Shared storage and FCPX

[Tom Sefton]

How was a link to a great piece of tech that enables smaller production companies to compete with bigger firms on shared editing projects been swung around so you can bang on about Apple’s non upgradable parts policy?? How..!!!??? Is this actually Steve Woz posting through an alter ego on the cow, venting his spleen about the direction his company took, angry that billions of people have chosen to trust one firm to build them something that works instead of fiddling around with parts and building a super computer for less money? The fools!!!

If you think you can build something like this and write the code to leverage the performance from the drives whilst making it plug and play, and easy to use, and put it in a different rackmount case that fits in a different bloody box and doesn’t have a handle on top to make it easy to carry, and get 5 colleagues or co-workers to work at the same time as you to test performance, then go ahead. Come back and write your findings here. If it works better than this one perhaps you can start selling it to people and offer a warranty and tech support and can build up a list of clients that trust you with their data and their business. Why stop there – maybe you could get yourself a rotary kiln and produce the purest aluminium around, meaning you can reduce weight whilst building a more fuel efficient and powerful car engine.

When exactly in my working week am I supposed to learn how to build all of these things – the hackintosh that is less than a Mac Pro and the shared raid, and the internal raid? I want to do my job. I want to buy something that works immediately and has a warranty and that someone else has used and found reliable. It’s all getting a bit silly with the DIY angle now – if you can’t see the value in a product like this from a small company, then what exactly is your point?

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Ronny Courtens]

I visit quite a lot of production and post houses every year, and actually it’s the first time I have seen new MacPros inside the server room of a post house. I found it very funny because there is no reason why anyone should do this anymore. With the old and noisy cheese graters I would agree, but this is an ultra-silent power-horse that does not take any space and that has actually been built to sit on your desktop. Furthermore, by putting the MPs in the server room, they are making things unnecessarily complex. Instead of just running one little fiber or RJ45 cable between every workstation and the server room, they now have to run several cables for the monitors and any other peripherals between every computer in the server room and every workstation in the building. A gigantic waste of time and money, but I posted the pics because I found they have been very creative in trying to solve a problem that does not actually exist.

Three our four years later when you upgrade why not be able to use the older system to create a system like the Jellyfish (for the 5%)?

I have no time to keep responding to this, but you really should not confuse a bunch of drives in a chassis with a high-performance shared storage solution.

– Ronny

[Andy Patterson]

[Tom Sefton] “How was a link to a great piece of tech that enables smaller production companies to compete with bigger firms on shared editing projects been swung around so you can bang on about Apple’s non upgradable parts policy?? How..!!!??? Is this actually Steve Woz posting through an alter ego on the cow, venting his spleen about the direction his company took, angry that billions of people have chosen to trust one firm to build them something that works instead of fiddling around with parts and building a super computer for less money? The fools!!!”

I read the article and seen the Jellyfish and made a few comments. I stated if they travel with it wouldn’t a rackmount system be better. Did you not look at the photo Ronny Courtens posted with the rackmount unit? I know several places that have rackmount gear. My comments are fair to make.

[Tom Sefton] “If you think you can build something like this and write the code to leverage the performance from the drives whilst making it plug and play, and easy to use, and put it in a different rackmount case that fits in a different bloody box and doesn’t have a handle on top to make it easy to carry, and get 5 colleagues or co-workers to work at the same time as you to test performance, then go ahead. Come back and write your findings here.”

I am simply asking questions and stated when hard drives are in a RAID you will get great performance. I even said the throughput of the Jellyfish was good.

[Tom Sefton] “If it works better than this one perhaps you can start selling it to people and offer a warranty and tech support and can build up a list of clients that trust you with their data and their business. Why stop there – maybe you could get yourself a rotary kiln and produce the purest aluminium around, meaning you can reduce weight whilst building a more fuel efficient and powerful car engine.”

I asked valid questions. All you have to do is say “yes rackmount solutions are offered or no they are not”. Someone else posted a photo of rackmount gear for the Mac Pro helping to prove my point and validate my question about rackmount gear.

[Tom Sefton] “When exactly in my working week am I supposed to learn how to build all of these things – the hackintosh that is less than a Mac Pro and the shared raid, and the internal raid? I want to do my job.”

You posted a link and I asked a few questions. I did not say you should build your own server system.

[Tom Sefton] “I want to do my job. I want to buy something that works immediately and has a warranty and that someone else has used and found reliable. It’s all getting a bit silly with the DIY angle now – if you can’t see the value in a product like this from a small company, then what exactly is your point?”

I asked a few simple questions. As I have stated before some people like the fact that with the old Mac Pro you could configure your own RAID system. Now you have to go external and buy from a third party company with a much higher cost involved. Some people don’t like doing that. It is worth mentioning.

[Andy Patterson]

[Ronny Courtens] “Three our four years later when you upgrade why not be able to use the older system to create a system like the Jellyfish (for the 5%)?

I have no time to keep responding to this, but you really should not confuse a bunch of drives in a chassis with a high-performance shared storage solution.”

I know it is shared storage on a network but the ATX hardware could be reused. That Jellyfish has a mATX form factor with 8 SATA drives. In the end it uses common PC hardware. That is not to say it does not have very unique features or that the software involved is not state of the art. I have never said otherwise. I am not knocking the Jellyfish system. I am saying with the old Mac Pro you could configure your own hard drive system. Now you must use 3rd party solutions. I am not saying the old Mac Pro running a RAID would be like the Jellyfish. I am saying there is a reason some people are still using their old Mac Pro. It does seem like some Mac users like using rackmount systems. Perhaps they don’t need to as you stated below.

[Ronny Courtens] “A gigantic waste of time and money, but I posted the pics because I found they have been very creative in trying to solve a problem that does not actually exist.”

There will always be new technology making things obsolete. Thanks for post the images.