need some help with storage

[Chuck Mcmakin]

Hi Oren and welcome!

CommandSoft typically addresses the question you have posed by recommending that we have a slightly deeper discussion together about the resolutions and numbers of video and/or audio streams that you anticipate needing your storage to support.

Each storage vendor’s hardware will have differing performance characteristics so the best way to “right size” your solution is to define your bandwidth requirements up-front to your potential storage vendors. I notice you didn’t really even state a target overall storage capacity so I think you realize that available capacity should be your secondary consideration after performance.

Your post mentioned 4 gfx/edit bays but not exactly how many streams each editor is likely to work with simultaneously. I am guessing that may mean you only need 1 stream per edit bay, but we always ask to be sure…

To help illustrate why that info is important to us, take this example:
One of CommandSoft’s more popular 16-bay RAID arrays is capable of supporting about 16 simultaneous DVCPROHD streams. That could be mapped out as 4 streams to each of the 4 edit bays or two streams each to as many as 8 edit bays, or… you get the idea.

Not sure precisely what your flash animators will need as far as bandwidth goes but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

Your Photoshop crew probably won’t need the same performance levels as your NLE and flash teams but the workload they put on the SAN could still potentially impact performance if we aren’t careful so it is good to factor them in too, just as you have.

With a FibreJet SAN you really only need:
Any storage array that uses an industry standard HFS/HFS+, NTFS, or FAT32 file system. (Of course the storage needs to be compatible with your choice of fabric/network infrastructure.)
A fabric/network switch (either fibre channel, GigE, or 10GigE)
HBAs (of the appropriate infrastructure type to support the switch & storage choices)
and SAN management software (the best of which is our FibreJet, of course!) 😉

Please feel free to call us any time if you would like to discuss your project further. We are always happy to help.

Chuck McMakin
CommandSoft, Inc. /
Phone: (805)730-7772 /
Email: chuck@commandsoft.com

[Bob Zelin]

I know exactly what you need. You need help from a dealer. You don’t list your company name, so no one can contact you, yet you say “what should I buy”. Without help from a company, you will fail. You can call all of these companies and ask them if they will help you with your install. You have also not specified what is your price range, and your companies technical abilities.

None of these solutions are plug and play (like a firewire drive).

Bob Zelin

[Jordan Woods]

I agree with Bob, but try to find a sales person that is as “non-vendor” specific as possible… maybe that way you would get a chance to see all your choices, because I think in your scenario you might have a very large variety.

post your whole workflow (compression, frame size, etc…) and budget. you’ll have your answers in seconds if you drop that info.

[Matt Geier]

Oren,

I read your post, and if you like, I can talk to you about this if you get time.

Bandwidth requirements are certainly going to need reviewed to determine what your network should look like.

The other item that needs addressed is your plan to move forward and if you are intending to edit ProRes any time in the future.

Without rambling here, you want to be careful about the solutions you look at because the majority of them will not spec this all properly because you have to consider, bandwidth, disk latency, and also other components like switches and servers that will properly work in the configuration.

The reality from my perspective is that you are doing the same thing a lot of people are doing in your business. You can likely run an entire network with Gigabit connections and a Managed Switch / Server / Storage combination to accomplish your Centralized Shared Storage requirement, while introducing “real time” editing over the network wires.

Give me a call if you like and we can discuss how you get into a solution like this for less money then you might be expecting!

Matt G
Small Tree
mattg@small-tree.com
651-389-9959