Trying to find a RAID solution with daily cloning of the RAID box

[Jason Myres]

QNAP is nice, but I do not know of an out-of-the-box NAS solution that will give you the data rates you’re looking for.

While they do have GigE interfaces, most NAS solutions don’t have the RAID or CPU power to stream full GigE bandwidth to several clients.

What you will probably need is more along the lines of a real file server (Apple Xserve or MacPro) sharing out a good SAS RAID array to a few clients, each with their own dedicated GigE connection.

Some people have started experimenting with this as a low-cost shared storage solution, with the idea that GigE will give you about 2-3 streams of ProRes per client.

A solution like this will run you about $10-15,000 depending on what gear you use, and how much storage you need. The main issue is that it does not scale very well, and to get beyond the 100MB/sec limits of GigE you have to get into aggregating GigE cables, or move into 10Gb ethernet which is still pretty expensive (a 10Gb host adapter is about $500-800).

JM

[Bob Zelin]

Jason is correct.
You need a file server, link aggregation (since you are using MacBook Pro’s via ethernet) and a fast drive array that can handle this. You will spend about $15,000. You now ask “isn’t there anything cheaper that can do this job” –

NO

There is no $5000 solution to allow you to have ProRes422HQ shared storage capability between 4 – 5 computers. And there won’t be one next month either.

Bob Zelin

[Michael Duff]

Thanks for the help guys – really appreciate it. I’m not after a cheap solution, or a cutting corners solution – but, this is a one off project and we don’t really need to think about future expansion.
So, if you don’t mind me picking you brains a bit more …
If we buy a MacPro and set it up to control the RAID – could we then share that RAID over ethernet? We are really only looking at editing on two machines at once. Maybe the MacPro and one MacBook Pro. Occassionally another MacBook Pro might jump in to access files. But never more than two editing simultaneously.

Thanks again for the help

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia
http://www.bearcage.com.au

[Bob Zelin]

with a multi port ethernet card, and an ethernet switch that does link aggregation, you can do exactly what you want. The total cost of this gear is about 2 grand. So where does the $15,000 total price come from – a great RAID array and a dedicated MAC Pro to act as a server for all of this. No $1000 drive array is going to work in a shared storage application.

Bob Zelin

[Caspian Brand]

Check out https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/video-san.php for a solution with the high performance RAID, multi-port GbE, high performance Server, and SAN software all rolled into one. iSCSI SAN access can enable MacBook Pro’s and iMacs to edit multi-stream PRORES HQ. Jumbo Frames are not required for high speed performance over iSCSI.

————-
Caspian Brand
Sr. Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions

[Allan White]

Question: why do you feel the need to remove the entire backup storage every night? I cannot think of a scenario where this would be simple, fast, or cheap.

We use lower-cost eSata blades (I like the OWC Mercury 1U rack, up to 8TB), connect them via Firewire or eSATA, and have it mirrored nightly. It’s in the rack with the fibre channel RAID. This provides decent backup for everything on the SAN. Obviously triple-backed up, offsite backup is the ideal, but for an entire SAN… it seems impractical.

Anything over a few TB is just going to require a very large case.

We mirror our “footage drives” when they come in (or we consolidate to that) with an eSATA drive dock. We stock up on 1TB drives for the source footage and treat them like film mags. =) Each has its own clone.

That way, the footage (by far the biggest pile of data) is always backed up – cheaply. We have other strategies for backing up each editor’s work (graphic files, editor projects FCP’s, etc.) – those are small and easily backed up in a cloud like dropbox.com. Those are really the gems that need triple-protection – and fortunately are easy to back up & restore.

What do you think? We’re all into buying lots of drives now, there’s no way around that. The key, in my opinion, is to focus the money where it’s most effective.

– Allan White, Video Producer, Luis Palau Assoc.

Quad 3Ghz Mac Pro, 10GB RAM, X1900 GPU, XSAN, CatDV Server