Promise VTrak E610f without a Fiber Switch?

[Eric Hansen]

what Sebastien laid out, plus a switch, is the cheapest way to do Xsan from a hardware standpoint. it’s many times more expensive than what i described using ethernet. yes, the Xsan method will make each computer connection faster, but if you’re just editing and 1Gb is enough, than Xsan isn’t worth the money.

but from an administrator’s standpoint, let me just throw in my 2 cents. the main reason i got out of Xsan is the lack of support for an independent guy such as myself, working in the middle of nowhere. even getting Apple Xsan certification was a waste as it didn’t get me any closer to getting assistance from the Apple mothership. the forums were of next to no help, because they were geared toward pros that were VERY high end. Xsanity just confuses me. and the number of people on there is much less than it used to be. back when i started, Apple even had an Xsan service plan that cost $1000 per computer per year (so for my first self-installed Xsan, that was $5000 a year). before i paid a cent of that, i called them up with an issue and even at their highest level of support that they offered, they were clueless as to how to fix the problem. that’s why they EOLed the Xserve and the Xserve RAID. This is why Xsan is now included for free. Apple makes more money washing their hands of it, than they do selling it with a service plan. if you go the Xsan route, just make sure you have an excellent integrator working with you, and will be available for support when you need.

and yes, they will charge handsomely for it. you say hardware will be the most expensive, but for an Xsan installation, I would budget a few grand for an integrator’s assistance on even the smallest of systems. i had plenty of offers from techs to pay their expenses to fly out to Jackson Hole to go skiing with me and fix my Xsan, but it was cheaper to go ethernet, and i can sleep better at night knowing that DNS won’t knock out my ethernet SAN.

e

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

[Eric Hansen]

yes. that will give you the best performance bang for your buck

e

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

[Bob Zelin]

I just reviewed your old posts. You use FCP 7, you are switching or have switched to Premiere. You compress video.

I don’t know where you got the VTrak, the ProCurve switch, and the other stuff, but you are better off with a turnkey solution, and someone that can assist you. The ProCurve will allow you to do 1GbE connection, which is probably more than enough for your 5 – 10 iMac computers that you are using. If it was my nickle, you can go with a Tiger Technology MetaLAN solution with this hardware, or you can buy a turnkey from lots of companies that I talk about on this forum, that will NOT use the hardware that you have specified in your original post. But it’s not my money, and I don’t know what your budget is to work with.

You have seen the list many times, if you have read this forum. There is a handful of companies that know how to do this. The list is not complete, but it’s a great starting point. With the exception of Tiger Technology, none of these companies will allow you to use the hardware that you curently own –
they are, in no particular order –
Facilis
EditShare
AVID ISIS 5000
Small Tree
Maxx Digital Final Share
Studio Network Solutions SANmp
Apace Systems
Cal Digit Super Share (and Accusys Exasan)
Command Soft Fibre Jet with Rorke Data hardware
Archion (a brand I usually don’t list, but works very well)
and of course, Tiger Technology MetaSAN
(and XSAN)
and there are others, but this is a good starting point.

Most of the dealers have their preferences, and depending on where you live, and who your dealer is, you may choose based on the support that you can get, based on your location.

If you want to persue your hardware, look into that QLogic 1400 switch (their low end model) and see how far you can get, before spending any more money on anything.

Bob Zelin

[John Veron]

Hi,

I think XSAN and StorNext based systems are out-dated in a compressed video environment.
XSAN architecture is too expensive and not supported (you can not call support), that’s why its free with the OS.
FibreChannel is a waste of money in a compressed world IMO and I still can’t believe that Apple actually suggest to replace a server with a MacMini…..

If you just want to play around and see what you can get out of the system, then try SANmp or FibreJet.
Disadvantage: It’s volume level locking.
Advantage: At least with SANmp you can get a free trial.

Advise: You will need iSCSI (maybe from Studio Netowkr Solutions) to talk on a “block-level” over ethernet to the storage.

I suggest you go to Vimeo or Youtube, I bet someone has posted a video explaining this.

