SAN Options (what do I need, what don’t I need?)

[Matt Killmon]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the information. So, essentially, you’re advocating a setup where we’d have (essentially) a 10GigE “cross-over” connection between the two systems, with direct-attached storage on one of them, file sharing over that 10GigE connection? Or am I misunderstanding something here?

The other main reason I’d prefer to get away from direct-attached storage is to keep the loud, hot storage arrays out of my (or the associate video producer’s) edit suite since I also do some audio mixing, and would like an environment where I’m able to hear properly. Currently that’s a bit tough with two constantly-running XServe RAIDs in my office. Plus, this office and the adjacent one are already wired with 62.5 micron multi-mode fiber to a nearby IT server closet. With this in mind, would it still be possible to engage in a setup like the one you’ve described, with the storage located off in a nearby server closet?

[Matt Killmon]

Would CatDV allow for integration into the existing Active Directory network to inherit user information, and allow users outside the edit suites (i.e. the marketing team) to look through and do basic interaction with our assets? I’m envisioning scenarios where I can mark projects as “ready for review” or “ready for approval,” have e-mail notifications go out to the appropriate parties, or where marketing brand managers can use encoding presets to create small files for themselves which they can then deploy to the necessary parties, without having to interrupt myself or my associate from ongoing edit duties.

I was mostly interested in FCS because it’s more Apple kit, so I assume (perhaps wrongly!) that it’s tailor-made for managing Final Cut projects well. Plus I know it integrates with Mac OS X Server, which in turn can join AD domains through OD (allowing it to integrate with the existing company-wide Windows-based network). Is your recommendation of CatDV over FCS based on CatDV being a more effective, less complex solution, or a cheaper solution, or some combination of the two? Are their lurking horrors in FCS that I’m not aware of, having never used it before?

I’m guessing these might be better questions for the FCS forum.

[Steve Modica]

This is doable with 10Gb and the 6Gb SATA stuff. The trick is that all of it is pretty raw so you have to test in advance to make sure the pieces will work together (we’ve been working on that for a while).

You used the term “bandwidth”. I’ll caution that this is a bad starting point. With shared loads, you cannot do “bandwidth/codec rate”. The performance and latency curve of a raid knees off very quickly when you hit it with many streams, even very slow streams. It’s also the case that raids are usually set up and tuned to be in a single stream (or “small” stream count) environment. So the individual IO latency suffers to provide a better overall average performance. (for example, IOs will get reordered or data is read in advance, making the IO take longer)

Whatever you buy, you should setup a realistic benchmark and monitor the IOs so you can demonstrate that they stay under the frame rate window requirement. Once you achieve that, you can sort out the network bandwidth requirements and take it from there.
Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications