-
Shared Storage
I’m looking to connect a couple of g5s (both duals, 2ghz, one is an original, the other one of the more recent models) to share data. I’ve done various searches on this list and others to find some different solutions but haven’t come up with anything. I’m sure there is a ton on this, but I’m not looking in the right place.
I understand the xserve/xraid solution but the costs are far out of my league at the moment. Can I buy one of the lacie network drives and gig switch and get decent workflow for a dv (but becoming HDV, and within time HD) based system? I couldn’t find any info on throughput for a drive such as this. Or would I be better off buying another g5 and filling it with drives? Can I expect to be able to work on projects with the project file and footage on the network drive? If I get a g5 for my network file server, would I just use the gigE connection, or is there something I could use to get better performance?
I understand that editors would not be able to work on projects simultaneously, but that is beyond my needs.
Basically, this would be an intermediate solution as I work towards a real xraid solution.
Thanks very much for any responses, I’m really just looking for a stepping stone solution, rather than a dive in (to debt) solution.
Sincerely,
Max Kaiser -
4 Replies
-
To get two FCP stations to access the same media on the same shared storage really requires XSAN, as well as the XServe drive arrays. And XSAN isn’t cheap….there is a per seat license.
I myself wouldn’t mess with “cheap” solutions. Cheap in, cheap out. Cheap breaks. Cheap causes headaches and often lead to expensive things like downtime and equipment purchases that may or may not work.
If you can’t do XSAN, then I’d suggest getting a set of drives for each machine, and duplicate the media. This means that when you transfer the project, that the other editor will have to re-render anything the first guy rendered (something XSAN avoids).
Maybe someone else has a good, working gigabit ethernet SAN solution and will post their experiences.
-
You want Xsan, most certainly. There are more solutions than Xserve RAID, but it just happens to be the most reliable solution.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com -
We have an Xserve hooked to one G5 and can mont it on our other boxes over gigabite ethernet. It works fine for DV and DV50 editing shared 3 ways. It will drop frames occasionally but for most editing it works fine. When a room needs to output then we have to be careful not to all hit the Xserver at the same time. I would think any fast local storage could be shared in the same way. Just be aware of the limits.
joe
-
I’ve got a G5 I edit with, and another editor on a G4 via gigabit that mounts all my hard drives on her desktop (various serial 1.5, FW 400&800 and internal drives. works fine for editing, she gets dropped frames occasionally when capturing via a DV conversion device like canopus. scratch disk is always set to my drives so that render files are never lost, I can pick the project up anytime. Only thing to watch out for is to never have the same project file open on both machines at the same time. Oh, and you may want a dedicated machine to act as a file server. works best when higher speed HD’s are used (serials usually).
Calvin.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up