Terrablock vs. XSan…

[Walter Biscardi]

I don’t have the pros and cons for these, but I know of a house that’s running the Facilis and have heard nothing but great things about them. Tech support went WAY above and beyond on a particular issue.

Shared storage looks incredibly simple as I met with their folks at NAB and am condering their solution for our shop as more broadcast shows start looking to us for Post.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

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“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Gary Adcock]

[Todd Beabout] “Is anyone out there currently using Terrablock (by Facilis) with a multi-workstation environment for shared storage?”

My current unit is connected to 2 fcp, an XP graphics station and occasionally a flame. I share content between all of them without problems via a q-logic switch.
I was able to show a terrablock at an NAB session that took only 30 mintues to configure for multi platform / multi application use, certainly better than the nearly dozen apps Xsan requires to configure a fully populated SAN properly. Add to that I do not hit the bandwidth limits of the 2gig fibre that xsan is still holding onto.

[Todd Beabout] “Also, is it possible to share projects between the different stations using Terrablock? I understand that only one system could have a project open at a time.”

That is correct but that is Volume level locking. Even Xsan has some issues with 2 users having the same video file open at once. The work around is to break your project into smaller pieces then use FCP’s ability to have multiple projects open at the same time to recombine them into the finished project.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Chicago, IL
gary@studio37.com

[Mark Raudonis]

Todd,

Terrablock (AKA “SAN in a Can”) has gotten good reviews and is well accepted in the community. It shines in a small scale environment where you don’t have the $$$ or time/talent for a more complex system. Sounds like a good fit for you.

As for project sharing… there is no free lunch and it’s going to be more complicated with the limitations of your Terrablock “volume based” system. If you want true scalability and univerasal sharing, you’d want to be looking at X-SAN.

I really don’t understand all this “hooey” about “project sharing”. Anyone coming from an AVID environment trys to scare the pants off of you by saying “you can’t share projects”. With FCP, essentially, the SAN IS THE PROJECT. (At least with X-SAN). We’ve developed a workflow with many, many editors (almost 100) where we regularly copy and use each other’s projects. It’s not a problem. You just have to organize your media in a “global” way that everyone can understand. And, of course, using the filename to add comments (like many Avid users do) is also not a good idea. That’s what the “comments” column is for.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

[gary adcock] “Even Xsan has some issues with 2 users having the same video file open at once. “

Gary,

Not true. We’ve had many users hitting the same file on a regular basis. I’ve never done an exhaustive test, but on any given day we could have up to 10 editors pulling from the exact same file. (The main title for example, which is shared on all episodes).

I’m not denying the complexity of the setup process for X-SAN, which is why Terrablock is so appealing to smaller shops, but when properly configured, X-SAN does deliver what it promises.

Mark

[Francois Stark]

Regarding the expandability of a volume-based SAN – we are running 7 users on a SANMP based system. I would say that we are close to the user limit, since we have 11 volumes on the SAN already.

4 FCP suites and 3 Pro Tools suites. Pro Tools can be tricky – version 7.0 doesn’t like SAN volumes, but 7.1 is fine.

By the way – we are not even close to the performance limit, lots of overhead still available. It just gets cumbersome to mount and do data management on so many volumes. Setup was extremely easy and the system is very solid – doesn’t fall over at all.

regards
Francois

Regards
Francois

[Gary Adcock]

[Mark Raudonis] “Not true. We’ve had many users hitting the same file on a regular basis.”

Mark, then it must depend on whether you are working in SD or HD content, The bandwidth is just not there for multiple streams of uncompressed HD in a shared configuration unless the user is willing to drop very, very large amounts of cash.

the adage ” your mileage will vary” holds true.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Chicago, IL
gary@studio37.com

[Todd Beabout]

Thank you guys for all the great info! We will have to really look at both systems closely to determine which one best fits our needs, but I always like to get some “real-world” info from people actually using the system and you have helped alot.

-Todd Beabout
Vazda Studios

[Michael J c]

Just to jump in here late, we recently purchased a 6TB Terrablock (4gbit) and are running 3 media 100 systems, an FCP and an Avid off it.

We haven’t had much problem with “sharing projects”… I guess it depends on how you look at it. Only one user can have “write access” to a volume, but they all can share reading to it.

It actually saved us on a project where we had two editors working with the same media 100 media files on copies of the same timeline. There is no problem sharing the same media files… even at uncompressed HD. You have to come up with a workflow that works for you, but we just have the read only system copy the active program, work on a different section, and then we merge the work into the timeline later.

Anyway… so far, we’re really happy with the Terrablock.