I don’t need SAN….Do I?

[Bob Zelin]

you are the first person to publically post this type of comment. I have been silent up until now, and I “tread lightly”. I had the same issue that you had with multiple clients, and I have heard of this exact issue from other people around the country. I have been emailed privately about this as well. What you have discovered is unfortunately very accurate. I too now only use AFP with link aggregation, without issue. I have personally run up to 7 FCP clients in the configuration you are describing without issue, and I have just heard that Pink Sneakers Productions is now running TEN FCP clients off of one link aggregated managed switch from Small Tree.

What switch and multi port card are you using ?

Bob Zelin

[Marc Bostrøm]

Thanks for your reply… I am sure that other setups would benefit in having a SAN. And the answer I got from the Tiger tech. guys was that metaLAN is great when you need to effectively manage the bandwidth allocation, benefit from server failover, virtualization for Avid (on Windows), or if you want easy cross-platform connectivity.

To answer your question:
Our setup is cheapo – but works,

1 x G4 dual 1Ghz vintage machine with two Intel Pro MT1000 gigabit cards that are aggregated. The machines own NIC runs on the office network.
1 x planet GSW-2404SF – doing jumbo

If I should buy today I would probably buy the HP ProCurve Switch 1800-24G.

For Christmas I’d like a HP ProCurve Switch 6400cl-6XG + 4xNICs……pretty please.

Marc Bostrom
-| just another PRO FCP user |-

[Bob Zelin]

For Christmas I’d like a HP ProCurve Switch 6400cl-6XG + 4xNICs……pretty please.

exactly what 4 port NIC cards with MAC drivers would you purchase (for christmas) ?

bob zelin

[Marc Bostrøm]

Sorry, I meant 4 single 10gbe CX4 NICs. Like the ones at:
Small-Tree: Intel Based 10 Gb PCIE Dual Port CX4 Copper Ethernet Server Adapter
or
Chelsio Communications: 10GBe adaptor N320E-CXA

Purchase…no…no…no… I believe in Santa 😉

Marc Bostrom
-| just another PRO FCP user |-

[Bob Zelin]

I am hoping that 2009 will bring us 10Gb cards that will work with RJ45 CAT6A format, and not have to rely on CX4 cables. That would be wonderful.

10Gb will only give us 180mb/sec (which is enough for uncompressed HD, but not 2K work). The fibre people (like ATTO) are aggresively pushing for 8 Gig Fibre, as the ethernet stuff on the market now can do exactly what Fibre can currently do.

I have been using the Small Tree ES4524D switch for all installs, but have heard great things about the HP Pro Curve 1800-24G. I have not tried it however. Someone on this forum contacted me privately and said that they got the inexpensive Netgear GS724T switch to work as well.

Bob Zelin

[John Mcclary]

Sorry, I think I need a term definition to be able to follow this thread. I know it should be obvious but “AFP” stands for what…?

John McClary

[Marc Bostrøm]

AFP: Apple Filing Protocol
Read all about it here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Networking/Conceptual/AFP/Introduction/chapter_1_section_1.html

Bob, I don’t understand why 10gbe only can deliver 180mb/sec. I have searched the web and have found this document:
https://www.myri.com/scs/performance/Myri10GE/#macosx
As I read it, 10gbe can deliver over the TCP stream 9661.82 Megabits/second which would give: 1207 megabytes/second
I know that in real life we could expect it to be slower but there is a long way down to 180 megabytes/second.
Can you help me connect the dots?

Marc Bostrom
-| just another PRO FCP user |-

[Daniel Hatch]

You do not need SAN. Recommendation is to consider Apace Systems vStor and try their SMB share for MAC over Multi-GE. You can collaborate real-time over GE connectivity between your three FCP nodes as well as use it for your fast access to graphics and other media. The advantage is that you can connect PCs to your workgroup as well and not to have to invest in SAN hardware. Also, They do support AFP on vStor as well, but, they do recommend that moving forward to consider SMB for your network. What is the stream type you typically use on your three FCP workstations and the capacity need you have and they can make specific SKU recommendations for you?

They are the best keep secreat out there and understand Video Workflow better than most.

FWIW

Dan

[Matt Geier]

Marc,

I can lend some insight here as to the problem you’ve mentioned.

There are only two manufactures of a 10Gb card that are going to be able to be supported on a Mac (today) – Mryinet (Their own Mac Support), and Intel (Mac Support by Small Tree Communications).

Here are some data numbers around each of the cards —

The Mryinet 10Gb PCI Express card performs at a 9.5 Gbps.

The Intel 10Gb PCI Express Card performs at a 9.9 Gbps.

When we install either of these cards into a Mac, we can only get them to output 180MB / sec. Why? It’s because of AFP limiting the traffic. The limitation is not with the card. The limitation is with AFP. Only Apple can make that better.

It could be said that if you installed these into a Mac that was running another protocol that was not AFP, it *might* go faster then 180MB/sec – it’s hard to say without actually testing it, and a lot of that testing never gets publicized or communicated back to the right places, even so.

Some additional notes:

If you are thinking about running 10Gb at your client, I would inquire as to what you’re doing that you need the bandwidth for? If you’re doing Uncompressed HD formats, 8bit *might* work on Gigabit since AFP lets us get 180MB out and an 8bit stream needs about 127MB of bandwidth…

Given that, I would simply propose that you keep using Gigabit on your clients, and put them into a Managed Switch. Then you either use a multi-port Gigabit Card in your server, OR, a 10Gb card in your server. – Either of these implementations under AFP will support up to 600MB/sec of bandwidth.

You can successfully use a compression, such as ProRes 422, which I hear is very good, and that will be able to be done on regular Ethernet. (35MB/sec)

Hopefully that helps.

Matt G.

[Chris Blair]

They are the best keep secreat out there and understand Video Workflow better than most.

I can second Dan’s assessment as we have an entry level vStor and it works great, and their customer service is outstanding. Their engineers know what they’re talking about and they can actually explain stuff to you in terms that you can understand.

When we were researching products they debunked a lot of the “myths” out there about shared video storage. One example is that everyone else we talked to said we COULD NOT use a network switch and connect our client edit workstations and regular office PC’s to it and expect to get the needed throughput for video editing.

Apace actually recommends you use a managed GigE switch and tells you it’s fine to have regular office PC’s connected to the network on the very same switch. We have it setup that way and it works fine, with NO ill effect from office network traffic.

They also said there was no performance gain by connecting directly from the ethernet connection on the PC to the ethernet connection on the vStor…which other companies claim gives a performance boost by bypassing the switch. We actually confirmed this by connecting one of the edit stations directly to the GigE port on the vStor. It tests out at the exact same speeds and performs the same as when connected via the switch.

Apace also gives you recommendations on the brand of switch to buy, how to cable and configure etc. All based on their experience with many, many installations. I find it incredible that they still seem to be the company no-one knows about.

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