Storage interface for editing – questions about iSCSI

[Bryce Arroyo]

Daniel,

Hopefully this will answer your questions and make everything much easier.
There is no reason to use iSCSI.A simple system with 10Gig Ethernet will give you speeds that exceed the requirement for 4K. Not just from Maxx Digital, but from any of our competitors.

You could do a Mac based system for him with all 10G connections, or we can do a 10G QNAP solution. Added w/ 48 TB RAID array, be it Mac based, or QNAP based.

Let me know what you think, and If you’d like we can get on the phone and talk about all the solutions.

Bryce Arroyo
Maxx Digital
714-374-4944
714-476-4308
bryce@maxxdigital.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
replies below –

Our production requirements are: RAID storage (40TB+) for online editing (PP), grading (Davinci), 4k, raw formats, occasional 8k (raw), processing multiple image sequences (tens of thousands of individual sequence files in various formats and up to 8k). Those are minimum requirements.

REPLY – any 10G system that you see advertised here on Creative Cow will work. 8K ? Are you kidding ? Do you own a Sony 8K camera or Red Weapon ? I don’t know anyone doing more than 6K.
6K .r3d at 5:1 compression is 143 MB/sec. Everyone can do this with 10G interface.

As a bonus and future-proofing, we could benefit from network capabilities and being able to have more than one computer connected to the storage but it is not essential for the nearest year.

REPLY – there is no future proofing. Everything you buy now will look like a joke 4 years from now. Every modern system you see advertised on Creative Cow will do exactly what you want. Every system can share with multiple computers (not just one computer) and do exactly what you want.

We base our post workflows on PC but have macs to deliver prores. By editing I do not mean feature-film-length sequences, rather short clips.

REPLY – everyone can do this. Connecting via .smb3 is no issue for any system you see advertised here on Creative Cow.

Most mainstream storage solutions use Thunderbolt 2 and 10 Gbit Ethernet. I keep hearing from some video professionals that TCP IP (or anything running over ethernet cable) is not a reliable protocol for online editing, and thunderbolt 2 is not a future-proof interface even when we talk about ~5 years.

REPLY – this is nonsense. Everyone is doing 1G or 10G Ethernet. A few are using Fiber channel, but even those (Facilis, Studio Network Solutions) mostly recommend 10G today, because of expense. Certainly 16G fiber is faster than 10G, but it’s more expensive, and more maintenance intensive. There is nothing wrong with TCP-IP. You can accomplish everything that you want. Nothing is future proof, including ALL the computers that you own and all the software that you own. Thunderbolt 3 will be released main stream in 2017. No matter what you buy in 2016, by 2020, or 2021, it will be a joke, compared to what is available by then. Every year, newer, bigger SATA and SAS drives come out. The 10TB SATA drive is about to be released. That will be 160 TB in a single 16 bay chassis. And if WD or Seagate succeed in buying SanDisk this year, you may see cheap large SSD drives in the coming year or two.

Main question: Given our requirements, do I understand correctly that iSCSI over 10 Gbit should still be sufficient?

REPLY – yes, it is sufficient. Don’t you have video facilities in Australia that you work with ? What do they own ? 10G via TCP-IP is also sufficient in a conventional NAS product.

By the way, can 10 Gbit iSCSI be aggregated (2 cables)? Or should we look into PCIe-based solutions such as those offered by Accusys to guarantee reliable speeds?

REPLY – you can’t link aggregate at the client. Only from server to switch, or switch to switch. You do not need 1600 MB/sec per client, no one has that requirement. And your drives could not keep up with this, under multiple client usage.

Accusys has multiple systems. The more expensive system uses QSFP (40G Ethernet) which is very very fast (faster than 10G Ethernet).
The Thunderbolt based system only accepts 3 client computers, and requires the fourth port to go to an Apple XSAN Mac Mini or a Tiger Share server. There is no expansion for this system (clients, you can have multiple drive arrays). The larger Accusys systems can be
expanded with the # of clients, because you use their QSFP switch.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Daniel Stoupin]

Thanks guys, that is reassuring.

I don’t know anyone doing more than 6K.

Now you do 😉

[Crystal Ho]

Hi Daniel,

You are not alone for 8K video editing.
We did have some users in Japan did exactly same thing as you, and they choose to use Accusys PCIe SAN solution.
As you might already aware of, Accusys PCIe SAN solution could support to thunderbolt 2 clients as well, via our own invented PCIE to thunderbolt 2 converter, this SAN solution could support to 12 MAC OS/ Windows/ Linux clients at same time.
Welcome to drop me an email as below address to know further details.
crystal_ho@accusys.com.tw

Crystal