Post NAB? Need some advice on shared storage options

[Alan Okey]

This is a job for a professional SAN integrator, and it will require a significant financial investment. If you try to home roll your own solution, you will be sorry and spend a lot of time and money just to find out that you haven’t really solved your problems.

The situation you described, 5 or more editors using a shared pool of assets, is an ideal candidate for a SAN (storage area network). This entails having a Fibre Channel card in each of the editing systems and having them all connected to a Fibre Channel switch, which is itself connected to a Fibre Channel RAID (or group of RAIDs) shared storage pool. Each workstation will need client license for the SAN software, and then there’s the (usually) required SAN metadata server that controls data access and permissions at the file level. XSAN and other SAN products require a dedicated metadata server, although MetaSAN does not.

Check out this thread for more info on this subject:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/977991#978143

Bob Zelin’s comments are right on the money:

…let me make one thing VERY CLEAR TO YOU. This is not a firewire drive that just plugs in and works. It appears that even though it is inexpensive to implement (and may actually work), you will need SOMEONE QUALIFIED to set this up for you. Which means that you will PAY SOMEONE MONEY to do this for you – (you will not do this by yourself). Many people say “why can’t they just come out with a shared storage solution that is cheap and so easy, even I can do it”. Well, today may be the day that “cheap” or inexpensive may actually exist (I will see in April at NAB), but EASY (easy like a firewire drive) is not today.

I am a video engineer with years of experience, and let me assure you that systems like XSAN (the full configuration) are not only expensive, but they are complicated, and require TRAINING to configure and maintain. Even the “easy” solutions (like Facilis, Editshare, and this solution – MetaLan) require some nominal training, that cannot be “easily answered” by asking questions on forums like Creative Cow.
In short, you’re looking at a big investment here, not just a few thousand bucks. Make sure you do your homework and hire a reputable professional that has expertise with setting up SANs in video post environments.

And here’s another gem from Bob, from this thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/971880#971938

THERE IS NO CHEAP SHARED STORAGE SYSTEM FOR VIDEO MEDIA. Not unless you consider $20,000 to be cheap. All these home brew “psuedo” SAN (NAS) systems DONT WORK. There are LOTS of companies making SAN systems – Apple XSAN, EditShare, Apace Systems VSTOR, Facilis Terblocks, Charismac, Studio Network Solutions, and “home made” Tiger Technology Meta SAN (which is very nice) – but they all have one thing in common – THEY ARE NOT CHEAP. Anyone that tells you otherwise is misleading you.

Good luck, and check out the XSAN forum for more related threads.

[Alan Okey]

I forgot to mention Final Cut Server.

FC Server is a capable asset management tool, but it’s not meant to be a replacement for a SAN. It can certainly work well in a SAN environment, but its primary function is to help keep track of assets shared by multiple users, not to provide the underlying infrastructure for actually sharing the data. For that, you need the hardware and software components provided by a SAN.

[Jason Wissinger]

Thanks for the advice. I kinda see spending the $20,000 to $30,000 or more as inevitable. I have been kinda spoiled with FCP lately because I have had to spend less money on gear. I started with a $50,000 *edit system went to a $20,000 Cinewave system to now just buying mac pros because we do everything on P2. So I have gotten quite spoiled.

So now I just have to figure out where to start. Know of any good companies that set up this kind of stuff. I will do some more research on my own and maybe I can get lucky and build the cost into the productions. Sweet.

Thanks again

[Dominik Bochenski]

Our shop just went with the MetaSAN solution. Even though we are more of an effects shop than an editing facility, the system has proven quite capable. There were some initial hiccups but Tiger and the dealer were great about ironing them out. The dealer we used was Datrox out of Montreal.

Keep in mind, we did spend quite a bit more than $30k.

[Mark Raudonis]

Alan,

I just got back from NAB, and I can tell you that the advice you quoted from MR Zelin, while accurate at the time, is rapidly changing.

