Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
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These sound like OSX instructions – I think they can be adapted to Windows. Thanks Steve!
Alex (DV411)
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[Jesse, DiJiFi] “Alex, do you think someone with pretty basic knowledge of networking could set this up without too many problems?”
Yes I do think so. The only thing I am not sure about is how to prioritize the 10GbT link over the standard one when you do those file transfers – but with Steve on our side, pretty sure we can figure this out. 🙂
Alex (DV411)
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[Jesse, DiJiFi] “So this direct connect method is very interesting to me. Though I don’t know if it can direct connect two stations to a third station, rather than one to one.”
You can with either two 10GbE cards or one dual-port 10GbE card in the edit station.
This will also likely require a static IP setup in each card (no DHCP server in the segment) – which isn’t anything to worry about – fairly straightforward.
Alex (DV411)
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[Steve Modica] “The Intel cards won’t work in a mac without a driver. So the small tree cards are the only option for those
Cross over cables are no longer required (since gigabit)”Again, great info. I’ve been using patch cables for direct GigE transfers but never knew until now why they worked. 🙂
[Steve Modica] “I think his limitation would be the raid0 stripe. I think before moving to a faster network, they should consider more drive spindles on the edit machines.”
There might be more to it:
[Jesse, DiJiFi] “We need it to be faster, though, as 100 GB of transfers will still take close to an hour.”
If my calculations are right, 100GB/hr is about 28MB/s which is roughly 25% of the GigE line rate; he should be able to get much higher speeds by optimizing his NICs, possibly using jumbo frames and a faster switch.
Alex (DV411)
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[Jesse, DiJiFi] “From what I can tell, 10 Gbps products are extremely expensive, so it seems this is not an option for me. I was hope to spend less than $1,000 on simply speeding up my network between stations, but it seems this is currently too new of a technology.”
From what I understand, you could do it for $1110: two Intel 10Gigabit AT2 Server Adapters for about $550 each, a cross-over Cat6 cable ($10 or so), and you are all set – as long as you are only interested in speeding up a file transfer between two stations. According to Steve, you should see 300MB/s if the drives can handle it. Like Steve said, the weak link (after you upgrade to 10GigE) will be your dual-drive RAID0 (200-280MB/s are most common speeds).
Or, you could go with Small Tree Comms for about $1000-2000 more and get even higher speeds.
Alex (DV411)
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[Steve Modica] “1. Using a normal copy, there’s only one cpu thread running to push the data across. This one thread will top out at around 300MB/sec. This is a function of how fast a single cpu can turn the TCP crank. Faster cores could make this a little faster. “
Great info – thanks Steve. I had no idea TCP had that much of a computational overhead. Are there ways to reduce it and speed up 10GigE to get it closer to its 10Gbs ceiling?
Alex (DV411)
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[Bob Zelin] “your G-Speed eS unit will not work as a drive array for a shared storage server.”
Bob, I don’t think Jesse needs shared storage for editing, or at least he didn’t seem to ask for it:
[Jesse, DiJiFi] “the way we transfer film requires that the digital file be captured on one system and then transferred to a different system for editing to keep things efficient.”
Jesse appears to be only searching for ways to speed up file transfer over Ethernet, and he asked a specific question about LAG.
Alex (DV411)
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Carly,
Which Dell is it? What are the error messages if any?
Have you tried installing the card in a non-Dell system to rule out a possibility of a defective card?
Alex (DV411)
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Thanks Steve, that cleared things up.
As far as helping the original poster speed things up – will Jumbo frames help him? Faster GigE switch? A direct 10GigE connection between the two stations that need a faster file transfer? (I.e. install 10GigE NICs in both machines and cable them up?)
(Of course an 8Gbs SAN will help but that’s an order of magnitude more expensive than any options above.)
Alex (DV411)