see is using Linux and the software you list with Mac clients. If you’re not familiar with this stuff, you’re going to pull your hair out trying to get the server/RAID array configured with Openfiler….then pull out more hair trying to get it to communicate properly with the Macs. By the time you’re done, you’ll be a bald high school student.

Bob has a great tutorial on here that details how to do this sort of thing on a budget (and it’s geared toward Macs). Find it and read it.
It’s based on his years of experience and real-world testing in real production environments.

One thing I’ll add…you’re to be commended for being forward thinking on this and for seeking help and advice on what you’re doing. That’s a great first step in doing this right.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

I’d be wary of a network expert if he/she has NO experience doing this for shared video editing. Most IT people I deal with have NO idea how to make a NAS or SAN or ISCSI or AoE system work with video editing.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Miller]

The students will be editing at DV quality, they dont’t use any higher because they are not allowed (except for Film festival students, but usually they edit one at a time anyway) and most don’t know how. I did find this article on Creative Cow… This may work..
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/build-your-own-affordable-san-that-iworksi

With this solution, the techs at school get XP, we dont need to learn Linux. I am only “iffy” about the software it recocmends. It is expensive… we may be able to afford it, but will it work, if installed on a PC, with macs? Any reccomendations for cheaper, software that does the same thing this will do? We may be willing to fork out 2.4 K for the software. I found the other parts needed for this system easy on the web.

Thanks for your help so far!

[Bob Zelin]

without being “too insulting”, let me just say this. If your “network experts” don’t understand the concept of link aggregation, and how to trunk ports together on your network switch, and get MAC’s and PC’s to talk to each other, you will fail. End of story. You said that you can’t afford fibre. This means that you are going to use iSCSI or just ethernet. Ask your experts if they understand what AFP and SMB are. Ask them if they have had success with SMB from MAC’s on PC networks. If they look at you with blank stares, you will fail. If they can’t instantly answer what link aggregation is for, and that they can do it (and have been doing it to improve network speed in the past), then you will fail.

there are companies on these forums that do video shared storage systems for a living. All the IT network people that network computers for data (like student database information) can’t understand why this is any different than sharing video. Well – I guess you will find out soon enough.

Bob Zelin

[Chris Miller]

Ok, ok ok….

Ok then… I am going to list what I want to do, and a few limitations, plese someone tell me what else I need to do, WITHOUT INSULTING ME/ MY HELP!

Here is the information:
7 Macs, OSX running Final Cut Pro 32 bit OS, they have a PCI port open on each.
We will log/capture to the server.
In the server, we will be using 1.5 TB 7,200RPM HDD’s.We will be using 9 of them.
We can use either Linux or XP on the server, but we’d PREFER XP.
Fibre is not an option.

What do I need to put in the macs hardware wise?
In the server hardware wise?
Server software? (cheaper the better)
Client software? (cheaper the better)
What type of network switch do I need?

Let me know this info ASAP, please just tell me the info…

Thanks!
Chris

[Chris Blair]

Chris,

Nobody is trying to insult you. As one of my first posts said, you’re to be commended for being forward thinking enough to implement this at your school. And Bob talks that way to everybody! We’re just use to it! 🙂

Actually…Bob just doesn’t beat around the bush or sugarcoat his answers. You’re on the right track…just ask your network people the questions Bob posed and see what they say. If they understand that stuff, then there’s a much better chance this will all work. If they don’t, then you’ll need to check out Bob’s “hot to” that you said you found, and ask more questions on here.

What you’re trying to do CAN work, but only if it’s setup properly with the right hardware and configuration. Also..be patient. We all work demanding jobs and post on here when we get a free moment during the day..or more likely in the evening.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Miller]

Ok, thanks for the reassurance, I just wasnt expecting to hear some of that when I got in today, was a long day too many lectures, and at least 50 pages of notes (Seriously I took 50 pages of notes, full pages).

I also apologize for sounding a bit demanding, we all have demanding jobs, I am an honors student, trying 2keep a 4.1, and balance alot more for the average student (personal details). I am surprised I have so much free time at the moment.

I read some positive reviews on Bob’s article, I think I am going to use it for my SAN server system. I discussed it with some of the other techs @ the studio, they agree it should work and we will most probabbly use different software if the software he reccomended is too expensive (I asked if they would donate it, sometimes companies do that for schools). If that fails, well I will search for something cheaper/ free. I did find this free software incase all else fails. It is linux based, would someone mind telling me if they think it would work, I will ahve ALOT of time to tinker with it to make it work.

Link: https://www.openfiler.com/

Also, my network people are only advisors, I need to set this all up myself with some help from another student who is experienced in Linux and Mac. With our brains combine, we could figure out how to set this up.

Thanks again guys!

[Chris Blair]

I could be wrong but I didn’t think OpenFiler was free. Might want to make sure before moving ahead with it. I’ve just never heard of anyone using it for video editing before. Most of the SAN/NAS management software for video editing is pretty specialized. But I also beleive Bob and others have put together some systems just using Mac’s native file sharing. Again…I’m not a Mac guy, but that’s what I recall from reading some posts in the last couple months.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Chris Blair]

Sorry…you were right. It’s free…the support is what costs money.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com