SAN, NAS and Organizing Your World

[Bob Zelin]

this is a simple answer, and it is not a complete answer. You will not get a complete answer on these forums, as this is a complicated subject.

You need to hire someone that does SAN systems for a living (like a qualified dealer). This is not a plug and play process. In choosing a SAN for AVID, you MUST BE AWARE that AVID is like no other video product. Each AVID Media Composer (or Xpress) creates a .msm file which is the Media Database for that particular workstation. If you have a generic shared storage enviornment (like XSAN) that is not capabable of managing multiple AVID systems, you will ERASE the “other” AVID’s msm files, making it impossible for them to access their files. Just because someone can “see” another computers drives, does not mean that it will work with AVID. This is what Metadata management is about with AVID and other systems that can handle multiple AVID systems. This is why it is more complex than a simple standard SAN or NAS system.

If you choose the wrong system, you will erase other computers media databases, and those uses will kill you.

Bob Zelin

[Josh Wilson]

Hi Bob,

I thought you might be the first to respond, with your adventures with MetaLAN and whatnot. Thanks for the heads up on Avid – it is insistent on managing it’s own media databases (both annoying and useful). The guys over at Apace assure me that Avid plays well with the vStore, so I’m hoping that shouldn’t be an issue.

I have no illusion of getting Avid to make nice with a NAS. I envision that as being a place for original graphics, music, animations, scripts, etc. to live so that we don’t have multiple copies sprayed across five computers.

Thanks again for the response. I’m not really expecting to get a complete answer on this – but I figured if I just brain-dumped I might get some of it answered. Then I can go back and post some bite sized questions.

Josh Wilson
Assistant Editor/IT Monkey
Denver Film and Digital

[Chris Blair]

I’m late to this thread but have some insight.

We own an Apace vStor, and while we don’t use Avid or Final Cut, it works exactly as advertised. Additionally, their customer support is among the best I’ve ever experienced in the 25 years I’ve worked in video production.

Everything they told us, and every claim they made, was accurate and true. I’d ask Apace to give you the names and emails of a few people that have bought their system and are using it with Avid. Then get direct feedback. But I would bet it works with Avid if they say it will.

As for managing collaborative projects etc. We dreaded the thought of creating a workflow system (directory structures, backups etc.), but in reality, it wasn’t that hard. We capture to our vStor from 2 VelocityQ workstations. 4 total workstations access video/audio files simultaneously, and all can use 3-4 real-time DVCpro50 quality streams (about 8MB/sec) at the same time. That’s 10-12 real-time streams. For projects and graphics, we use a LaCie 2TB rack-mount ethernet drive, and for all backups we use a 4TB LaCie rack-mount ethernet drive. All our workstations have dual ethernet, with one GigE port connected via a managed switch to the vStor, and the other GigE port connected via the managed switch to the rest of the network where the LaCie drives reside. A managed switch allows you to specify bandwith on various ports, so the vStor ports are setup completely separate from the rest of the network and each has 200GB of bandwidth assigned to it. This doesn’t allow the office network to ever interfere with the vStor.

The weakest link in this setup is the LaCie network project drive(s). It’s (they’re) fast enough, allowing us to work almost seamlessly on projects, but we do notice occasionally pauses and delays that didn’t exist when we edited from dedicated, direct attached system and project drives. This occurs mostly in VelocityQ with no noticeable difference in Photoshop, After Effects, Digital Fusion etc. VelocityQ creates a LOT of “temp” files of graphics, audio etc., and saves a bunch of backups of timelines and project settings, so we assume this is what causes the small delays.

The LaCie drives test out at about the same speed as our old direct attached SCSI system drives (25-30MB/sec sustained), which is really good for a NAS based setup with consumer drives, but they don’t support jumbo frames, which according to people I’ve talked to, would probably eliminate the pauses.

When we mentioned these delays to the guys at Apace, they actually recommended we just use the vStore for our projects, saying they have several Avid and Final Cut customers that just do everything on the vStor. They just setup different volumes (which look like connected hard drives to the user) for video, audio, and projects.

But we have so much stuff already on the LaCie drives, we just decided to live with the occasional pauses, which typically occur a few times an hour and result in about a 2 second delay when doing non-critical stuff. It never occurs during playback or export, so all our editors just said, hey, we’ll take that in exchange for the huge amount of time we’re now saving by NOT having to move files and projects and try to figure out where or when somebody is going to edit or capture something.

The most difficult and time-consuming part of the switch was moving the massive amount of data to the new drives and transitioning from the old, direct-attached setup to the shared workflow. This took months, and we still occasionally open an old project and have to do a lot of re-associating and moving of files.

But moving to shared storage is a HUGE boost to productivity, and makes backups soooo much easier to manage. I actually don’t think it’s as hard to setup as Bob makes it out to be, but if you’re not familiar with it, it does make sense to hire someone to do it. We only hired someone to install and setup our new GigE switch and help setup all the various shared drives. We handled the set-up of the vStor and the workflow management ourselves. Once it was setup and working correctly, we pretty much have forgot about it. We’ve had to re-boot the vStore once in 6 months, and that was after a power-surge. Same goes for the LaCie drives. They run 24/7 and we’ve not had a single issue that’s kept us from editing (knock on wood.)

Hope all that helps

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Morten]

I’m considering the vStor 2100. Can you confirm if it works with ProRes HQ in HD resolutions?

– No Parking Production –

Finalcut Studio2, Dual G5, Kona 2, ioHD, X-Raid

[Chris Blair]

No help here. We use it with 3 VelocityQ and 1 Blackmagic Decklink system with Premiere and After Effects. However, we talked with people before we bought it that were using it with Final Cut. Ask the guys at Apace or your reseller to give you names of people using it with Final Cut and call them.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com