I know just enough to be completely lost

[Steve Modica]

A G5 won’t cut it for serving Nehalem and Westmere based systems. They have a very high bandwidth to and from memory and will basically swamp the G5. They’ll send more traffic than it can handle so the ports won’t keep up.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Bob Zelin]

this thread started with –
I produce/edit a daily, 3 camera talk-show style TV program for a non-profit

and in your last comment, you said –
Not sure where you go that my goal was to find the cheapest solution possible. Quite the contrary, I am ready to spend some money, I would just prefer to spend it wisely

REPLY – Jacob, I am not sure what is going on here. I have given you accurate advice. This is my opinion. You are a young inexperienced guy, working for a non profit, who has given you ZERO budget, and your job is to “make it work” with what you have lying around. I have given you a start of a solution, by spending $1800 bucks, so you can at least get started. And you are giving me a hard time, telling me about the old crap you have lying around, to try to avoid spending the $1800 bucks. I am not trying to sell you anything, I am just telling you that IF YOU HAVE NO MONEY, YOU CANT HAVE SHARED STORAGE. It’s that simple. You have had countless people from different manufacturers give you accurate advice, on what to buy, and who to contact, so you will have a WORKING SOLUTION, and you have been suggested to try a FREE SINGLE ETHERENT CABLE – have you tried this yet ? Are you waiting for someone to reply to you, saying “Jacob, don’t listen to these idiots, I built a shared storage solution for 500 bucks, and it works great – here is how I did it”. This is not Alice in Wonderland (no pun Nick Hason !), this is the real world. You can’t paint your house, unless you can afford to buy paint – you can’t take mud from outside, mix it up with water, and paint your rooms brown.

This is my advice to you Jacob –
1) get an ethernet cable. Try doing shared storage between your two MAC computers, and see what happens. And I want you to report back to me.
2) get a multiport ethernet card for your old G5, plug in two ethernet cables into your two MAC computers, turn on file sharing and see what happens. Can you do this.
3) when you see what does and does not work, then you will reconsider what I just said – BUY A CHEAP MAC PRO – go onto ebay, and find one. What is the problem here. That is step 1 to a working system. As you grow from that point, you will eventually have what you want.

ALL of the companies that have responded to you, have very nice working shared storage solutions. I am not sure what you are looking for, but a miracle you will not find. Anywhere.

Bob Zelin

[Jacob Goodnight]

Bob,
I’m not sure how asking the question, “Does it have to be a Mac pro or would this PPC work?” can be construed as “giving [you] a hard time.” But if that’s how it came across, I am sorry. I was trying to clarify a solution you proposed(thank you steve for your answer). Also, you are correct on all accounts less one. I have not been given ZERO budget. Frankly, I can afford paint for my house. I am just trying to decide on a color. I have been entrusted to come up with a legitimate solution for a problem. I am in the information gathering stage of finding that solution.
I will try plugging the two computers directly together via Ethernet first and buy another mac pro to use as a dedicated server if that proves to be inadequate and I will be happy to report back.
Thank you all for your responses.

[Frank Gerner]

…is to consider a dedicated Linux server. You can buy components according to your needs and budget, upgrade at any time without much trouble and without buying a whole new machine, you can have RAID 6 without hardware (I recomend a good Raid card though, go Areca, will cost you a bit but you get great bang for the money) and you can share files with Macs using Netatalk and with Windows clients via Samba. A little server for two seats shouldn’t cost you more than 1.000 bucks (wo. hardware raid) with plenty of hard drive space.
Downside is you need to know a bit about what hardware to pick and how to configure things.
You can even go down the 10Gig lane one day with a multiport nic for the server and cards from Small-Tree for you Mac clients. Or iScsi, or Fibre. You are very flexible there.

[Matt Geier]

Hi Jacob,

I’ve read through the thread.

Keep in mind that no matter what hardware configuration you choose, it will all work differently then the next set of hardware when it’s being shared, over a network. Pass files back and forth over Gigabit wires to and from each system, with or without their own direct attached storage, that’s the easy part……passing files at the same time while sustaining shared performance from the storage operations and o/s model is the difficult part….often, it’s the shared sustained real time performance where others are faulting and falling off the ledge on.

Moving up from Gigabit, you can get opt to get direct attached storage and pass files back and forth over 10Gb Ethernet wire for fast transfers from storage to storage…..The speeds of transfers will go up assuming you are not writing to internal Mac drives over the wire, and assuming the storage array chosen supports the speeds you want (Example: MB/s using Finder Copy)

The goal as I understand here however, is that you want to have your Power PC, and your 2nd Editor, accessing the same storage with Final Cut Pro codecs and edit video simutaniously in the timeline. I also understand that you intend to keep the files native to the storage.

If you truly want to accomplish that; then you need to invest in a Shared Storage solution like that of Small Tree’s which is designed and configured for Real Time Sustainability…..Invest in a 3rd Mac Pro 8 Core (minimum), and get that in place as the server to ensure you are servicing your other clients hooked into it accordingly. IN this configuration you should take in account that you are getting the best PCI Express performance, DMA (Direct Memory Access) performance, and Processor performance by having the new Mac Pro as the server.The next step is being confident that the hardware configuration you’ve chosen is going to work when you load it up and start hammering on it.

Good luck to you! Call me if you like and I can talk more about your needs;

Matt Geier
952-641-7433

[Bob Zelin]

Matt has said the magic words –
“which is designed and configured for Real Time Sustainability”

every IT dope thinks he can put one of these systems together “it’s just a network, what’s the big deal”, and then they try to play back REAL TIME HD VIDEO, and all of a sudden, nothing works.

The difference between all the esteemed companies that participate on Creative Cow, and the generic IT solution, is that the professional companies that provide shared storage solutions for the video business are DESIGNED AND CONFIGURED FOR REAL TIME SUSTAINABILITY. Matt Geier has said the golden words that seperate “us” from the rest of the pack.

Bob Zelin

[Mark Raudonis]

BOB,

You should make a T-Shirt that says,
“‘I’m configured for REAL TIME SUSTAINABILITY”
and wear it to NAB!

Mark

[Jacob Goodnight]

Hello all,
Two weeks ago a pipe burst in my office building sending me and my equipment scurrying to get out of the path of destruction. I am still a refugee at this point but when everything is back as it should be, I will be working on setting up this network. I’ll keep you posted.

[Kyle Lodge]

HAHAHAHAHA Mark,

It’s already in the works Bob won’t have a choice.

Chao,

Kyle Lodge

[Bob Zelin]

Jacob writes –
“Two weeks ago a pipe burst in my office building sending me and my equipment scurrying to get out of the path of destruction. I am still a refugee at this point but when everything is back as it should be, I will be working on setting up this network. I’ll keep you posted.”

REPLY –
this is the difference between you and me. About a year ago, I was at Pink Sneakers Productions, that owns 3 SAN systems. A power transformer that fed the buiding exploded, and smoke started to bellow out of all the outlets in the place. Of course, we had big UPS’s on all the servers and RAID arrays, but I did not “scurry out of the path of destruction”. The fire department was called, and I stayed to shut down the servers properly, and unplug all the power from all the equipment, so this company would not lose their data, when the fire dept. came in with their axes (the FD did no destruction, as they use thermal cameras today before they break open walls – I did not know this).

The moral is, you must STAY WITH THE SHIP, even if you sink with the ship, until all the passengers are off.

when you work for a FOR PROFIT company, you will understand that maintaining the company’s operations is more important than anything.

Bob Zelin