HS San

[Sean Oneil]

[Chris Miller] “Its managed… Would it work?”

Based on the specs, I’d have to say no. You want one that supports 802.3ad LACP Link Aggregation, the only type of trunking supported on the Mac platform. It says trunking, but it doesn’t specify if it supports the right kind. So chances are it doesn’t. Link Aggregation isn’t necessary for smaller setups, but for yours you’ll want it.

It also doesn’t say if it supports jumbo frames, which you need. It probably does support it, but if it doesn’t say so then don’t risk it.

Honestly, Bob made a good point asking if your IT guys knew what Link Aggregation is. You asked if a switch was okay that didn’t list either of the crucial features. So you’re not really sure what to look for, let alone what it is or how to set it up.

My suggestion is to by the switch and necessary ethernet cards from Small Tree Communications. It costs more to buy from them but do it anyways. Then you’ll be a customer of theirs and they can help you set it all up to work well for video editing, as they are experts at IT stuff for video editing on the Mac.

Sean

[Chris Blair]

I’ve never heard of that brand of switch. Stick with well-known brands and follow Sean’s advice. I doubt you’re going to find a really good Gig-E switch with all the features you need for less than $500.

And to expand on what Sean says…link aggregation basically links multiple ethernet cards in software and makes them work as if they’re one device. So if you take two 1GB ethernet cards and aggregate them, they operate as if they’re one 2GB card. Link 4 cards and you effectively double the bandwidth capability to 4GB. Now keep in mind this is theory and you don’t REALLY get 4GB line speeds, but you will see a big increase in performance.

So in most NAS based shared video editing setups, the server that houses the drive array would have multiple ethernet cards that are linked to increase the link speed beyond the limits of a single port.
It is also used to increase reliability in case one card fails.

You can even go so far as to place two or even three ethernet cards in your workstations and link aggregate them to increase their speed, but it’s usually not necessary with standard definition video.

Jumbo frames is another setting in software that allows an ethernet card and a server/raid to move data in larger chunks. Smaller frames typically use more CPU interrupts and more processing overhead for a given data transfer size. So if you use larger ones, there’s less CPU ussage and less processing, hence, faster data transfer. You have to set it up on both the server and the workstations.

So the theory is if you aggregate cards and increase the size of the chunks of data they’re moving, you can significantly increase throughput and reliability.

This is a very simplistic, non-technical explanation, but that’s the basis using these techniques.

But I’ll point out that with our system, the Apace vStor, the default configuration for it was that jumbo frames was NOT used. It worked that way, but we had capture issues when trying to capture uncompressed clips or long compressed clips. When we called their tech support and asked about it, they walked us through setting it up and it provided an immediate 20-25% increase in measurable performance across all 4 edit systems. So you definitely want to make sure your switch uses it.

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

[Bob Zelin]

everyone here – especially me, should feel like an idiot. This kid is going to build a high speed san in between math homework?. What forum is this? Are we writing to make ourselves feel important?
What school is going to allocate funds solely based on a students opinion – and this opinion is based on a single user forum, and a general overview article that I wrote. Come on.

Bob Zelin

[Sean Oneil]

[Chris Blair] “So if you take two 1GB ethernet cards and aggregate them, they operate as if they’re one 2GB card. Link 4 cards and you effectively double the bandwidth capability to 4GB.”

That’s actually not entirely true. The max bandwidth is still 1gbps per session regardless of how many ports you trunk. On the server end it’s great because each client has an equal portion of the combined bandwidth (up to 1gb). But no single client can transfer a single stream faster than 1gb, even if you trunk 2 or 4 ports on the client end.

An alternative to Link Aggregation is to simply assign each port on the server it’s own subnet. So each client is masked off from one another. This only works if you have equal or less clients than you have ports on the server.

Sean

[Chris Miller]

I contacted Small Tree and they hooked me up with the proper 6 port card and network switch. I am having the company which we buy through look for better else where for it is standart operating procedure.

The guys at small tre also reccomended using Open-E as a server software. IT is not as pricey as others and may be able to get an educational discount.
Also he mentioned that some free software may be as good, but it may not be compatiable with the Nic. He said it never hurt to try it, saving money is good, esp in todays economy. I plan on trying Free NAS and Open Filer. If both fail, we will invest in Open E.

Hardware wise, I did learn that the best hard drives to use for this type of thing is Hitachi, for they are most stable. We will have a 8.5 TB storage area, weith .5 TB for tinkering (we need a network drive for other stuff). We are going to get two nics per Mac to increase the bandwidth.

The only issue I see now is in the iSCSI access software for the MAcs themselves. Ideas? Does Apple make any free add-ons for it, like Microsoft does for Windows XP/Vista.

Thanks!

[Sean Oneil]

I assumed he was a teacher.

Sean

[Chris Blair]

I think I pointed that out in my post when I said you couldn’t expect those line speeds and that it was a simplistic explanation of how things work.

Naturally if you’re using a connection with a maximum throughput of 1GB, you’ll never exceed that. I was just trying to explain the theory behind link aggregation…that combining cards can give you a significant boost in speed.