Cheers.

[Simon Lytting]

I’m just going to jump in with my own question, because it seems there are a couple of Promise Raid gurus in this thread. Hope that’s alright.

I have a Promise e610f, 2 channel fibre raid. It’s only hooked up to one PC runnning DaVinci Resolve. We only took over this Raid one week ago, from a bankrupt company, so I’m completely new to this.

Does anyone know the best way to setup the Promise to video handling?
Right now I’ve set it up kind of default I guess with the following settings:

RAID0 (I was hoping in the end to set it up for Raid5 or 6 but right now I’m just looking for MAX performance)
Stripe size: 64kb
Sector size: 512Bytes
Write Policy: Write-Thru
Read Policy: ReadAhead

I’m getting kind of ok results I guess with 320MB/s write and 365MB/s Read on the DaVinci disk speed test. But even though it’s ok, I was wondering if there are any settings I could change that would make it even better?

The PC it’s running on is a Dell Precision R5500, Win7 Pro, 2 x Intel Xeon CPU X5650 2.66Ghz, 128Mb DDR3 1600MHz Ram, GUI is running on NVidia Quadro 2000.
I have a Qubix GPU Extension box running 2 x NVdia Quadro 4000, 1 x Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 and NVidia GeForce GTX 670

Hoping for som great pointers! 🙂

[Simon Lytting]

I forgot to mention the system will probably mostly run DPX 10bit sequences and Arri Alexa Prores444 QTs

[Sebastien Bertrand]

Hello Simon,

Depending on various factors in your configuration, you should be able to achieve better performances than that, while keeping a raid 5 or 6 protection. This however goes way beyond what is possible to do on a forum like this. You can hit me off-list if you are interested in professional services to tweak your storage.

sebastien at ordigraphe.com

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

[John Veron]

Hi,

I don’t know how to configure a Promise Vtrak but I can tell you that RAID0 is very very bad.
Try RAID5 at least, it will still be ok performance-wise.
In RAID0 you loose one disk and everything is GONE.

Write-Thru is usually not very good.
Please try to enable Write-Back. This means that the data is cached by the controller and then written to disks.
The controller essentially says “I got the data, continue to give me more”. With Write-Thru it will write the data to the disks first before doing anything else.
this option can be switched on/off during operation and for testing the best performance.

Cheers

[Gary Holladay]

Øystein,
This isn’t as difficult as it may seem. You can download/demo all of the software you need to try to bake this for yourself here: https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=15 but please check out this video to see if you want to tackle this on your own!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEIJ913X-A

I’m the CEO/CTO for SNS – and designed this software, so I can say with complete confidence that it will provide you with a solid option. We created the globalSAN Xtarget iSCSI target software ($899) for this purpose exactly. Many of our customers have old Promise arrays and even some old Xserve RAIDs that they’d like to repurpose for compressed workflows using their existing GbE network.

With Xtarget, you can download the 14-day demo and try this for yourself. It’s pretty straight forward – in that you connect your array via FC to a Mac, then use Xtarget to share the LUNs created on the array via Xtarget. At that point, that Mac is now an iSCSI server that is ready to share your Vtrak over the gigabit network. Your next decision is to determine what kind of traffic cop software you want to use. Xsan is compatible with Xtarget so if you want multiple writers to a single LUN, that’s the best option, but if block-level (one writer/many readers) is ok for your workflow, we sell iSANmp for $199 per seat. I hope this helps – but if you get stuck – SNS has a phone install support for globalSAN Xtarget as well.

Thanks,
Gary

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Gary Holladay]

Sorry – seems the youtube link was truncated: If you look up: globalSAN Xtarget Storage Server for OS X – you can view the tutorial.

Best,
Gary

.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEIJ913X-A&list=U

–
Gary Holladay | CEO/CTO

Studio Network Solutions (SNS) | 1988a Innerbelt Business Center Dr | St. Louis, MO 63114 | Mobile:314.497.8935 |
http://www.studionetworksolutions.com