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Simple Thunderbolt to Ethernet solution (Yeah, right!)
Right, here goes.
We’re a production company working with H.264, ProRes 422 & 422 (HQ) workflow mainly on about 3 heavy(ish) duty edit stations plus 4-6 office traffic machines.
We’ve decided to go with Thunderbolt for storage (Promise Pegasus R6) and we’ve served that adequately through an iMac. Now we want to build something a bit more long lasting that can actually give the speed that we need for our setup.
So our thinking is Pegasus on Mac Mini and that Mini on a dedicated video file sharing network. The question is how to get the network bandwidth needed?
1. Thunderbolt to Ethernet hub (does something like this exist/will exist?) – Enough ports to serve 4 machines dedicately and shared for others (same as above). Anyone heard if someone is building something like this or is already out? Again will OS X be able to push data through each port at real speeds?
2. Either Sonnet Echo Express PCIe 2.0 Expansion Chassis or Sonnet RackMac mini Xserver and a Small Tree (or similar) 6-port high-quality Ethernet NIC. This seems like most real solution. Again will OS X be able to push data through each port at real speeds from the Thunderbolt drives?
3. Wait for Mac Pro with Thunderbolt and get Small Tree 6-port NIC – otherwise same as above.
Any suggestions or obvious pot holes?
Thanks,
PJ Palomaki————————————————–
Technical Director / Motion Graphics Editor / Video Editor / Cameraman / DVD Authoring / Flash Programming …
Fruitmedia Ltd
http://www.fruitmedia.net -
11 Replies
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You could get a Magma three slot box and a Small Tree 6 port NIC and have a couple slots left over for something else.
The benefit of the magma is that they use a high end PCIE 3 switch in the box which gives them an advantage over PCIE 2 daisy chaining (like you’d do with multiple 1 slot boxes).
I’m not sure what you mean by option 1. There are no thunderbolt ethernet hubs. That would be the ame as putting a 6 port card in there.
Steve
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
On the Magma page (https://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp) under ‘Thunderbolt Compatible Drivers’ it only lists 10Gb Ethernet NIC’s from Small Tree. Are the Gigabit cards not supported (i.e. PE2G6I)?
EDIT: Ah! Just saw your email 😉 Thanks, so all Small Tree NIC’s are supported for hot swappable, excellent.
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Technical Director / Motion Graphics Editor / Video Editor / Cameraman / DVD Authoring / Flash Programming …
Fruitmedia Ltd
http://www.fruitmedia.net -
They will be very shortly. We haven’t checked in the changes yet (we’ve been working on some other gigabit chips). Magma won’t list them until they have them in house and have tested themselves.
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
There are a host of connectors that ATTO is rolling out for Thunderbolt. I would consider using this:
https://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?cat=16&scat=32&sku=TLNT-1102-D00
…to plug a Mac Mini into your Thunderbolt RAID and a GbE switch. It uses 10GbE and Small Tree has a GbE switch with 4 ports of 10GbE for expansion.
There are plenty of other options ATTO is rolling out like a SAS RAID Thunderbolt Adaptor you don’t need a MacPro to have blazing fast SAS expansion boxes connected to your network.
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I’m really interested to hear what you came up with. I’m working in a small video department that is looking to do something similar. We would like to connect up to six users on a network. We are all on MacBook Pros. Are you using desktops or laptops?
Tim Wuolle
Producer/Videographer/Editor -
We haven’t transitioned to a new system yet as none of the Thunderbolt-enabled PCIe extensions have actually been released for sale. Also still slightly apprehensive of new technology which hasn’t been tested properly ‘on the field’. The four options that have been announced are Magma ExpressBox 3T, mLogic mLink and Sonnet Echo Express and for more integrated solution, the xMac mini Server
All these look very tantalising if they play ball with, for instance the Small Tree PE2G6I (6-port Ethernet NIC). This means dedicated Gigabit ethernet per machine or double bandwidth if the machine has two ports, i.e. Mac Pro.
Steve (who has posted to this thread) said that they have tested their cards with the Magma and the mLogic devices with good results. He also said that they have Thunderbolt-enabled drivers for all their cards. Is this right Steve, I’m not misquoting you?
Just waiting for the devices to actually be released for sale and maybe get some first impressions from people before pushing the button on this!
But if this solution works, it would be an ideal solution for us and also fairly easy to extend by adding another 6-port NIC.
Cheers,
PJ————————————————–
Technical Director / Motion Graphics (C4D & AE) / Video Editor / Camera Op / DVD Authoring / Flash Programming …
Fruitmedia Ltd
http://www.fruitmedia.net -
[PJ Palomaki] “Steve (who has posted to this thread) said that they have tested their cards with the Magma and the mLogic devices with good results. He also said that they have Thunderbolt-enabled drivers for all their cards. Is this right Steve, I’m not misquoting you?”
This is correct. Our driver work (10Gb and 1Gb) is done. We’re just waiting for vendors to put finished product on the market. Everything I have in house is pre-release.
Steve
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
We’re very interested in this trying out this solution over the summer. Assuming we had the server connected to a mini-sas RAID5, would a single gigabit line be theoretically capable of digitizing HDCam ProRes 1080i to a disk over ethernet connection?
Thanks!John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[John Davidson] “would a single gigabit line be theoretically capable of digitizing HDCam ProRes 1080i to a disk over ethernet connection?”
Sure. Pro Res is only 20MB/sec (and normally a lot less).
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
Fantastic. When these are available for purchase I’ll be in touch. Thanks!
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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