Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
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Valentin,
Here are some of the responses from studio sysadmins who walk the talk as far as VFX storage, and who I learn a lot from, every day.
Re: Windows Server
– “No way I’d use win server (any) for dedicated storage”
– “I don’t think anyone is using M$ products for file serving needs”Re: what OS:
– from Greg: “If I were to find myself in this position, I’d be looking at a solution which is more focused on storage as opposed to a ‘i can do it all’ solution, such as a Nexenta product, or if license costs take it out of the running, some other ZFS product. The caching is a lot more intelligent and you can augment it in a few different areas to meet your needs. Support and comfort levels will play into that decision. If they do go ZFS I’d not do it on linux but rather a solaris based OS, a second choice would be *BSD, with linux being the last choice.”
– from Julian: “FreeNAS/ZFS would be cheaper, more reliable and perform better”
– from Brian: “FreeNAS (9.2 RC is out)
LSI HBA
OWC SSD Pro Enterprise for ZIL
Samsung Pro or OWC Pro (non Ent) for L2ARC
Nearline SAS for spinning rust (SATA with SAS controller).Or, you can rent storage if this is a temp thing.”
I’ll also reiterate my earlier sentiment that this project will likely benefit greatly from hiring someone (not me – not for this project) to help you through buying choices, and perhaps with ongoing support as well. I don’t think that it has to be local.
HTH.
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[Matthew Sonnenfeld] “To maximize compatibility of your workflow I would look towards the HP Z 820 workstations. Dual graphics cards are best. Look towards NVIDIA Quadro if you want the speed.”
Hi Matthew,
I haven’t configured a Z820 specifically for Resolve yet… Do CPUs matter? If there appreciable benefit in, say, dual 12-core CPUs (along with good GPUs) for Resolve purposes? What about memory, is there a sweet spot? Also, is that sweet spot calculated on a per-core basis (like with AE, about 4GB per phys core), or more of a system-wide thing?
I realize it all depends on workflow specifics (resolution, codecs, etc.) – looking for some general guidance.
Thanks!
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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In video editing, transfer rates are usually the first priority, but faster response definitely helps. RAID10 is a nice setup.
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RAID0 on SATA2, with spinning drives: about the same transfer rates (140MB/s), faster response.
With SSDs, it’s another story.
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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[Valentin Struklec] “I have not played with 10GbE yet, but from what I have read it seems to be doing not to bad.
Honestly I am more worried about IOPS and the performance of the system going down with more than 2-3 users constantly streaming data.”I hear you. In that case, CPUs, OS overheard, number of spindles and caching do make an impact.
Did you already buy the config above, or is it still in planning stages?
Don’t think you need someone locally to consult you on what to buy, or how to configure an OS. That can be done from anywhere.
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[Valentin Struklec] “How much mb/s do you think will this baby be able to read/write? “
This begs a question: if you were sold on Adaptec’s caching performance, why not ask Adaptec? (Don’t take it the wrong way – who else would we ask?)
I’d be worried less about the memory, CPUs and power supplies in your system, and much more – with these three:
(1) the disk I/O subsystem (drives, controller, caching),
(2) 10GbE cards and their performance,
(3) OS and its ability to pump the I/O from storage to NICs, with good MPIO support and low latencies.[Valentin Struklec] “WinServer 2008 r2”
Have you talked to anyone using 08r2 to serve multiple streams of 2K TGAs?
[Valentin Struklec] “- Should we be scared about the file sequences (10mb per frame tgas)?”
4-5 streams of them? I’d be scared. 🙂 That’s 1.5GB/s assuming 30fps, an impossible feat for a single 10GbE link, a very tall order for an MPIO 10GbE configuration. Pretty much can guarantee the configuration you described is nowhere near that in performance.
I’d first see if you can bring your performance requirements down to perhaps 2-3 streams, ensure the storage subsystem can serve double that on its own, and then take a look at what OS and networking configuration can do what you need. WinServer 2012 r2 may do that over SMB3 with Win8 clients but I’d perhaps look into Linux storage servers.
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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[Zach Dierks] “I was asking a question. I know you exist. I want something easier than 2 boxes on my desk.”
The mBox does exactly that – one box vs. two. Should be functionally equivalent to what Bob suggests.
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[Guido Passi] “Should I change graphic card and maybe buy the PNY NVIDIA QUADRO 600, wich probably is the only Quadro I can afford? Or should I try keeping the Nvidia 650 Ti?”
Keep the 650 Ti. You may need to edit a configuration file to enable GPU acceleration with it, but it’ll be quite a bit faster than a Quadro 600 where GPU acceleration (and graphics performance in general) is concerned.
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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I’d look at a 4- or 5-bay NAS boxes from Thecus or QNAP.
Although even before that, I’d test the speed of file transfers between the two Win7 systems. A Mac can be networked to them w/o a dedicated NAS.
RAID5, 6 or 10.
4+ bays allows for much greater speed and configuration versatility – which is why I am not suggesting 2-bay units.
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[Bob Zelin] “If you are using a computer like the Mac Pro or HP Z series, they will have dual Ethernet ports. If you are not, you will need additional NIC cards on your PC’s or USB-Ethernet port adaptors on your Macs. “
What about using a router or a switch if the performance demands aren’t that high, and they don’t plan to play complex timelines simultaneously?
[Bob Zelin] “So a single internal SATA drive will NOT be fast enough to allow two computers to play back media from the same internal hard drive.”
Perhaps not simultaneously. Even that – depends on the formats. Several 35Mbs dSLR streams can be handled by a single SATA drive I believe.