[Bob Zelin]

couple of more comments on 45Drives –

1) you will be running FreeNAS software to get this to run. Are you familiar with FreeNAS software, and it’s installation.
https://www.freenas.org/
here is the manual – you can glance thru this at your leasure –
https://doc.freenas.org/11/freenas.html

2) the 45Drive box used the Highpoint RocketRaid 750 card –
see here –
https://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_R750-Overview.htm

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

I find it interesting that with all the different brands out there, and this being your first post, you are asking about
45Drives, instead of other brands that you see advertised here on Creative Cow, or brands that have dedicated forums on Creative Cow.

I see that Chad Lancaster on the RED User forum aggressively promotes 45Drives whenever anyone asks about them.
I have commented that I am disappointed that 45Drives has (for some reason) no interest in appearing at video trade shows like NAB, or SMPTE, nor do they advertise on any video forums like Creative Cow, FCP X, Red User, ProVideo Coalition, etc. They show little detailed information about the use of their system, but their name keeps popping up, just like your post today.

I will try to answer your questions below –
you write –
Here’s my most important question: I am wondering how much risk there is to buy a server and THEN, down the road, upgrade work stations. Is that putting the cart before the horse? Should I really upgrade my two edit computers first and THEN do the server?

REPLY – you can buy shared storage (a server) whenever you want. It’s just storage, that you will use for your Mac and PC edit systems. You will connect to any server system via ethernet with a dedicated network port from your edit computers.

I mention this because my work station is … an early 2008 PowerMac!! (with Yosemite). My co-editor is on an early 2014 PowerMac (pre-thunderbolt). We’re still in the HD world, of course. No 4K yet.

REPLY – Your 2008 Mac Pro with 10.10 has two 1G Ethernet ports. One port is for your internet and one port is for your shared storage system. With a 1G connect to a shared storage system you will get about 100 MB/sec, which is plenty for HD video. You can always add a 10G card from ATTO or Sonnet into your 3,1 2008 Mac Pro running 10.10
and do 10G ethernet connection for 4K video.

Sales rep readily acknowledged that, because of the age of our network interface cards, we won’t get maximum speed. His main arguments are:

1) if we connect to the server with CAT6 ethernet, we’ll work at the same speed as we do now with our local SATA raids;

REPLY – these two computers will work perfectly fine for doing 720p and 1080i HD video. Typical ProRes is 20 MB/sec and ProRes422HQ is 30 MB/sec. You will get 100 MB/sec with a 1G connection. Your “network interface cards” are not cards. These are the network ports built into your Mac’s. If you want 10G speeds, you add a PCIe card from Sonnet or ATTO.

2) the two of us will be able to share storage; and

REPLY – that’s the point of shared storage – to have multiple people using the same shared storage array.

3) after we’ve updated our workstations, we’ll be in a position to jump into 4K smoothly.

REPLY – you can do this now. Add a 10G card. Or work with a 4K compression ratio that is under 100 MB/sec.
Go to AJA System Test or https://www.red.com/tools/recordingtime to see the bandwidth for 4K. Different cameras and different codecs have different bandwidth requirements.

Recognizing that we’re still in HD and don’t have huge storage needs, the he suggested we start with their 15-slot chassis (the Storinator AV15) with RAID 5 storage. Start with 5 drives, 4TB each. Cost for chassis, 5 drives (20TB total) and 5 hours of support, $4950.

REPLY – you can buy a QNAP without a 10G card for as cheap as $1500 (the TS-873e). For $2800, you can get the QNAP TS-1685, which has dual 10G ports built in, 12 SATA drive slots, and 4 SSD slots. Just add drives. You can use any 7200 RPM SATA drives from 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 TB. These are the same drives that you would put in a Storinator, or an AVID, or anything else. They are made by HGST, Western Digital, Seagate or Toshiba. 45Drives does not make drives.

In addition to my main, cart-before-the-horse question, also curious if:

1. Anyone ever used a product from 45 Drives?

REPLY – NO. If they would show up to a trade show, or advertise on a video website, I would talk with them. But they do not.

2. Does this price seem reasonable? (I’ve got no clue at all).
REPLY – I replied above. You can easily do a system for $1500 – $2800 today.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Rainer –
#1) – he said it was a Lacie 6TB, and while he does not give any details about what model he had (other than it was discontinued) – I will assume it’s two 3TB SATA drives (probably from Samsung no longer made) at RAID 0.

