Max T Sledgehammer NAS fast enough ?

[Bernard Lamborelle]

I’ll let someone with experience on Max-T chime in, as I can only share my experience on the LAN portion…

There are lots of people taking advantage of Gb Ethernet for their DV and SD editing needs – some with more success than others.

The main issue on LAN is the fact that there is more limited bandwidth and that everyone fights for it. As a result, people experience uneven performances, which often lead to drop frames, etc. Another issue is the stability of the connection. Many people have reported that their capture would unexpectedly abort when using a regular connection.

For those working with a combination of Mac and PC, it can also be painful to setup a reliable network protocol that satisfies both types of clients. When you can find a happy medium, OS upgrades on either side are often source of new problems.

A number of users have opted to install metaLAN Server ($595 USD) on their server, and metaLAN ($295 USD) on their client workstations. It makes for an affordable “SAN” that lets them overcome these challenges.

I use the term SAN, because metaLAN provides block-level access to the storage (as oppose to using network file protocols). As such, the server appears to the client as a storage device (much like iSCSI Target software makes your server looks like a storage device) and mounts the shared volume on your desktop. The setup is easy: You only need a server with a functional network connection (TCP/IP). There is no need to setup a domain or even configure SMB/CIFS protocols.

metaLAN gives you bandwidth control so the server controls how much bandwidth each client is allowed to use. This can be used to adjust for fair utilization so everyone can enjoy reliable playback.

File system translation is handled automatically so PC clients can connect to your Mac servers, and vice-versa.

I always like to recommend the use of trunking on the server to increase the available throughput to LAN clients. SmallTree makes great NIC (www.small-tree.com) for Mac. Some users are trunking 6 ports and are delivering a sustained 65MB/sec to their client on a single port. For those with budgets, the use of 10Gb gives you top performances, but I find that trunking offers better value for the money.

Tiger offers 30 day evals for those that would like to try. There is no need for special hardware: If you have a Windows or Mac server and are experiencing some of the issues listed above, feel free to contact me and I’ll set you up with a reseller. There is no need to reformat your storage either…

Cheers,

Bernard Lamborelle
bernard at tiger-technology dot com
+1 514 667 2015

PS – metaLAN can also be used as a low cost alternative to Unity or LANShare as it allows multiple Avids (on PC only) to share access to the same media files, much like EditShare…

[Ramona Howard]

Bob,

Not without some specific tools added on and then it still won’t get you very far. Now 10GB is another story and could give you considerable performance with the added benefit to set up some throttling permissions for users. We don’t have anyone doing 10Gb on a large scale, say to replace a SAN so I can’t chime in there too much.

Bernie comments:
For those working with a combination of Mac and PC, it can also be painful to setup a reliable network protocol that satisfies both types of clients.

Network protocols between OS platforms is not a problem if you simply need a mount point, we have many studios doing it daily with Mac, Windows and Linux and a combination (pretty basic stuff). With this, depending on the file type (what raster) and connection (Gigabit, Bonded Gigabit, 10GB), some are streaming with no drop-outs but it’s from a single mount point where no one else is hitting the connection.

Where the problem lies is treating this setup like a SAN, which I think is what he meant. Over standard Gigabit, in todays HD world it isn’t going to happen (in real-time) and or work very well. We did demo 720p over Gigabit many years back, but not something we recommend to do as we were on the edge of the cliff with that.

A 10Gb LAN will get you pretty far but you better have an excellent knowledge of hardware because not all manufactures are equal in this implementation. Everything from switches to Motherboards play a role in just how much you can squeeze down that 10Gb pipe.

To answer your original question.
A NAS can dish out files to as many users as needed, the problem lies with real-time performance and how many need it. You can do a single stream in real-time for example with everyone else throttled down to a trickle. All depends on how much hardware you want to throw at the problem with the outcome still not a SAN.

Hope that helps
Cheers,
Ramona