And while I respect everyone in this forum, I don’t see why it’s a bad thing that a high school kid aspires to build a shared video editing system for his school. I applaud him! 18 months ago I didn’t know diddley about this stuff. But after months of reading, research, asking questions on here, and talking to dozens of companies and their reps, I was able to garner a pretty broad understanding of how all this stuff works.

I’m certainly no expert and have no desire to be. But I thought the spirit of these forums was to help people. Who cares how old he is or how inexperienced he might be? I wish half my employees had this kid’s moxy and audacity.

I wish him luck and if others on this list can build a working NAS or SAN with no prior knowledge, why can’t a bright 17 year old?

I joined the Cow about 4 years ago, spent a couple weeks on forums, then immediately left because of the negative and arrogant tone that permeates a lot of these forums. Despite the fact that I had 21 years of experience at the time, Emmy awards and a wall lined with other awards, I was treated like I was an idiot by a few individuals…and on most forums was repeatedly admonished with responses to valid questions with answers like:

“this has been covered…do a search.”

When in fact the subject HAD NOT been covered. It usually had been skirted and discussed on the fringes of other discussions. On one question I asked, a moderator answered that I was wasting everyone’s time, including his! Thankfully, I don’t see that person on any forums anymore, so perhaps he got his comeuppance.

But I’ll help the young lad as much as he wants or needs thank you very much. And I hope he succeeds in his efforts.

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

[Sean Oneil]

[Chris Blair] “I think I pointed that out in my post when I said you couldn’t expect those line speeds and that it was a simplistic explanation of how things work.

Naturally if you’re using a connection with a maximum throughput of 1GB, you’ll never exceed that. I was just trying to explain the theory behind link aggregation…that combining cards can give you a significant boost in speed.”

You did point out that you don’t get the full 1gb. I was just clarifying something. If you combine ports on the client end as well as the server, you still only get 1gbps per stream, contrary to what common sense might dictate.

Sean

[Chris Blair]

Yes…a good point. It’s easy to get caught up thinking that combing numbers and specs will result in certain peformance levels without remembering there are thresholds and real-world limits.

I think advertising agencies MUST’VE named all the computer industry’s devices, since the names bear little relation to real-world performance. I remember setting up our first networked computers in the mid-90s and having a hard time understanding why our 100MB/sec ethernet would only move data at about 5MB/sec.

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

[Matt Geier]

Chris,

Boy, I love it when these ‘intended to be simple’ conversations get drug out long. I will tell you I’ve been in this industry a long time, and even this thread is starting to confuse me. Just to clarify, I did read the entire thread before I decided to post myself.

I want to warn you about some things first, mostly your budget. The two major items here that suck up the money fast, are a Server, and the storage. To be honest, I concur with others here when I say you don’t have enough budgeted for this project, and here is the reason why;

You have 6 Mac’s using Final Cut, and they want to edit video in a shared environment. To do this the right and correct way, to keep yourself from having problems later, you need to understand what it takes to make this happen in an environment where you will not have dropped frames etc.

If you truly are working in just DV format’s and have no intentions of ever moving out of that, you can probably piece meal something together that will work for you. The chances of it failing in the future are high though. This isn’t because of you, but mostly because of the hardware you’ll choose to make your solution.

Here’s what I would envision in order to make this work correctly (this is coming from someone these forum people know, who can vouch for this from different points of views so this should be helpful to you)

Small Tree does what you are trying to accomplish. To boot, Small Tree sells an entire solution that they can manage end to end, remotely, so you don’t have to worry about this.

Storage – You should be budgeting for something that will stand up to what you need. In an DV editing environment, bandwidth certainly is a factor. Once you go beyond a DV environment, the requirements for “real time” editing in place start to change and you have to select storage that is actually capable of holding up. (Budget here should be 5-10K)

Server – All of your editing is going to change from working locally, to sitting everyone on a single (or multiple) server/s to accomplish the editing projects. This needs to have 1-2Gb of memory for every client connected to it. It also needs to have about 1Ghz of processor for every 1 gigabit port on the server. (Budget here should be 3-5K)

Managed Gigabit Switch – Managed Gigabit Switches have hardware ASICS inside with fans and are capable of supporting a lot of traffic with things like flow control (very important) and other features. This needs to be a Managed Gigabit Switch that will support Dynamic Link Aggregation. MACOSX Only supports Dynamic Link Aggregation. This also needs to have packet buffer memory of at least 8MB per port (this is very important for video editing). (Budget for this should be 1-2K) (vary by vendor / brand)’

There are also some other additional items that should be discussed about your environment because it should be looked at as a whole, not just, one side of what you are doing. The network needs to be configured to support your needs now, make sure you don’t bottleneck when you add traffic, and do other things like scale easily too.

The old saying is “you get what you pay for.” I will let you know that you should be looking of a budget larger then you are. It would not be unreasonable to plan on spending 9-15K to get into a solution that will work for you which includes all these items I’ve discussed, along with support so you don’t have to manage the solution before, after, or during the work flow.

If you’d like to discuss any of this, I can certainly help you. You can contact me by phone.

Matt G (Small Tree)
651-209-6501 x 1