Promise VTrak E610f without a Fiber Switch?

[Sebastien Bertrand]

Hello Øystein,

Yes, connecting your Promise storage via fibre channel is your best option for performances. Get a pair of mac minis with Promise SANLINK for the xsan metadata controllers, 3 fiber cards for your workstations and a second ethernet switch for a metadata network.

Upgrade your workstations to Lion or Mountain Lion to get the free Xsan licenses. If you have dual controllers on your Promise storage, you can use the 8 fiber ports on your promise storage to connect up to 6 workstations (2 metadata servers + 6 workstations). Unless you go over 6 workstations, there is no need for a fiber channel switch.

To set that up, I recommend you get an experienced integrator, as the concepts involved in setting up a SAN are quite different from a standard network installation.

Sebastien Bertrand
Systems Integrator, Ordigraphe Inc.
Toronto, Canada
https://www.ordigraphe.com

[Eric Hansen]

does the E610f have 8 FC ports? I have a client with a Vtrak E (not sure the model number) and it has 2 ports on each of the 2 controllers. if you have a similar setup, then yes, you will need to get a fibre switch, along with everything else Sebastien lined out in his post. This will make things much more complicated than you have now. Even though Xsan software is free, it will still be an expensive upgrade in cards and MDCs and time invested. BTW, if you have a similar port/controller setup as i do, i’m not sure if going to 4 ports over 2 will increase the speed. I believe they’re just there as fault tolerance in a multi switch system.

a few suggestions:

– creating 2x1GB trunks from the clients to the switch doesn’t do anything to speed up the connection. Steve Modica can chime in on this. Basically, it’s something the Mac OS can’t recognize and take advantage of.

– i would suggest dumping the ProCurve and getting a multi-port Ethernet card for the Mac Pro host computer, and connecting every client directly. the configuration of the switch may be your bottleneck, or the configuration of the 2x1GB truck on the host computer side may be set up incorrectly.

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Sebastien Bertrand]

You are right Eric,

The E610 only has 2 ports/controller, it’s the older 4Gb model. It’s the E630 and E830 that have 4 ports/controllers, so he will need a switch.

Sebastien Bertrand
Systems Integrator, Ordigraphe Inc.
Toronto, Canada
https://www.ordigraphe.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
Eric of course is correct about this, and so it Sebastien. But we all know what is going on here. I will explain.

Eric points out that you gain nothing by trunking or bonding two NIC ports to the switch from the client – that is true. I don’t know the AVID ISIS 5000 trick, but other than that trick, bonding a client to a switch with LACP does nothing. For faster speed you need 10GbE to the client or Fibre.

A Fibre switch like the QLogic 1400 is not expensive. And perhaps your VTrak has the 8 ports (I never saw anything like this, but I could be wrong, and probably am).

What is going on here (Eric and Sabestien) is that “we” try to promote how simple all of this is, as long as YOU HIRE US. Doing an XSAN integration is a pain in the ass, even if everything is free – you still pay a lot to the integrator (the guy that does this for you). So I am guessing that Oystein wants to do this by himself, without hiring anyone, and is trying to use the equipment lying around his office, but can’t figure out how to do it.

Well, as Sabestian, Eric, and myself will wind up saying to you – Good Luck Oystein, and when you get tired of doing this, and making all these mistakes, you will ultimately hire someone (like us) to do this for you. And after you pay that first time, you will have the knowlege of how to do this in the future. And what winds up happening, is that once you have this knowlege, you quit your job, and go somewhere else that will pay you more money (or go out on your own), because now you are an expert, and can demand more money for your services.

I know the game. I live it.

Bob Zelin

[Eric Hansen]

Haha, great post Bob. That’s almost exactly what I did after assisting in the install of an Xsan and maintaining it for a year. But then I realized the pain of proper DNS, which made me yell profanities at small children playing with puppies. This may all be fixed in the current version of Xsan, but honestly I don’t want to know. I did my last Xsan in ’09

Oystein, I definitely recommend keeping it simple and building on the working ethernet setup you already have. Once it’s setup properly and the bottlenecks have been fixed, you should be getting full gigabit speed to all of your clients (assuming your RAID is not full or near full)

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Øystein Rabbe]

Thank you guys for different input. I am sure I have only 4 connectors in my VTrak if that makes a difference?

How much do I need to spend to get a Switch that can handle this? And will I not get anything out of setting it up with only the four connectors? What will I gain if I choose to connect all my clients directly to the Mac Pro with a better ethernet card compared to buying a fibre switch?
Why is it so difficult to set up an xSAN?

[Eric Hansen]

Xsan is a shared and actively managed filesystem and requires Metadata Controllers, not just a switch. the suggested Mac Minis and SANLinks will run about $2000-3000, plus the cost of the switch and FC cards for each computer.

if you stick with ethernet, you will “gain” simplicity. FC is great, but I think it’s overkill for your use.

If this was my personal setup, even though I have Xsan experience, i would stick with ethernet.

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Øystein Rabbe]

So you think settting up a Ethernet card in the Mac Pro and share it with a direct ethernet cable per user would be the best option then?

[Bob Zelin]

Oystein,
you are a kid that thinks he knows a lot about computers. Here is what is going to happen – you have 2 choices.

You can just jump in (like Eric and I did years ago) and make lots of mistakes, pull out your hair, have fear of getting fired or killed, and (hopefully) eventually learn exactly what needs to happen to make this work. It will be painful, but is it worth it ? You tell me – it gave me a new career.

OR

You can hire someone to do this for you, who is experienced. This experienced person has suffered like we all did – and so now we know.

Some of your questions show your inexperience – like “how much does a fibre channel switch cost” – I gave you the model # of the QLogic 1400. Look it up. If this is too difficult for you to do, then it will be too difficult for you to set one of these up. They do not just plug in and work.
Same with XSAN – why is it so difficult ? You should go to google, and XSANITY, and find out about XSAN, and what is involved with setting it up. You just don’t “poke around the menu’s” and figure it out. Most guys go for training, or work with someone that had received training at one time. Or someone that has suffered thru lots of mistakes figuring it out.

None of this is easy. I am not trying to discourage you – I was a person (so was Eric) that jumped in saying “I can do it” and soon realized that nothing was working, but neither of us gave up, and spend a LONG TIME getting good at this stuff.

So you can be that person too, or you can hire someone. I can only assure you of one thing. It’s not going to just plug in and work. And no one (especially me) is going to sit here on Creative Cow, and answer every question that you have on “how come this doesnt’ work, and what do I have to do to the ProCurve switch to make it work properly”.

Bob Zelin

[Øystein Rabbe]

Bob,
If its me, or someone I hire to set it up its not really that relevant. The equipment itself is going to be the major cost, as of what my original question was- how can I do this in an affordable way.

I respect your expertise and advice and I have no intention to pretend I can do all this myself when I know I can not. But as this is a forum where thoughts and advice can be shared freely I dont see why I shouldn’t come here to ask for thoughts on different kinds of solution supporting my existing infrastructure. I am not going to do something myself OR hire anyone else if I am not in understanding of what different solutions I can choose from and what the results will be, both in financial terms as well as technical terms.

So once again- thanks for advice. But I am not someone who will figure out everything on my own, and thats exactly why I come here. But also to understand the process so I am sure I make the right decision.