-
Small scale Avid shared storage
Bob, please don’t kill me. Having read lots of the posts here I know how you hate people trying to put together a shared storage system on a budget. However at this stage I’m just trying to get my head round the options to see whether I can afford to do what I want.
I’ve a fairly kick-ass standalone Avid system consisting of a Mac Pro with a Mojo DX hooked up to an Infortrend A08S-C2132 RAID via a two-channel LSILogic SAS3801E SAS card which I’ve happily used to work with 1920×1080 25fps material, offlining at DNxHD 115 then conforming at 10bit 1:1 from HDCam originals.
What I’d like to do is repurpose as much of this kit as I can, supplementing with whatever else I need so that I end up with a two-seat shared storage Avid system capable of sharing DNxHD 115 material, but without having to shell out the really big bucks for Unity. Ideally I’d like to be able to reconfigure things back to what I’ve got at the moment to enable me still to conform at 1:1 on one of the edit machines (I wouldn’t expect to be able to share the uncompressed material).
I know that with Avid there’s the problem of not being able to share the media databases on a generic system. Since what I’m proposing is just a two-seat system, would it be viable to set up two partitions, only one of which would be writable by each machine (while both partitions are readable by both), so that when each machine wants to create some media it does so on its own partition and updates its own database, which the other machine can then reload? Or is it not as simple as that?
I’ve read with interest the posts about sharing over Gigabit Ethernet, possibly using link aggregation, and I wondered what people’s opinions are as regards bandwidth/throughput/sharing issues? Should I think about repurposing the existing Mac Pro as a server, and getting two new ones as editing systems? Or putting the SAS card into a Wintel box and keeping the existing Mac Pro as one of the editing machines? Presumably it’s going to fall over if I just plug a second Mac Pro into the first and attempt to share the RAID over AFP while editing on both machines?
Finally, is this sort of venture just going to be too much for an (albeit fairly tech-savvy) editor to cope with and should I try and find someone in London to do it for me, in which case who would people recommend?
-
12 Replies
-
Hi Adam,
This is Taylor Frees with JMR Electronics. I believe we have a solution that suits your needs. You can contact us at 818-739-1110. If you prefer to email, my address is taylorf@jmr.com.
I look forward to hearing from you.
-Taylor
-
Adam,
you have just been given a lead from JMR on this forum. JMR works closely with Tiger Technologies that makes MetaSAN, that has “AVID Virtualization”, that will allow for multiple AVID’s to be used, instead of Unity. JMR is an excellent company.You will also find “alternate” solutions from Studio Network Solutions, Apace Systems (for ethernet), and of course Facilis, who makes the Terrablock. Oh yea, also EditShare who also has an etherent solution that is teriffic that works with AVID systems.
Forget Unity.Bob Zelin
-
Thanks Bob, and Taylor… Speaking to JMR’s UK rep at the moment.
best
Adam
-
Adam, you may also want to consider our EVO storage server which can be configured with all GbE ports and requires no separate MetaData network.
We have quite a number of all Avid shops using our software and servers to handle reality television production on Mac and Windows based Avids, and DNxHD 115 falls well within the capabilities of Gigabit Ethernet.Your SAS array is a bit more difficult to turn into a SAN with software alone, but one option is that you could continue to use it on one system as on-line finishing storage for Uncompressed material if required.
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/video-san.php
Regards,
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Hi guys,
regarding this small scale shared storage. I have another question for you. We are currently working with two editshare fields. One in an OB-van which we will replace by a bigger editshare server. The other field we use in combination with two avids to ingest sdi feeds and a third avid is used to edit straightaway. Because our editshare fields aren’t that reliable anymore we are looking for another solution.
We are looking for storage that is portable, quiet and doesn’t generate a lot of head. It also has to be able to work with an MOG sdi speedrail our similar. Because we do a lot of edit while ingest for news. In relation to that we need the ability to share projects between our ingest station and the editor station. I’ve been looking on the website of tiger-technology and facilis, but i can’t really find anything that suits our needs. Could you help me out?thx in advance
Frederic Vanderheere
-
Interesting how everyone out their is looking for a smaller solution to sharing media in Avid. At the moment we have worked out you can happily share media via symbolic links. This is how most people get around the Avid Database issue. We have been working with linux and been able to create a AVIDfs share then by putting the right .dll files into avid workstation on PC we can now allow true avid project sharing.I would never use Tiger as this isn’t really shared storage it just simply allows for multiple clients to connect to a single media space but you cannot see each others media until you rebuild your media databases. This is so frustrating and thats assuming you don’t get a blue screen in the mean time. The answer at the moment assuming you wish to build your own server with PC clients only (mac coming soon) use Windows 2008 server as we can change the quota for the size of virtual drives and simply install Quadrus software this gives you true project sharing and works properly. This has been used on a lot of big scale projects.
-
The answer at the moment assuming you wish to build your own server with PC clients only (mac coming soon) use Windows 2008 server as we can change the quota for the size of virtual drives and simply install Quadrus software this gives you true project sharing and works properly. This has been used on a lot of big scale projects.
Can you please explain it little more. What is Quadrus software. We have win 2008 server and how will quadrus software enables Avid project sharing?
-
Yer sure basically Quadrus has 2 parts to its software a client and server part. Installing the server part simply allows the server to emulate the sharing of avid unity/Isis. The client side just makes the avid behave as if it’s on unity/Isis.
So all you simply do is create a folder on the server share this out as a network share and simply mount from the client as far as the avid software is concerned it thinks it’s unity and allows you to share avid projects and media just like unity/Isis at the moment it’s all windows based but in the future this will have simple setup GUI ..I hope this help please feel free to ask questions…
-
Where and how to buy it and how much does it cost. Can it take mac clients.
-
Hiya Muhammad, where abouts in the world are you I can put you intouch with quadrus themselfs..
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up