Your own “affordable” san

[Bob Zelin]

I can tell you a hardware list, but who is going to set it up for you? Do you know how to do link aggregation. When you buy from EditShare, Apace, etc., they HELP YOU. The cheap solution requires knowlege, or someone who has the knowlege.

So if I say “buy the Small Tree ES4524D and PEG4”, what are you going to do with these pieces. They just don’t plug in and work.

If you want a turnkey solution, EditShare, Apace, LairdShare are better for you. If you want “affordable” you need someone that can help you, unless you understand link aggretation, and setting up a network.

If you want, I will tell you the pieces to buy, but you can use google to get the prices. And the Cal Digit HD Pro is a wonderful disk drive to use as your storage for this application.

Want a quick answer – double the price of the HD Pro, and you are done.

Bob Zelin

[Chris Blair]

I’ll back up what Bob says. Is it possible to “build your own affordable SAN?” Yes. Is it quick and easy? Nope. Will the savings from “building it yourself” be worth the time and frustration of installing and configuring it yourself? In my opinion…a BIG NO!

We considered building our own shared video editing setup, but when it comes down to it, what you’re paying for with the people that sell these “ready to use” setups is the small little tweaks in the configuration that ensure the system works, AND…more importantly, you’re paying for the customer service for setting up, installing and troubleshooting the system after the sale.

I could’ve bought the EXACT same hardware that came in our Apace vStor for around $4500. But I opted to buy Apace’s entry level box for around $9000. Why? Because they’ve tweaked the Linux OS, tested the unit extensively, and have several other software modules that allow their box to specifically work with non-linear editing applications, including AVID, Final Cut and many others.

Was it worth the extra $4500. HELL YES. These guys spent hours, yes hours on the phone with us, taking control of each edit PC via the internet, and configured each one for us for us remotely. When we had a few playback problems, they again spent HOURS on the phone tracking down the problem (it ended up being cabling). When we were having capture problems, within hours of my email request, they emailed detailed, step by step instructions on how to adjust the Jumbo Frames settings on each PC and the vStor to improve performance (we went from an average of 75MB/sec write speeds to almost 100MB/sec; and from 45MB/sec read speeds to nearly 70MB/sec).

So the moral. Yes…you can build your own system, but from a financial perspective, it’s only worth it if you have a LOT of time and a LOT of patience, and a lot of KNOWLEDGE about networking (gigabit or fibre channel).

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Bob Zelin]

Chris is correct (but Chris is always correct !).

When I wrote my little article, I received comments back that “you can get a cheaper switch”, etc. Well guess what – you can get all this stuff FOR FREE, and if no one is there to help you, you are SCREWED. I used Small Tree because they were available to me on the phone (Netgear, and Cisco were not). I praise Tiger Technology, because YOU CAN TALK TO THEM.

As products become cheaper and cheaper, the one thing that is not cheap is KNOWLEGE. People think that if they get a $400 solution, it’s just going to plug in and work – well, THEY ARE WRONG. Companies like APACE Systems are there to HELP YOU, and this help is not free. It is worth the money – ABSOLULTELY.

Bob Zelin

[Chris Blair]

Bob wrote:

Chris is correct (but Chris is always correct !).

Bob…I’m flattered! You know WAY more than I do about this stuff. I just try to share my personal experiences to try help people who are going through the confusion I went through last year!

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Warren Eig]

Bob just did this for me. It just works. I’m attached to a 16 bay 16 TB SAS box doing RAID 6.

Call Bob. Hire Bob. It just works.

Warren

Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905

email: warren@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.babyboompictures.com

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