Caspian Brand
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Isilon is a newer player in this market by comparison, and their tools have come from a very IT-centric background. Doesn’t mean their not in the broadcast game, they’re at NAB every year, but I bet you’ll find a lot more content creation houses using XSAN. Both are clustered file systems. XSAN relies on Fibre Channel client connections with Apple Servers set up to provide Ethernet gateways to the file system. My impression of Isilon is that it’s based on Ethernet connections to the clients.
If you’re building your first system, I’d also recommend looking at high performance systems that don’t have the high expense, and cost of implementation of clustered file systems and separate metadata networks. There are a number of solutions out there than can more than provide you with the performance needed for 6 ProRes clients, at a much more attractive price tag, with far more simple configuration and maintenance requirements.
Take my company’s solution for example, which can provide both Fibre and Ethernet in the same solution, and doesn’t require metadata controllers or networks:
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?t=more&pi=12
Browse the COW some more and see what similar users are doing for their environments, and call some of us to find out what we can do for you.
Best Luck to you!
-CaspianProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
SD or HD, 6-8 drives in a RAID is the magic number for real-time video, but don’t cheap out on a desktop NAS device, as it will not have enough “embedded” horse power to deliver.
Good Luck!
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12 -
Not that this will necessarily change your results, but I would suggest using a larger file size in your AJA tests, say 8GB or 16GB to try to make sure that test file puts a more constant hit to your storage.
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Hi Bruce,
What codec do you intend to use for on-line?
We offer a mix of Fibre Channel and GbE connections to the same targets in our EVO storage server:
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12
I think we may have spoken a couple of years ago.
Regards,
-CaspianProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
If the storage is directly connecting to your Xserve and your Xserve is going to “share” out the storage over AFP, then you are not building a SAN. You are building a shared storage environment via File Server methods (a la NAS).
XSAN and MetaSAN and SANmp are SAN management software tools for connecting to directly to storage at the “block-level” over Fibre Channel or iSCSI (which can use GbE and 10GbE connections), rather than going through network shares on a server.
Final Cut Server is an Asset Management tool, intended to build a searchable database of all of your media and associated proxies. CatDV is another Asset Management tool that does this as well. Neither are File Servers and neither manages a SAN, they’re purely database/cataloging tools for keeping track of what you put on your storage.
If you want to build SAN, you’ll need SAN management software and networkable, block level storage devices, like EVO:
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Steve, I totally get your point about re-purposing a Mac Tower/Server to someone’s desk, but I would have to respectfully disagree about Linux black boxes just going into a landfill vs. getting an upgrade or being reused…some of the processing power built into these servers and their capacity for storage make them just as re-purposeable, not for someone’s desk (as they fit so nicely in a rack), and many of the components in the servers are upgradeable as well, I/O, Controllers, Storage, CPUs, RAM…I’ve personally gotten far more extended life out of Black Box PC parts for various server purposes thanks to Windows and Linux than I have from some equivalently aged Macs…just sayin…an older computer is as an older computer does…just depends on what and where your needs are…
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Hi Mike,
I can’t address all of your questions in one sitting, but one point I wanted to make between some of the differences between SAN and NAS. They are both Shared Storage (which seems a more apt name for this forum these days) but they accomplish sharing storage in different approaches.
SAN = Storage Area Network
NAS = Network Attached StorageThey don’t make this easy…but they are both valid approaches to “Shared Storage”.
One way to consider the differences are that a NAS is basically a File Server, that can be fairly task or performance specific, say for video editing. Conventionally in this model, the storage connects directly to the NAS server, which can be based on Windows, Mac, or Linux. This server then presents network shares to it’s direct attached storage through the server’s own network ports. These network ports are often connected to a switch, and subsequently multiple client computers. The NAS is what arbitrates access to the storage. With a NAS the client sends the NAS a request for Media, the NAS then accesses this media on it’s direct attached storage, then re-shares this media out through its requested network protocol: AFP, CIFS/SMB, NFS, each of which have differing levels of performance and support depending on the client OS.
A SAN on the other hand, is historically a hardware RAID based storage array with multiple network ports on-board (Fibre Channel or iSCSI). These ports will usually connect to a network switch of some sort (usually Fibre or GbE), and require a multi-platform SAN management software (such as SANmp, MetaSAN, or XSAN) to arbitrate the access to the storage in place of a single server/NAS approach.
In the SAN approach clients can have this “block level” access to storage in that the client machine is accessing the media directly from disk vs. requesting the media from a NAS (which then requests the files from storage and re-shares them). With the SAN “block level” connection, as far as the client computer is concerned, that high speed storage is residing inside the client computer, even though it’s really in a centralized RAID system on the network. This “block level” difference is mainly what enables SANs to get higher throughput in the range of the 800MB/s + you’re looking for, by using Fibre Channel or iSCSI.
