SAN Advice/Recommedations

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Hey Justin,

One thing to note about file-locking systems. They will not give Final Cut Pro the ability to editing on the same project file at the same time. Both volume-locking and file-locking SAN/NAS will all you to access the same media files, however, if your goal is to edit the same project file at the same time a file-locking system will not enable that.

Not trying to steer you away from file locking, I just know this is something that a lot of people (rightly) assume. File and volume both have their ups and downs in any environment.

Xsan does not require Promise, tons of people use Active and many other arrays. Don’t call apple support if you are using anything other than Promise. But honestly, you are way better off working with one of the many good resellers in town to support you, just be sure to buy from the reseller you want supporting you.

Xsan – If you want file-locking I’d go this route, however it’s pricy and support heavy
SNS – Solid systems (I worked for them for years) easy to maintain, mostly volume based solutions, mixes iSCSI and Fibre, does have 10GbE options
Facilis – Solid systems, however don’t believe the file lock hype, it’s been ‘out’ for a year now and it still doesn’t work very well. They do mix gigE and Fibre which is awesome, and I do know they are fixing their file level issues.
JMR – Good hardware, not a complete solution
Small Tree – Good hardware, not a complete solution

I’d go fibre over ethernet, just because a lot more people actually have it working. Xsan’s are awesome, but are a lot of support. SNS and Facilis are both great products.

The best move for you depends on what you value. My favorite 2 out of what you mentioned are Xsan and SNS. If you need file locking then go Xsan, but you should really find Caspian at SNS and talk to him about volume-locking workflows, he’s brilliant with that stuff. The people I’ve seen take his advice are happy happy people.

Best of luck and congrats on the TruTV series!

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions

[Steve Modica]

If you want to go with 10Gb Ethernet and consider being future proof (like having Fibre Channel over Ethernet support for those 10Gb cards) you should buy from Small Tree.
If you poke around you’ll see Bob’s post about HP switches and flow control/jumbo frame issues. We write the drivers for the mac, and we’ve literally had every line of switches in the lab at one point or another for testing. We sell stuff that works. Most vendors have no idea flow control even exists, much less know how to support it.
As for storage, we’ve written AoE (coraid), iSCSI and FCoE drivers for Mac as well as an entire FCoE target stack for linux (in house). We can pretty much debug anything from a disk problem out through a kernel bug.

A file based network storage setup is definitely the way to go. It’s simpler, scales better, and is easier to manage. If you do it with us, you’ll use a mac pro as a server and you can repurpose that later onto someone’s desk if you upgrade the server.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Justin, Hi Nate –
I have had several legnthy emails privately with Justin before I saw this post, and Nate’s replies match up with what I said to Justin privately – but I wanted to respond publically to what Nate has just posted, on certain comments –

Nate writes –
JMR – Good hardware, not a complete solution

REPLY – JMR is a complete solution, that requires SAN Management software (it can even use SanMP). JMR usually recommends Command Soft Fibre Jet or Tiger Technology MetaSAN. Remember, not even Studio Network Solutions systems work without SanMP (but maybe that makes it a “complete solution”, because the same company makes it).

Small Tree – Good hardware, not a complete solution

REPLY – NOT TRUE ! Small Tree and Maxx Digital Final Share (AND PROMAX SHAREMAX dopeyhead !) use Apple File Sharing, making all three solutions complete solutions. I don’t think that ProMax would be happy about you saying that ProMax does not offer a complete solution Nate !

Bob Zelin

[Ryan Stoutenborough]

Hi Guys,

Regarding,

“Remember, not even Studio Network Solutions systems work without SanMP (but maybe that makes it a “complete solution”, because the same company makes it).”

EVO shared storage solution from Studio Network Solutions (SNS) works with XSAN, SANmp, Storenext, MetaSAN, or Fibrejet.

EVO is modular in regards to connectivity options. One can start off as an Ethernet NAS-only solution and can scale to be a full blown SAN having any mix of fibrechannel, 10GbE and GigE/iSCSI connectivity options. You can also scale the storage by adding the optional expansion chassis. EVO does multi-stream ProRes, HD & 2k.

Learn more about EVO right here – https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/video-san.php

Send me a message if you have any questions & good luck to you!

