I built a 3 workstation SAN spending $120 at Best Buy

[Bob Zelin]

the highlights of your original post are below, in case someone else want to try this.

My reply first –
I have no idea of how this is working. Pro Res Proxy is only 6.4MB/sec, so I assume that the bandwidth is so low, that you are not seeing issues yet. If you go up to ProRes4444, or even ProRes422, this will stop working. Our original tests in 2008 were with DVCProHD (14MB/sec) with one host computer (no server) and one client. We could not get the two computers to run at once. Unless I am misreading what you wrote, you do not have a dedicated MAC Pro as a server – you are using your tower as a server, and as an editing station, and playing back ProResProxy at the same time from the same HDOne, from a laptop. I have no idea of how this is working. As I said, if you increase to ProRes422 (or 4444), I will bet money that you will not be able to play back. The right way to do even with zero money, and no link agg (and this is still not the right way, but at least for a test) is to have a DEDICATED computer to act as a server, which will connect to the HDOne. It appears that you are using one of your editing systems (the tower) as the server as well. I have never seen a system like this work reliably – even when we tried it with a Small Tree card in the tower, and did the link aggregation trick. Using the server as an editing system as well always kills the entire system. But hey – if it’s working for you – more power to ya !

bob Zelin

Generally we work in PR Proxy, online at 4:4:4.
Here’s what I purchased:
Netgear 8-port Gigabit Desktop Switch – Model # GS108
Cat 6 cable – 8ft -25ft runs
I plugged the tower and my MacBook Pro 3.0 Intel Core Duo into the switch. Setting the tower to file share I mounted the HD One drive and opened up FCP.
I created a new project, which I than accessed by both FCP stations (tower and MacBook Pro). I opened up about 15mins of clips(PR Proxy) on both systems, dropped them into the timeline and played them out simultaneously. Then waited.
Both timelines played fine accessing the same project, same source media on the HD One. No latency, no drop frames. I added another video layer to each project, played fine. I kept adding layers until I had four on each time line which is pretty much what an average project for us would max at.
So I added another MacBook Pro, we would never have three editors working but there will be times when we may have two editors and a third producer looking at clips in a read situation.

[Chris Blair]

To add to Bob’s point….will this setup work reliably when you’re working on deadline and you have drives that are 60-70% full?

We use an Apace vStor system with 4 edit stations attached via gig-e. When the drives are empty, we can layer 4 streams of uncompressed SD video, add multiple real-time DVE effects (our system uses hardware based DVE processing), set-up a minute-long looping sequence, and this timeline will literally play for hours looping continuously with no hiccups. We can even log and capture in a 2nd suite at DVCPro50 quality at the same time!

Fast-forward 6 months with drives now 75% full and three edit suites running simultaneously. We’re lucky to be able to layer 4 streams of 2:1 compressed SD video in each suite…(at about 10MB/sec each) with the same DVE effects before we start seeing playback issues. We can still edit 6-8 total streams of compressed SD across all the edit systems, but it WILL not handle uncompressed across all those once the drives start filling up.

Now each of these scenarious is ridiculous because they would NEVER occur in a typical editing environment. If we have 3 edit systems running at the same time….98% of the time the timelines are playing back 1 or 2 streams of compressed SD video (typically DVCPro50 quality). There is rarely even 4 or 5 total streams playing simultaneously across all 4 systems. In THAT scenarios, everything runs fine.

My point is, wait until you get into typical editing scenarios and see what happens. I bet you’ll start to see issues somewhere, somehow. As Bob notes, the ONLY way this is working is because of the relatively low-data rates. And to second his reply..if it DOES work for you…fantastic! I just know that in our place, we can’t afford to cross our fingers and hope something unproven works when we have clients sitting there paying $175-$200/hour.

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

[Jim Newman]

Bob and Chris thanks for replying,

I did use our cutting tower as the server. Only because it was the only thing available to me and this is really just a trial and error phase considering I can always return the switch and the cable I’m sure we can use for another application. I should have mentioned in my initial post that I ran my tests in 1920×1080.

We do our offline in PR Proxy and online to 4:4:4. I’m figuring that after we buy our second tower I’ll turn our current tower into a dedicated server but I’ll still online locally to the main cutting tower avoiding a bandwidth issue. Like most people we have several external drives that are redundant to our master footage.

I agree that the system hasn’t been tested to it’s max capacity. I would like run different scenarios over the next week or so seeing how far I can push the system. Economically, if I can’t get this thing working properly, it will make more sense for me to schedule a day and night editor working on the same system rather than have two day editors that can’t access the information they need.

And of course, as Chris mentioned, the last thing I would want to have happen is miss a deadline because everything died on us at a crucial point.

Since I have pretty much zero IT knowledge, where can I find the mbps I’m transferring? That may also be useful in this forum as well.

What do you guys think would basically be the ultimate test for this system? Should I try PR 422HQ? Should I keep adding more edit stations?(might be difficult) any thoughts?

Bob, I know you’re in Orlando, but if you were local to LA I would invite you to our facility to take a look.

Thanks,

[Bob Zelin]

Jim,
your boss wold not pay for me to come over.
Ypu are in the land of such great operations like Melrose Mac, Mac Hollywood,
and all the regular professional dealers that build shared storage systems. It is amazing
that you go to Best Buy to try to make this happen.

You have pieced together a regular siimple Apple network. The way that all of these ethernet based
systems work is based on link aggregation, be it mine, Apace, EditShare, etc. Even with link aggregation, if you dont’ have a dedicated computer ( a server), you will ultimately fail.

And as Chris so accruately points out, ALL these systems start to lose performance as they get full of data on their drives. People ask “is my drive array good enough” You own a Cal Digit HDOne – Cal Digit makes the HD Pro for a reason – they know very well that in a professional enviornment, the HD One won’t cut it for shared storage. The Cal Digit HD Pro is the right choice, for hi speed performance in a shared enviornment. Don’t believe me – look at the Cal Digit site on Super Share

Bob Zelin

[Eric Hansen]

hey jim

the only reason your system is working is because your bandwidth requirements are so low, using ProRes Proxy. we use Proxy over here and 1920×1080 at 23.98 is only a little over 4MB/s. your single gigabit non-jumbo connection will support a few of these. but it’s not reliable, as the guys above have written.

i have tried the “use an edit system as a server” before and also been yelled at by Bob. my biggest problem is i don’t learn from other peoples mistakes, i have to make them myself. using an edit system as the server will work. your CalDigit has a lot of spare bandwidth. but reliability is the problem. if Final Cut starts to act funky and you need to restart your computer, that means you have to restart the server (same computer), which stops everyone else from working. even worse is a total system crash or kernel panic. yes they do happen and they’ve happened to me. have this happen a few times and you’ll wonder if you’re saving any money going this route (you’re not).

you really do want nothing else running on your server computer. the question isn’t spare capacity, of which the Mac Pro has a lot of, it’s reliability. you don’t want to go to every editor and say, i got to shut down the server for a few minutes. they will hate you for it. in the end you just have to accept that this server will only do one thing: serve files. you said you’re thinking about getting another tower. well, get a used first Gen Mac Pro, make that your server, and keep FCP running on the tower you have now. the general rule from Small Tree, if i remember correctly, is 1GB of RAM and 1GHz of processor for every connected client.

also, you don’t need link aggregation if you only have a few clients. get an ethernet card from Small Tree that has enough ports for everyone and use that. you don’t need a switch, just connect them all directly to the multi-port card.

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv