Raid for on-set use

[Eric Hansen]

you might want to jump over to the Resolve forum for specifics, but since you mentioned a Rocket, I thought the bulk of your work would be RED. If you’re doing more Alexa, then you’re correct that three 580s will be faster than a single Titan. I should also mention that some are having issues with the Titan on their Mac Pros, jump over to the Resolve forum. you don’t need a GUI card in Resolve 9 or 10. running GUI off the GPU only slows it down by a tiny fraction.

with 10GbE, i think you’ll see more like 650MB/s real world. how many MB/s is your current Resolve system pulling when it’s rendering Alexa footage?

i would look at all the components in the chain, and try to figure out where your bottlenecks are in a typical workday. would faster storage help? would faster GPUs help? do you really need to render at 110fps to get your work done? where can you compromise and get away with it? personally i like redundancy. if something happens to your Resolve system, it won’t stop the card offloading process if it’s running on another computer.

e

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

[Gautam Pinto]

Alex, both Cineraid units look like good choices. The build quality looks good and seems like others use the same chassis (small tree) it looks like it could be a CI design chassis or similar OEM. In terms of expander, I think these are the same LSI / Areca expanders used in most of the boxes out there. In terms of size weight and cost per bay, right now the ARC-4036 is looking very attractive. It’s small, light weight, and I can have 16bays by getting two units, for the same cost as the 12-bay Cineraid. The ARC-4036 can be had online for less than 1K, currently and it’s the smallest, lightest, well-built, least expensive 8bay expander chassis I can find. ( unless I build my own, which I don’t want to do, lest I incur the wrath of Bob )

Kidding aside, I’m leaning towards the ARC-4036 and the Atto R680 with cache assure technology.
If I need more storage capacity I can just pickup another 4036. The 8bay cineraid MSRP is almost double the cost of the 8bay 4036. And it’s so small and light, that I can fit 2 on my cart based setup if I need it!

For the heat issue with the Atto, I can always put in an extra silent fan in the expander chassis close to the card. Unscientifically speaking, I think this would provide adequate cooling for the thermal envelope of the enclosure.

For mobile set use the ARC-4036 looks great on paper. For the studio, I would seriously consider Proavio or Cineraid 16bay rack-mount chassis. They both look like great choices.

Thoughts?

[Gautam Pinto]

110FPS? Unfortunately yes. Rendering on set with two cameras and 5 hours of rushes a day can certainly introduce workflow challenges given budgetary restraints. Many “producers” don’t understand the complexity and difficulty of performing these tasks, and often I am performing with extremely unreasonable demands. It is my understanding though, that the actual encoding to a codec is a CPU and IO bound problem, and GPU is used for image processing, not encoding. So it’s a balance between more components than just the GPU.

I have to work with many camera systems. So for RED I have to re-configure, and for Alexa the same. This is another thing that many people don’t understand, a DIT system is a uniquely custom engineered solution to almost every production. I need to balance all the variables for hardware decisions based on all the factors in the equation.

Further to your points, at 650MB/ sec I think this is still within the threshold of acceptability. However, it brings up the idea of using a Thunderbolt enabled mac mini or laptop, with 10Gbe expansion chassis, for all the offloading tasks. These would be easy to replace in the field, and consume little space and power. However, again I will be loosing a slot for the 10Gbe card! I guess if I remove the HBA or the QIO I will be gaining a slot, so It might work out. I’ll explore the option.

Will a thunderbolt mac mini, or laptop with a 10Gbe network card in expansion chassis, connected to the mac pro directly provide good enough performance for about 250MB / sec throughput?

Since the volumes will be mounted over the network, they will not be block level, so I’ll have to research any issues with the file naming / extended attributes, permissions and offloading software, etc.

what do you think about a Mac Mini offloading data direct connected to the Mac Pro via 10Gbe and the Mac pro sharing the Raid over standard file sharing?

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Gautam Pinto] “The ARC-4036 can be had online for less than 1K, currently and it’s the smallest, lightest, well-built, least expensive 8bay expander chassis I can find.”

Agreed, it seems to be a better choice than either the 12- or the 8-bay expander from CineRAID. The only things I’d wish for, in your environment, are redundant power supplies, but I understand that you can’t have everything. ProAvio 16-bay 3U expander will likely take less space than two ARC-4036 units, and does have redundant PSUs, but is some $700 more expensive than two ARC-4036 units combined. At 78 lbs. (per their specs… diskless… really?), it seems to also be quite a bit heavier.

[Gautam Pinto]

[Alex Gerulaitis] “PSUs, but is some $700 more expensive than two ARC-4036 units combined. At 78 lbs. (per their specs… diskless… really?), it seems to also be quite a bit heavier.”

Yes this chassis is that heavy, and without disks! I used to have a RS16SS Proavio unit and it was at least 100lbs with 16 disks. Anyway, I could get away with the size, and perhaps even the weight. But it’s the noise that would kill the deal. Also, Proavio and other companies like CineRaid, market their products for M&E environments but never publish the noise specs. This is always so frustrating for me, as these units are often used in studios, edit suites, film sets, and on-location where noise really matters. These units are not just used in machine rooms. Why don’t these companies ever bother to publish the noise levels of the different units?

Anyway.

I have never seen a 16bay chassis that is quiet. So two 8bay units that are quiet might be better in this regard.

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Gautam Pinto] “I have never seen a 16bay chassis that is quiet.”

IS316JS is quiet. Seriously. A good client of mine had two of those, likes them, and he is sensitive to noise.

[Gautam Pinto] “Why don’t these companies ever bother to publish the noise levels of the different units?”

CineRAID does for the most part. If you’re in LA, I could try and arrange a personal rendezvous.

[Gautam Pinto]

Thank you for the advice Alex, I have looked into the unit and done some math and here is the breakdown.

Areca ARC-4036 X 2 units
Cost: $1800
Cost per bay: $112.50
Weight: 30lbs
Volume in cubic inches: 1560.582 (both units)

Proavio IS316JS
Cost: $2700
Cost per bay: $168.75
Weight: 78lbs
Volume in cubic inches: 2268.49

I understand the difference… the Proavio has server grade hardware and components, solid steel chassis, redundant power, and is designed for a server room.

The Areca is for a studio environment sitting beside someones desk in an edit suite, with non mission critical data on it.

On set, I’ll be offloading data to 3 locations always. One production raid, one internal raid, and one shuttle drive. The shuttle will leave my station twice daily and get backed up to LTO, as well as copied to a SAN. So if the Areca fails, I’m still covered 6 ways from sunday, and can temporarily switch to an internal RAID 0 in the Mac Pro, during the down time. So the train does not stop. I have backup components and procedures for almost every component in the chain.

Given the cost, features, cubic volume and weight I think the Areca makes more sense for my current requirements. However, I am definitely looking at both the Proavio, and Cineraid products for my studio work.

I appreciate all the help and advice, thank you.

[Rainer Wirth]

For the data and speed you want to use on the spot I would recommend a FC Raid with 4x8GB FC Atto card and a 16 bay FC Raid together with a Mac Pro. Everything else is very experimental.
We use this for Bundesliga soccer. You can use a mac mini to transfer data but not as a shared system.
As a FC system you can use a Yotta3 from Axus (pretty solid hardware)

cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I use an Atto H680 inside a OWC Thunderbolt expansion chassis. One SAS port connects to a Codex Data pack (which is a RAID) and the other port connects via fanout 4-way eSATA cable to 2 or more eSATA drives. On some mixed cam shoots, one of the 4-way eSATA ports also connects to a Red mag reader.

It’s worked for months now.

So, Gautam, I guess it should work with your RAID on one port and 4-way eSATA on another.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Fred Jodry]

Gautam, to get rid of some of the heat issue go to a cooled air supply. Some of the scientific or laser manufacturers make big thermocouple coolers that are practical to your uses. Also, game computer builders sometimes use some of this big stuff. Fred Jodry