#2) he tried to put them into a dock, and they WORK, but only for 15 minutes. So you see the problem here – it costs MONEY to purchase a new enclosure.

Now, you can get this –
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MED3ER0GB/
which is a modern 2 bay RAID 0 enclosure from Other World Computing – but it’s $87 ! EIGHTY SEVEN DOLLARS !
Do you think he is rich – are you going to finance him for that $87
☺

Sorry Rainer, I see this mindset more and more every day now. Unless it’s free, any solution is not the correct solution.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

but I am old – I worked with AVIDs with drives smaller than 3TB each ! The 3TB ones were “the big ones”.
Bob

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

[Bob Zelin]

well, just to show you how old I am, I remember (but never used, or knew how to use) the PDP-11 based CMX computers that used a PAPER TAPE loader to load the software (even though 8″ Floppy disks were already out).
I remember thinking how insane it was to have this ribbon of paper that had to be loaded to get the computer to run. And the mindset of people back then were no different than of today. Anything new sucked. They had
IVC Helical 2″ VTR’s and had just received their first Sony BVH1000 1″ machine, and they all said “this Sony is a piece of junk compared to the IVC ” ! I heard that type of analogy my entire career, on every type of product (right up to FCP X !).

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

your link is not working, but I saw the poor review. Synology makes very good products. This reviewer only put 4 drives into his system. That is crazy.

bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

I know I will get yelled at by younger editors for bringing this up, but “back when I was a youngster” – and we had
3TB and 9TB AVID SCSI drives (and smaller before that) – there was not that much space, so you did your low res cut (now called proxy workflow), and RE CONFORMED at the end of the job to full resolution (or you went to a linear on line house to conform the video with your edit list). Fast forward to today – “kids” (you know, the ones that love FCP X, and started making videos without a lot of knowledge) – don’t know the process of conform. So I can install a 100 TB shared storage system for them, and because of no conform process (why cant we edit with the naitve 6K media all the time) – 100TB of storage is used up in 9 months.

So of course, you are correct – we will look back and say “900 TB – I need more than that ! – that will be used in less than a year”.

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

load 30 of these 30TB into this –
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tes-3085u

and you get 900 TB in 2 Rack units.
But considering that according to https://www.red.com/tools, that 8K full frame is under 200 MB/sec, which can be achived with nice boring SATA drives, isn’t this a little over kill ?

https://www.red.com/tools/recording-time

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

Is this Joao, that used to be with Mean Green Media in Washington DC ?

With an iMac Pro 10G port that is using the new Aquantia chip, I consistently get 800 – 900 MB/sec write speed with
the 10G connection to the QNAP (did you enable Jumbo Frames on your iMac Pro, QNAP, and 10G switch ) ?

With the Promise SanLink3 – as I told Nick, you get 350 MB/sec Write and 1100 MB/sec READ. With Thunderbolt 2 adaptors (on “old” iMacs or Mac Pros) – you get 800 MB/sec Read/Write on the same QNAP. So it’s not the QNAP. The Promise SanLink3 Write speed is SLOWER than the Promise SanLink2 with a thunderbolt 2 connection, for WRITE speeds.

If you use a $100 ASUS PCIe 10G adaptor with the same Aquantia 10G chip in a Windows 10 PC connected to the QNAP, you get 1100 MB/sec READ AND WRITE on the same system. So exactly what does QNAP have to fix ? Apples issues ? Promise’s issues ?

Bob Zelin

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

[Bob Zelin]

too late Jeff –
macOS 10.13.3 Server no longer works. I have been building Mac servers since 2008, and everything was great until 10.12.6. Now, you can certainly get a Mac (use any Mac that you want – Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini) with your Promise R8, as long as you get anything up to 10.12.6 server on it. 10.13.x – forgetaboutit ! No longer works the way you will want it to work.

So what’s next ? QNAP, Synology, Lumaforge, Studio Network Solutions, ProMax, etc.

So why did Apple do this ? And when is Apple going to fix this ? OH – I know the answer – because they hate us, and they are never going to fix this. (who knows what will happen with 10.14).

Bob Zelin

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