Ryan Stoutenborough
Studio Network Solutions
http://www.studionetworksolutions.com

[Justin Daniels]

After exchanging emails with Bob and surveying the responses so far – I am leaning towards a 10Gb ethernet setup. My only question about it is in regards to real world performance. Does it actually match up with something like an 8Gb fibre setup when dealing with ProRes422? Furthermore, does the cost vs. what you get for it make it worth it? Or, is Fibre more cost efficient?

I think the move for us is to go with a file-based system (seeing as how we will have multiple users accessing/modifying the same files) so that leaves us with Small Tree, Maxx Digital Final Share, JMR (who can do fibre or 10Gb ethernet) or the Terrablock which has a file based option now.

Also, Bob and I talked about the need for proxy files if dealing with 3 ProRes422 streams at full resolution in multiclips and I’m curious to anyone’s experience with Final Cut Server’s supposed “automatic proxy creation.” Apple’s website says that “Final Cut Server can now create edit proxies automatically. After you ingest your footage in Final Cut Pro, save the project to Final Cut Server. Final Cut Server automatically generates proxy files and links them to the project, so you can either edit with original footage over a high-speed network or choose the smaller proxy files for editing on a notebook or over a slower network.” Does this actually work without glitches?

Thanks for everyone’s help with this.

[Bob Zelin]

Justin writes –
Apple’s website says that “Final Cut Server can now create edit proxies automatically. After you ingest your footage in Final Cut Pro, save the project to Final Cut Server. Final Cut Server automatically generates proxy files and links them to the project, so you can either edit with original footage over a high-speed network or choose the smaller proxy files for editing on a notebook or over a slower network.” Does this actually work without glitches?

REPLY – this is a question for the FCS forum, but I can assure you that if you try to create lo res proxy files on the shared storage server while you are using it as a file server, it will BOG DOWN THE SERVER. Processing requires processing power of a computer, and you can’t have non stop proxy rendering going on while the same computer is flawlessly doing file sharing to your multiple computers. This is not a “miracle process”. This applies to CAT DV as well. You can run CAT DV on a Mac Mini which works flawlessly. And if you try to create low res proxy files non stop for all your footage while you are working, you will BOG DOWN the MAC Mini. To do non stop proxy file rendering of all of your media, you need a seperate computer, and if it is EVERYTHING, you need a powerful computer, not the shared storage server, and not a Mac Mini.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

and let me be publically clear on one subject, before you say to me “Bob Zelin said it would work” –

I have NEVER EVER tried doing 2 or 3 clients, each doing 3 streams of MultiClip at ProRes422HQ, on a 10Gig ethernet system. It should work, but I HAVE NEVER TRIED IT, so I am not saying “oh yea, it works great”. I have NEVER TRIED IT. We have limited clients doing 10Gig work (mostly with Autodesk Smoke and 2k dpx files).

Just to be clear.

Bob Zelin

[Justin Daniels]

I’m not planning on doing the proxy creation while editing. The plan was to ingest the full-res footage and create the proxies before anyone started cutting anything.

Also, we’ll be dealing with regular ProRes, not HQ, so the files won’t be quite as intense in terms of bandwidth

[Steve Modica]

We’ve been testing ST RAID II (6Gb) with 10Gb and it’s very fast. We’re using 3Gb SATA drives on 6Gb SAS ports. There’s a nifty feature that lets 6Gb SATA multiplex 2 3Gb drives.

The results are very good. We can sustain about 350MB/sec for each client out to about 4 clients (depending on the codec) off a single chassis.

I would like to stress that this type of load requires a lot of fairly aggressive tuning. The OS does not have enough of anything laying around by default.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Hey Bob,

Let’s not get bogged down in schematics (or is it semantics? I can never rember…)

When I say JMR is not a complete solution, I mean exactly what you are pointing out, you must add SAN software, switches, fibre cards, etc. all of which JMR don’t make.

Same with small tree, Small Tree is awesome hardware, that I personally incorporate with Promax ShareMAX just as you incorpoorate it with Maxx Digital Final Share. Traditionally ST components are implemented through VARs to be part of a complete solution.

I suppose the same could be said about Xsan, as it’s just a software component.

Wait… what do you mean complete solution?!?

nate cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions