shared media raid – cheaper options – opinions wanted!

[Mark Palmos]

[walter biscardi] “We just connect them up directly. We’re only using the one socket on the Mac Pro.”

walter,
presumably one cannot edit with each other’s ProRes HD media over a gigabit ethernet, right? Isnt that what bob zelin’s Tiger Technologies Meta LAN is for, so one can use a regular network, but have remote disks mount locally so no need to deal with unresponsive protocols.

thanks
mark.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Mark Palmos] “presumably one cannot edit with each other’s ProRes HD media over a gigabit ethernet, right?”

No clue. We don’t edit over the ethernet. We simply move files as we need to, which is not very often. Generally just some graphics, animations and tease material. Takes all of 2 minutes or less in most cases. The rooms edit independently.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Bob Zelin]

please remember, this is all hear-say, and I do not know how well it works in real life. You need a dedicated MAC Pro as the “server”(it can be a regular MAC Pro, not running OS-X server), a 4 or 6 port ethernet card in this computer, along with generic SATA storage (like the brands that advertise on this forum), a managed Gigabit ethernet switch that allows for trunking (this is something I am reading up on today, on how to configure the switch) – (this is about $1000), and ethernet connections to your MAC FCP workstations. The software for the “server” is $549 and the software for the “client” (each MAC FCP system) is $249 – so your “big” investment is the dedicated MAC Pro with the dedicated SATA storage (it can be fibre storage too if you want to spend more money). Everything else is cheap- – except the knowlege to hook it up correctly. This is my current learning project right now, because I know that I am unqualified to do this by myself right now, until I learn more (and I am giving myself 30 days before I jump in).

Bob Zelin

[Mark Palmos]

Hi Bob,
it sounds very interesting, but not really cheaper than getting say a pair of maxx evo HD–4TB’s and using a gigiabit ethernet for basic copying files over.
please do let us know when you find out more.
tx
Mark.

[Bob Zelin]

you are correct – no matter what you need to have a large drive array, like a Maxx Digital EVO for the “central” unit, but to have true shared storage (where you don’t have to copy files), products like MetaSAN and MetaLAN are the lowest price things I am aware of.

With that said, most of my clients (actually all of my clients) are doing what you just suggested – have a large array in each edit room, and simply copy the files over. Nothing is less expensive than this solution (even though it’s a pain in the ass to constantly drag files across).

bob Zeiln

[Mark Palmos]

Gotcha, thanks Bob.

till later
Mark