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Shared storage: Jellyfish Mobile, QNAP TS-1685, vs. other?
Hi there,
We’re finally taking the plunge and upgrading to shared storage. I’ve been speaking with Patrick at Lumaforge and the Jellyfish seems like a great product. I later stumbled upon the QNAP TS-1685 and it looks like a great offering, but almost too good to be true. I’ve tried speaking with QNAP sales but no one could call me and their chat support was questionable to say the least.BACKGROUND
We’re looking to have four 10 GbE clients using FCPX, Davinci Resolve, and AE, and possibly two other 1 GbE clients doing low bandwidth work (graphics, etc…). Everyone working off the shared storage. We’re capturing EPIC-W 8K footage, but will generally be converting and editing ProRes 422HQ 4K files and potentially grading the 8K raw in Resolve when we have a workstation that can handle it. We don’t do a lot of multicam work, so I don’t think we’d often exceed 6-8 streams.OPTIONS
Jellyfish Mobile 48:
48 TB raw, four 10 GbE connections, two 1 GbE connections, and 128 GB RAM.QNAP TS-1685:
Equipped with 12 WD 6 TB Red Pro enterprise drives (72 TB raw), four Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB SSDs, dual-port 10 GbE expansion card (four 10 GbE connections total), four 1 GbE connections, 2.2 GHz quad-core, and 16 GB RAM.QUESTIONS
The configured QNAP is about $5,500 less and offers an additional 24 TB raw storage, and 4 TB SSD caching. Where is the catch? The QNAP tech said the CPU and RAM will have no impact on use outside a VM environment. This seems hard to believe as Patrick recommended upgrading to 128 GB RAM. Is this a ‘get-what-you-pay-for’ and we should just go with the Lumaforge? If not, is the QNAP support correct that we’re OK with the lowest end CPU and RAM configuration? Are there other products I should consider instead?Thanks in advance!
Justin -
9 Replies
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Hi Justin,
I don’t know if I’d say there is a catch per-say, but as you stated earlier; you got pretty sketchy help/answers on the front end, when that happens you can usually expect that on the back end, if not worse. QNAP is a good company with a good product, but they don’t have much to provide as far as expertise in pro video, which you may or may not need.
Their technology is fast enough for editing video, because the baseline tech available today is crazy fast (cheap 10GbE NICs, cheap 10GbE switches, 12G controllers, 12G drives, all super fast). So if your only goal is to have a networked RAID that is fast enough to edit from, either will work.
LumaForge will provide a more industry-specific type of support, as they focus on this market.
All of that said, without the specifics, I tend to agree with the statement that loading up RAM is not going to give you any benefit. Processors have minimal impact on video performance, not none, but any mid-range processor (i5-7400 as a good example) will have zero issue providing the processing needed for Shared Storage. In the systems my company has we do load up RAM (sometimes) but only when customers get into offloaded Rendering/Transcoding, outside of that I’m not sure what benefit having 128GB of RAM would give. I’d skip it unless they can give you a specific technical reason that it’s going to help.
As far as other systems, I may be a bit partial, but I’m allowed… check out ProMAX Platform, it goes to the next level of shared storage by adding Asset Management, Archive, Transcoding, Rendering, etc. all built into a single system/single piece of software.
Good luck in your search!
Nathaniel Cooper
ProMAX Systems
nathaniel@promax.com -
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for your response and info. We would love to go with a ProMAX system, but at this point I think you guys might be out of our league. Your integrated LTO archives are enviable ????I contacted another CreativeCow user using the TS-1685 who gave it a solid review so I think we’ll go in that direction. I’m in touch with Bob Zelin who will help sort out any specifics for us.
Cheers,
Justin -
All good Justin, thanks for the complements!
Wait till you see our cloud integration ???? Side note, we are about to launch a line of servers that will be at a much lower price point, that can grow into the full workflow server when you guys get to that point. It’s just above QNAP pricing, but it will give a better way to scale your workflow down the line. If you want some details let me know, otherwise good luck with the QNAP, it’s a good product!
Best,
Nathaniel
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Justin writes –
I contacted another CreativeCow user using the TS-1685 who gave it a solid review so I think we’ll go in that direction. I’m in touch with Bob Zelin who will help sort out any specifics for us.REPLY – I would never trust that Bob Zelin guy. He is an idiot. He built a system for me, and it never
worked, and he charged me a FORTUNE of money. I would hire anyone else but him.xoxo
bobBob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
I would trust that Bob Zelin guy.
He can get nasty, but stuff he builds lasts so long without any support, that you don’t have to even deal with him after it gets going. ????———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India -
Hi there!
Which solution did you guys finally go for, and has it served you well? Do you have any recommendations for a small post facility with similar demands as yours?
Kind regards,Mathias Theissen
– Colorist & Online editor -
Hi Mathias –
this is an old post !I installed a QNAP TS-1685 for Justin Raine on August 16th, 2017.
He has four MacBook Pro’s – all 1G, and one iMac Pro 10G connected to a Netgear XS708T 8 port 10G switch.
This switch connects to the QNAP 10G port.Please let me know if you have any further questions.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Thanks a lot, Bob!
Best regards,Mathias Theissen
Colorist & Online editor -
Hi Mathias,
Apologies for the delayed reply! Bob indeed did help us out with the setup of a QNAP 1685. We’re using it with FCP X and Resolve primary. Feel free to shoot me any questions if you’re still working through shared storage.Cheers,
Justin
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