With some SAN management software, additional MetaData Controllers and MetaData networks may be required, such as with MetaSAN and XSAN. The MetaData Controllers do not present the clients with the media files themselves, just the metadata about the files and where they reside on the storage array. These MetaData Controllers arbitrate the locks to the storage file system, but do not stream the actual media; the media files travel down the high speed Fibre or iSCSI connections directly to the client machines. A NAS, on the other hand, arbitrates the locks to it’s local storage and file system, as well as presents the media files over it’s own network ports.
These days with such products as the EVO, which my company provides, the lines between conventional SAN and NAS appliances is blurring, as our EVO appliance is a storage server which provides a combination of NAS shares and SAN block level storage targets in the same box.
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12The long and short of it, both approaches provide a great way to share media, and you may even find yourself using a multiple, “tiered” approach to solving your storage needs, depending on the number of clients you have and what type of media you need to share.
I hope I’ve helped answer some of your questions, I’m sure others will chime in with good input here as well. Thanks for participating on the COW!
Regards,
-Caspian
https://www.studionetworksolutions.comProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Backup is ALWAYS a good idea. The LG NAS is a pretty clever little box, but you’re going to get what you pay for as you say. Keep in mind this device only has one GbE port so, all of your users will be funneling down one port trying to access the same two drives at once, if trying to backup at the same time, which will slow them down a bit. Also try to make sure that you’re using a Verification process when copying your media from local storage to the network storage. It would be a hard lesson learned to have made an Archive of incomplete or corrupt data. I don’t trust the Finder or Windows Explorer with important data transfers intended for archive. ChronoSync is one of my favorite tools for this on the Mac.
-Caspian
https://www.studionetworksolutions.comProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
I would definitely recommend 7200RPM drives for anything.
Personally I’ve gone so far as to swap out drives in my laptop and MacMini for 7200RPM drives as well, as it will even provide a slight performance advantage in that domain as well.I’d say go with the Hitachi or Seagate (buy a 7200RPM model).
Regarding “enterprise class” this usually distinguishes between RAID capable drives vs. drives used in a standalone state.
Do you intend to throw some type of RAID across these drives or are you just going to use them as JBOD?
If you’re just going to manage everything in Disk Utility and do the software stripe across two drive approach mentioned by Michael with the third drive as a time machine backup (which is a nice workflow, good call Michael) then I would think you’d be allright with the standard “desktop” drives.
Another option would be to install an inexpensive RAID controller where you could potentially set up a RAID 5 across 3 drives, or setup a Hardware RAID 1 Mirror across two of the drives for extra redundancy.
Again, whatever you choose to do, at minimum stick with the 7200RPM drives for any sort of media work.
-Caspian Brand
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Hi Peter,
The cheapest Fibre Channel switch I know of is the Qlogic 1404, which can be had in the states for just under $2k with SFPs. It is a 10port 4Gb switch, but with your Infortrend array, you don’t “need” a Fibre channel switch to start building a SAN. You can use the Infortrend’s built in Fibre Channel hub, especially for the two primary computers you intend to use with it.
Fibre Channel switch or not, you will need SAN sharing software if you want to share access to the same volumes over Fibre Channel. SANmp would allow you to simply share access to the volumes on your Infortrend without the need for any extra GbE MetaData networks.
If you don’t care about simultaneous Fibre Channel access, you “could” have two volumes on the Infortrend directly connected to each of your two Fibre Clients, and then have them re-share their respective volumes over GbE to others. However, this approach is not recommended if you intend to have video editing by other users over GbE.
If you’re main goal is to just more effectively have others contribute graphics or occasionally transfer their local media to the main video edit storage, then this approach can be fine, and if you don’t have a large budget, this approach could be a good start into slowly improving your network setup over time.
Regarding the Longshine switches, even though there are Optical Fibre Optic ports on these Ethernet switches, those ports are not implemented for the Fibre Channel protocol, which is based on SCSI. IP networks and Fibre Channel networks can use the same physical cables, but drastically different protocols. The Fibre ports on the Longshine switches are intended to connect multiple switches together over IP, sometimes over long distances, not to bridge Fibre Channel over Ethernet. There are specific devices called Fibre Channel to iSCSI bridges that do this, but these cost ~$5k.
Regarding your question about SANmp, it is per seat client license model, and would require a seat per Fibre connected client, so in your case, 2 seats. SANmp can work with Infortrend storage with or without an FC switch. Volume level sharing is not a disadvantage, and can actually be quite a benefit in a smaller workgroup on a tight budget, as there are fewer networking components required, less IT knowledge required, and a lot less pesky file permissions to worry about maintaining. If your Fibre connected clients re-share their SANmp connected Fibre volumes over Ethernet with AFP, you have now added File level sharing through your workstation to the storage. In this manner you could actually have two separate workstations hosting shares to distribute performance and provide some extra redundancy of sorts.
Again all the performance will depend on your budget and what you’re trying to do.
Feel free to shoot me an email if you want to discuss some of these approaches in more detail.
Regards,
-Caspian
cbrand@studionetworksolutions.comProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions