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physical distance considerations FCP(G5) and Xserve RAID
As a seasoned editor (15 years) and recent convert from Media 100, I am happily digging into a new FCP 5 system. For storage we went with the Xserve RAID. Since that is one loud beast, we installed it in the equipment room which is luckily adjacent to the new FCP edit suite. I say luckily because the copper cables provided with the system are short! Unfortunatley they are too short to even reach the equipment rack, thus I had to set it near the wall on top of a small platform to at least raise it off the floor! The technician that installed the system said that in order to go any farther, I needed an amplifier of some kind…(which is not cheap)! I am not very well versed in hardware and this was new to me. The Apple info provided with the fiber channel card is skimpy. Can anyone give me the low down on this? We want to add a 2nd FCP system later this year in another edit suite that is about 30-40 ft away so besides being able to move the Xserve RAID into the rack, we need to get this straightened out also for the future.
Thanks for anybody’s guidance!
KimDual 2.7 GHz G5, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9650, Xserve RAID, AJA IO, 2 20″ Cinema Display, FCP 5.02, OS X10.4.2
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1 Reply
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Post this in the Apple XSan forum, those guys can give you great answers. Basically what you need to do is change over to optical fibre, which you can run for much longer distances. This involves changing GBICs on both the controller and the HBA, as well as buying glass-fibre cables.
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