I saw more “SAN in the CAN” solutions this year than ever before. These simple to implement, maintain, and administer systems are all aimed at that “12 and under” small post environment.
Most interestingly, many of these solutions are NOT using fibre channel. They’re figuring out how to achieve the necessary bandwidth over gig e.

This space is now getting very crowded with many players offering various solutions. Off the top of my head, check out:
Terrablock by Facillis, SANmp, Editshare, and a new entry at NAB, “Lairdshare” from Laird telemedia.

Finally, I saw a very interesting approach to a SAN using over one hundred small laptop drives. Keep in mind, “more spindles equals more bandwidth”. The whole thing ran on DC power (just like your laptop). Very interesting .

The SAN field is undergoing MAJOR innovation right now. Expect a rocky ride ahead.

Mark

[Matthew Nelson]

I have not worked with any of the San in a Can solutions but I have run both metasan and xsan. I lean towards XSan because of the scalability of the volume. The following would be my equipment list for a solid SAN system.

A metadata controller
A backup metadata controller
SAN Software for each client and controller
Fibre channel switch
Corporate Gigabit ethernet switch
Metadata Gigabit ethernet switch
Fibre Channel HBAs for clients and controllers
Fibre Channel RAIDs with enough bandwidth for your house
UPS for the gear with email notification and machine shutdown abilities
Rack for the Gear
A machine room with proper AC to keep the gear cool
2 CAT6 runs to each member of the SAN
2 FC runs to each member of the SAN(copper for within the rack, optical for runs to the edit bays)
Static IPs for all members of the SAN
Apple Remote Desktop to manage the system
Trained personal to install the whole thing
24/7 tech support from the SAN company

Hope this helps.

Matt

[Sean Oneil]

Jason,

I hate to rain on everyone’s parade, but I can assure you that purchasing a SAN, given your situation, is a bad idea and probably a big waste of money at this point in time.

You have 3 people, working with a compressed format (DVCProHD). You don’t need a SAN, nor do you want the hassles of a SAN.

This is what you do. Get a used Mac G5 and buy a quad-port ethernet card for it from Small Tree and install it:
https://www.small-tree.com/login_sendpass.asp

Then buy a regular SATA array, like from one of the vendors you see advertised here, and set it up on the G5. Connect each of your 3 client Macs, giving each one it’s own ethernet port. Give them IP address, and make sure all 3 have different subnets (192.168.XXX.0 – “XXX” is the subnet) so they can’t see each other. Anyone with minor networking skills can help you with this.

Make sure filesharing is on, and you’ll find that all 3 clients have a very fast connection to the same SATA array all at the same time.

I promise you, that is all you need and it will cost you less than $5k. People will tell you the problems with regular file sharing vs. a SAN. However, a setup like what I described addresses these problems by having such drastically higher specs than what you require. A single ethernet port provides 10-times as much bandwith required for a DVCProHD stream. And by not using a switch, you get an even cleaner path. You can also improve performance by turning on Jumbo Frames.

Sean

[Winston A. cely]

Excellent advice, Sean. I’ve used this type of setup and it works very well. Before we set it up, we had actually called ProMax about a SAN setup, and they talked us out of it for the very reasons you give.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

“If God could do the tricks we can do, He’d be a happy Man.” – Peter O’Toole – “The Stuntman”

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe

[Jason Wissinger]

Wow this sounds enticing. I will look into this. Thanks for the advice.

[Sean Oneil]

One other thing. With OSX Tiger, having persistently mounted network drives was a total pain in the ass. With Leopard you don’t that problem anymore. So if you go into “System Prefs -> Accounts -> Login Items” you just drag your mounted network drive into that list and it will automatically mount it every time you restart your machine.

Also, should a network drive become unavailable, on Tiger it would cause all the connected machines to freeze up for like a minute. Leopard fixed that problem too.

Sean