Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
-
For Windows, Tiger MetaSAN I believe is the best option – check out “Windows OS centric SAN sample configuration”
I also think it’s not married specifically to FC and will work equally well on iSCSI. Hope my friend Bernard Lamborelle, resident Tiger Tech SAN guru, will chip in.
-
[John Cummings] “Is it possible (or desirable) to use the onboard Intel graphics to drive the computer monitors while leaving my Geforce Nvidia card to handle cuda tasks?”
Not on CS6 or prior. Pr CC is supposed to be able to use multiple GPUs, and graphics chips other than NVidia, but I haven’t seen any benchmarks or reviews yet.
-
I thought I replied but maybe my post is still sitting in the moderation queue…
First, a correction: RAIDing removable / portable drives is neither recommended nor supported, so you may not be able to RAID two of your Quadras together. I completely blanked out on this when responding. In general, the device must appear to the system as “fixed” in order to be a part of a RAID set.
Here is one relevant article:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH5834
-
Hi Eric,
Tracked about two hundred 2.5″ drives over the past 8 years or so – in laptops for editing in the field. Not one failure but the sample is too small to make any determinations. A number of clients also use 2.5″ drives for editing in external FW and eSATA enclosures, usually with their laptops, i.e. in the field.
All other things being equal, I have more faith in SFF (“Small Form Factor” – usually 2.5″ but can also include 1.8″) than LFF (“Legacy Form Factor” – 3.5″) because:
– smaller drives are less affected by vibration, shock, heat-related tracking issues. This is simply a result of smaller size and slower linear speeds;
– higher density where you can pack 3-4 SFF drives in a place of one LFF means you could make RAID0, 5 or even 6 where it’s impossible with larger drives: more performance and reliability options.SFF drives are more expensive of course so LFF ones are still the value leaders. A 4TB J4 would cost around $800; G-RAID – less than half that.
-
No first-hand experience – J4 boxes are fairly new. Yet if it’s performance-to-size ratio you’re looking for, can’t beat J4. 400MB/s with spinning drives, faster with SSDs. (Seen Hitachi 1TB 7.2K SFF drives for under $100 – that would make a really small yet quite fast 4TB box for under $800.)
At the same time, J4 is overpriced – $400 for a 4-bay software RAID is a bit much, no matter the quality.
Unlike Eric, I’ve had good experience with SFF (2.5″) drives both enterprise and desktop, with AFR smaller than with 3.5″ drives.
Personally, I think LFF (3.5″) form factor is going the way of floppies and CRTs – we already see that on servers; hope to see many more SFF-optimized storage boxes in the next year – and hopefully at a much better price point.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
Yes, with spanning or striping in either OSX or Windows. What system (hardware, OS) are you using?
-
[Jeff Pulera] “5-10 years, seriously? That would be like still driving a Model T Ford.”
Have a client calling me occasionally about a Targa 3000 / Speed Razor / Win2K system we built for him in 2001. Still works, dammit.
Five-year old systems (5400 chipset) are actually chugging along quite fine, some even as primary CS6 / MC6 editors; some repurposed as secondary systems. HP xw8600 takes up to 128GB RAM, is quiet, easy to service. Can’t say that about custom Core 2 Quads systems that sometimes come to the shop… Anyone remembers Abit? They made decent motherboards until they went out of business.
-
[Jeff Pulera] “with a video editing rig, that is all the more reason to NOT go with Dell or other big box solutions.”
Jeff,
Wouldn’t that apply to any integrator not specializing in video?
In other words, it could easily be a Dell (or a Raspberry PI), the main question is, who supports it?
Tier 1 (HP, Dell) can make a lot of sense support-wise, even for single-person shops. It’s dramatically easier to troubleshoot a five- or ten-year-old HP than it is a custom box, parts are easier to source.
Paul: what cases are you using with Intel motherboards? Intel seems to be so moody where it comes to workstations: one year they make them (workstation-class motherboards), another one they don’t. Then they put a server-class UEFI on it that is married to an Intel server chassis as far as sensors and fan controls, and if you try to make it work for a Supermicro chassis, you have to modify undocumented hex strings so that fans don’t spin at 100%. Once spent a week doing that (on a $100 profit) – won’t ever try again. Servers – fine. Workstations – Supermicro boards for customs, HP for Tier 1. Never Intel unless it’s an Intel chassis.
-
[Darren Breckles] “Would the Xeon provide good performance?”
While you could get a well configured single Xeon system for under $5K – I am with Eric, the short is answer is “no” – a Core i7 is nearly always faster for the price, and with Premiere Pro especially so. Most Xeon systems are used in these scenarios:
– with memory- and CPU-hungry apps like Maya, 3DS Max and AE
– by people who prefer not to use what essentially are gaming components in their editing systems;
– heavy duty use of more than 8 hours a day
– on-site support and warranty are important
– larger teams where standardized equipment and a single point of support become important
– future upgradeability, especially memory: 64GB is the current max on Core i7, with the majority limited to 32GB. In three years this may become a pain point, and you’d have to change the system to overcome it. Current dual Xeon systems can take up to 512GB RAM, and that memory is also considered more reliable (registered ECC).Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
[John Kaley] “What kind of speed can expect from the 10GbE Small Tree solution? 300-400 MB/sec?”
Here are some tests from the field:
350MB/s writes, 250MB/s reads – 2008 xServe, 16-drive RAID6 DAS, OSX 10.6 server, Small-Tree 10GbE PCIe in the xServe, Thunderbolt 10GbE NICs in Magma chassis on the clients.
620MB/s writes yet still 250MB/s reads – same as above except in OSX 10.7 server which allows to use a later version of the Small-Tree driver. The relatively slow reads are likely an indication of xServe limitations. We’ll know more once the client tests a Mac Pro in a similar configuration.
Also tested were ATTO PCIe and Thunderbolt 10GbE NICs: similar speeds with a switch; direct cabling (no switch) however locked the cards into a 1GbE link limiting speeds to 110MB/s. Strangely, ATTO drivers didn’t allow to force a 10GbE link. Also, their TB chassis (Sonnet I believe) is also much louder than the Magma one, which didn’t work for a client. ATTO support however is top notch, and they’re looking into these issues which they hope will be fixed soon.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA