[Bob Zelin]

1) buy the 10G card
2) connect it to a 10G switch
3) your problems will go away.
If you expect to have your 2 computers on the 1G network get good speeds (and you are shooting 4K Sony F7 footage), you are just fooling yourself.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

are you getting jittery playback just on the AJA I/O XT output and Panasonic TV, or is it also jittery on the Mac computer screen when it plays back ?

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

why does it need to be buss powered ?
You are dealing with a large heavy RAID array –
products from Maxx Digital, Areca, G-Tech, Promise, OWC, Netstor, Highpoint all have looping thunderbolt ports. ALL OF THEM.

bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Kiki
Raid 0 is used to show off to forums and magazine articles how fast your drive array is.
Drives fail – end of story. Do you get more performance – yes. If you have one drive fail – be it
a 4 bay or 16 bay with RAID 0, you lose ALL YOUR DATA – so all your performance means nothing
because you just lost all your data.

Should you backup – absolutely – you backup to additional drives, or LTO tapes.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Kiki –
bad idea. Leave it RAID 5, just the way it is now. RAID 0 is a nightmare waiting to happen.
And yes, you should think about buying ADDITIONAL spare drives for backup. And yes, I know it
costs money to do that.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Salvador –
I have looked at your impressive website. You are an engineer. You should be making these decisions. Exactly who is telling you that Facilis is not going to be a reliable product. Exactly what is his background ? Why choose your “preferred vendor” – it seems to me, based on your website, that you are more than capable of not only making the correct decision, but of doing the minor administration that would be required for any of these products. I hate these people that try to install a system that is so complicated, that it insures their job.

You have asked an excellent question – 4G fiber, or 10G Ethernet.
4G fiber is over. Today, even if you were to run 8G or 16G fiber, you would not use the orange 63 micrometer fiber cables that you have in place. Even with a facilis (who will be more than happy to supply you with 4G fiber cards from ATTO) – this is a poor choice, compared to 10G Ethernet over cheap Cat6 cabling. Even if you say “no no we are sticking to fiber” – well, then you are running new 50/125 fiber cable for 8G or 16G fiber. So it’s my opinion that you should switch to 10G Ethernet with a nice boring cheap Netgear 10G switch, which ANY of these companies will support. and you will get greater performance with 10G Ethernet that you do with your current 4G fiber.

You seem like a very smart guy. I urge you to take matters into your own hands, and make your own decisions, and stop listening to foolish advice from those that do not have a clue.

And by the way, I have nothing against Dynamic Drive Pool, other than the fact that they have no representation in the US. I recently knew very little about GB Labs in London, but they contacted me, and trained me on their product, so I am no longer “afraid” of GB Labs, which turns out to be an excellent product, with US support. If DDP is reading any of this, perhaps they should participate on Creative Cow, or FCP.CO.UK, or other international forums where people can learn more about their products.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hello Salvador,
this is my opinion.
It is my opinion that your IT director should be fired immediately. He is obviously complete unaware of the professional video industry, and completely unaware not only of the Facilis Terrablock, but of the other professional solutions that are available from professional video companies, that make up 99% of every professional television station and professional video facility in the entire world. These companies no only include Facilis Terrablock, but also include AVID, EditShare, Small Tree Communications, Archiware, ProMax, Maxx Digital, Studio Network Solutions, OpenDrive, Apace Systems, GB Labs, OWC Calipso, LumaForge, Tiger Technologies, and a few select systems from QNAP and Synology that are optimized for video production. I am sure that your IT director is not familiar with any of these brands, as I am sure he has never attended an NAB trade show, IBC show, CCW show, SMPTE meeting, etc. This all means that he is completely unqualified to make any decisions on the purchase of a professional shared storage system for your company.

I urge you to show this to your supervisor or boss, and simply say “maybe we should contact a company that is familiar with what we need, because I don’t thing that our IT director is familiar with the requirements that are necessary for our department”.

I would like to know whose website is not scant, and not informal in tone ? Facilis is a great company, but all the other companies I mentioned are terrific as well. Exactly who is he looking at ?
NetApp, EMC, Quantum ? Is he looking for permanent job security ? Perhaps he wants to build this himself with a Dell Server and Cisco switch !

Now if you are talking about Ardis Technolgies Dynamic Drive Pool, they are in the Netherlands. Are you in the Netherlands ? Who is going to support your product ?

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

put your disk cache on an external Thunderbolt SSD that you get from Other World Computing, which is cheap. All Thunderbolt products have looping input on them.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

you are very generous Chris. This is great info, and I am sure that most of “the players” are gobbling this up right now (that read Creative Cow, which is most of them).

I owe you one.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Chris –
I wish I could help you – believe me, I want your money, but I am
not qualified to help you.

1) I have no idea what Netatalk even is.
2) I am unfamiliar with the 8132F switch

I can tell you that if the switch is configured for Jumbo Frames (not MTU 1500) and the card is configured for Jumbo Frames, you should be getting incredible performance. I use AFP, and SMB all the time. NFS has crappy performance, but AFP and SMB work wonderfully with these products, using Win 7, Win 8.1 Pro and OS X.
I have also used Linux servers, using these cards on clients, and they also have wonderful performance.

If I had the knowledge of the Powerconnect 8132F, I would remote in, to check your switch configuration. But I am not qualified to do so. I also do not know what Netatalk is, so I am once again incompetent to assist you with this.

As I often mention – you are suffering thru the growing pains of a do it yourself system. Had you purchased an existing proven system, the company you had purchased from would have done all this legwork for you, and you would not be suffering. This does not mean that you do not have a wonderful system – but every piece of hardware has its variables and it’s “tweeks” and without suffering thru this, you never know what is going to happen. On the gear that I work on, I go thru the same “growing pains”, but I eventually figure things out (usually with the help of other manufacturers). I am afraid that I just don’t know how to help you with this.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com