I am building a SAN. A few questions for Bob Zelin.

[Caspian Brand]

If the storage is directly connecting to your Xserve and your Xserve is going to “share” out the storage over AFP, then you are not building a SAN. You are building a shared storage environment via File Server methods (a la NAS).

XSAN and MetaSAN and SANmp are SAN management software tools for connecting to directly to storage at the “block-level” over Fibre Channel or iSCSI (which can use GbE and 10GbE connections), rather than going through network shares on a server.

Final Cut Server is an Asset Management tool, intended to build a searchable database of all of your media and associated proxies. CatDV is another Asset Management tool that does this as well. Neither are File Servers and neither manages a SAN, they’re purely database/cataloging tools for keeping track of what you put on your storage.

If you want to build SAN, you’ll need SAN management software and networkable, block level storage devices, like EVO:
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12

-Caspian

Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Hey Christopher,

In regards to your questions:

1. XSAN will not work with this hardware. MetaLAN is likely not needed, if you use gigE and a NAS set up like your talking about you can probably just use the built in AFP sharing features in the Xserve.

2. FC Server is a completely separate/independant product from Xsan/MetaLAN. In theory you can use FC server with a set up like your talking about, but it’s VERY scetchy without a dedciated server. I would stay away from the idea of putting FC Server on the same gige network as your production network.

Give me a buzz if you’d like to talk about specifics on what you can and cannot do with this type of set up.

Good luck!

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
949.375.2738

[Bob Zelin]

If you have a few multi episode shows for Discovery, this means that you have money. I am in Florida, and I know that if you have any show on a known cable station, and it’s a regular show, it means that you have money. So WHAT THE HELL are you trying to build your own system for ? Does your boss’s daughter need a new BMW ? If you are a professional company, you buy a shared storage network from an established company that does this for a living.

Do you know why you do this – because getting these shows out for deliver is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than saving 10 grand building it yourself. Do you want to lose the Discovery jobs ?

Your list is absolute nonsense. You can read thru this very forum to find out what components are used to put your own system together, but I won’t help you now, because you have already stated that you are not a struggling filmmaker, but an established company that had actual cable channel shows. SPEND SOME MONEY. Buy professional equipment. You have already been answered by Studio Network Solutions, which is an excellent company to deal with. There are plenty of others – I just listed some of them in a post above, but just for you –

Studio Network Solutions
Maxx Digital Final Share
Small Tree GraniteStor
Facilis Terrablock
EditShare
Apple XSAN
Apace Systems
AVID Unity ISIS 5000
Cal Digit Super Share

and there are other that are good too. But tell your boss, that if he winds up buying his daughter that BMW instead of investing in his company, I am NEVER working for him, not matter what.

Bob Zelin

ps – the hardware stuff is not straighfoward. If you wind up with the list you mentioned above, you will fail, and you will be fired.

[Christopher Delaine]

Thank you for your help Bob.

My first instinct was to go with Avid ISIS 5K but this is my company’s first encounter with a shared storage solution and the price tag kind of freaked them out. Plus we just bought about 40k worth of Panasonic 3D gear (Don’t Ask) 🙁

Since our edit codec will be Apple ProRes 422 and XDCam and I only really need to support 4-8 seats at the most I decided to go with a Gigabit E solution supported by a stupid fast RAID set and Xserve.

Thanks Nathaniel for your advice on XSAN and MetaLan. I have had some really encouraging success with file sharing test between our machines and will hold off on the MetaLan purchase until after a through evaluation of the Hardware once it is in place.

Oh and Bob I will of course hold on the receipts just in case. 🙂

[Steve Modica]

I agree with Bob’s post 100%.

“Real fast” doesn’t mean “Real time” and the loads you want to push are realtime. When you crank up those 10Gb ports across all those clients, the OS is going to “burp” a lot. When it does, everyone is going to drop frames. (To make matters worse, it won’t burp immediately either. It’ll wait a few hours til the page cache is fully populated)

10Gb to Gigabit isn’t trivial. 10Gb ports don’t talk Gigabit to gigabit ports. They hammer them with 10Gb bursts. Imagine the normal flow control issues with gigabit times 10. I can promise you, for the purposes of video editing, it won’t work right. Either the vendor won’t support xoff transmit from their 10Gb ports (thanks Cisco and Extreme) or they won’t have their water marks correct to be useful (broadcom).
If you buy a 10GbaseT switch, it probably won’t negotiate gigabit flow control correctly either.

You may find that 3 1Gb ports are enough to kick the 10Gb ports butt.

I don’t want to be the guy that goes around spreading FUD all the time, but we seriously sit around banging our heads on this crap everyday. Chris and I are looking at the new Samba, how the OS processes IO buffers and what happens when 10Gb ethernet is dragging data off of 6Gb storage (hint: it’s not good for the OS). Keep in mind, Small Tree sells the fastest PCIE cards you can put on the Apple PCIE bus. So you might expect we’re out there from time to time letting them test our stuff.

What I’m trying to avoid is this upset customer scenario where you call us saying “it doesn’t work” and we basically demonstrate to you that the cards go fast, but your storage and server won’t keep up. Sorry… Now what? You hate me because I won’t spend my engineering resources to fix the stuff you bought somewhere else. 🙁

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Eric Jurgenson]

Steve,

So you are saying that 4-1G connections between the server and the switch (link aggrigation mode – NAS configuration) is likely to outperform a 10G connection? Is this just for certain switch models?

I was thinking of going with an SMC-8926EM managed switch with a 10G module for my server connection. Any comments on this particular switch regarding 10G to 1G flow control and other issues?

Normally I’d go wth the 4-1G configuration to save some money, but I was thinking of 10G between the server and the switch as a first step toward 10G to the client (at some point in the future).

[Steve Modica]

[Eric Jurgenson] ”
So you are saying that 4-1G connections between the server and the switch (link aggrigation mode – NAS configuration) is likely to outperform a 10G connection? Is this just for certain switch models?

I was thinking of going with an SMC-8926EM managed switch with a 10G module for my server connection. Any comments on this particular switch regarding 10G to 1G flow control and other issues?”

When a 10Gb port is properly configured (on both sides) and flow control is working, it should be able to satisfy 5-6 Gigabit ports doing substantial work (think 50-60MB/sec. Beyond that and you’ll be getting memory allocation glitches and things)

If you are only planning on deploying a single 10Gb port, you may as well just do Gigabit with a 6 port card.

I don’t know anything about that specific switch. SMC uses broadcom and our previous experience with them is that flow control was disabled due to a head of line blocking bug. Whether they’ve fixed that I don’t know.

All of these vendors are really evasive about Flow control. They call it out in their specs, but then bury something in the manual explaining that it doesn’t work right 🙁

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications