Eric Hansen
Forum Replies Created
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i believe that another reason for the 4 port cards is redundancy at the switch level. if you’re running a RAID with Active/Active controllers with dual FC outputs per controller, then you can run one set of FC cables to 1 switch, then another set of FC cables to another switch. then instead of getting 2 FC connections from your client to a single switch (which is the typical setup for Xsan), your computer will get 2 connections to 2 switches, for 4 total ports. at least, this is how Apple explained it to me when the Quad Port cards came out. i’m not sure if this increases throughput, but it protects you if one of your switches goes down.
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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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hey max
responding you your initial question about getting an enclosure and filling it with hard drives yourself. i think the big differentiator is the one-vendor solution vs. the multi-vendor solution. there are 2 types of people on the SAN forum – 1. installers like Bob and myself, and 2. End users that may or may not understand the technical underpinnings of these systems. most of the first time visitors who are asking questions are in the second group. if i install a system for a client, i have no problem going multi-vendor because if they have a problem with the system, they will contact me first and i have to deal with it. but for the End Users on here, a one-vendor solution may make more sense.
if you (or someone else reading this thread) want to drop drives into an empty enclosure, here are my quick rules:
1. get Enterprise or Server-grade drives. these things will likely be running 24/7 – you need hard drives designed for this. they aren’t “Green” and they won’t spin down. “Green” drives or drives that run at less than 7200 RPM will not work for this. too much latency among other issues. yes they are twice as much money. your Deskstars technically will work, but many of them now are “Green” and you will have issues.
2. get a longer warranty if you can. most Enterprise level drives come with a 5 year warranty. keep the receipts and mark on the drive the date that they were purchased. this has saved me money and headache when a drive fails.
3. avoid Seagate for RAIDs. search the forums to find out why. i don’t buy anything from them anymore. i think what irks me the most was their horrible customer service and “who cares” attitude.
4. the Hitachi Saturn seems to be the most popular right now for these RAIDs. they are not as expensive as Hitachi’s higher end Enterprise level drives, but they still meet all of my requirements listed above. many one-vendor solutions use Hitachi. i had a Hitachi laptop drive die on me a few months ago and their customer and replacement service was awesome.
5. don’t mix and match drives. obviously you shouldn’t mix and match the GB sizes of the drives, but i’m more referring to the types or speeds. Enterprise drives and Desktop drives have different levels of latency and spinup/down. if you mix them, different portions of your RAID will react at different times to I/O. this will cause your system to either pause for a second, or to hang.e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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this advice might already be too late since its a few days later, but here you go:
since you’re using a fibre channel switch, i assume that this is an Xsan setup. if so, make sure EVERYTHING is turned off. then start things up in this order:
1. fibre switch – if its a QLogic, wait a few minutes for it to go through its boot cycle and the “heart” is beating
2. RAIDs
3. ethernet switches
4. metadata controllers (do the volumes appear on the desktop?)
5. client computers (do the volumes appear on the desktop?)this whole process will take about 15-20 minutes. if this doesnt work, then i would advise that you not do anything at this point until your network guys come back. you could do more damage.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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Bob Herzan wrote – “You have plenty to choose from in this area, from the Rorke side we would like to know a bit more on what your customer requirements are now and where they plan to go.”
No worries. They want 3 things: Expansion, Expansion, Expansion. The first Ethernet-based SAN that I installed was based on the CalDigit RAID card and HD Element combo because the client liked the idea of buying small (just 4 internal drives) and being able to expand by adding more HD Elements. the funny thing is that the max you can go with this setup is roughly 20TB at RAID-5. they never thought they would need that much space.
until the following week. they are now talking expanding to 60TB. i always joked in my Xsan installations that it never mattered how much total space you have, you’ll only have 500GB free. editors and producers always find a way to fill it. 2TB or 200. so expansion is key. that’s why i’m specifically asking about SAS expansion RAIDs. one of my biggest hang-ups with Xsan was that if you wanted to add more clients or more RAIDs, you had to make sure you have enough ports left on your switch. because if you need a new switch, then you’re possibly doubling the cost of the expansion. with SAS cards like the ATTO R380 and RAIDs with built-in expanders, these hang-ups go away.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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hey bob
thanks for the list of manufacturers. i’m amazed at how inexpensive the AIC products are, especially the 16 bay XJ1100 unit for only $1500. with 1TB Saturn drives and ATTO R380 card, its less than $5000. unless i’m overlooking something. its also interesting to see how different the prices are for different companies. a similar setup from Sonnet is over $10k.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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bob said – “Anyone with more than 10 edit systems isn’t looking for a low budget solution.”
good point. 10 full edit systems is a lot. but in both the Xsan systems and the Ethernet systems i’ve worked on, there may only be 4 or 5 full edit suites, but there are also editor’s laptops in each suite, secondary systems for logging or ingesting footage, a DVD duper, a few office computers, etc. all of these people want access to the SAN to varying degrees. whether it’s to play footage back for logging or viewing, transferring files to or from the SAN, graphics work, etc. for these systems i created 2 Ethernet networks: one Gigabit, jumbo frames, flow control, static IPs on a 10.x.x.x network (the high-speed network for the edit systems), and another general office network with auto-negotiation on 192.168.1.x. the SAN is available on both of these networks, to all the users in the office. so yeah, there may only be 4 or 5 edit systems, but there could easily be 15 total computers in such an office, with AFP running the show. that’s why i was curious about the number.
btw, i don’t know if this has been the case with your clients, but with every new install i spec, people are requesting an iMac along with the Mac Pro in every edit suite, along with at least 2 additional ethernet lines in each suite for laptops or other portables. i guess they want to keep their editors working through “render-time” and their clients love the fact they can plug their laptops in and play footage back. its kind of funny seeing production facilities go from completely wired for Ethernet, to wireless, and now back to wired.
sorry, a bit OT
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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bob said: OS-X will run up to 10 AFP clients. After that you will need to run NFS. If you don’t want to deal with this, run OS-X Server. I have no idea how efficiently this type of system will run with more than 10 clients anyway. Even if you get a 48 port Small Tree switch, and OS-X Server, the system will never support 20 full time DVCProHD clients.
interesting, that’s the first time i’ve read hard numbers on what AFP supports in OS X vs Server. bob, does this mean that you’re using OS X Server in your larger installations?
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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i don’t know if i can really add too much insight into what Flow Control IS. but when i received the 48 port Edgecore switch from Small Tree, the first thing they had me do was enable Flow Control. i think they now enable it on all switches they sell before shipping them out.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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Neil wrote: “With LTOs, my observation is they’re not like hard drives. You need to have the software that wrote it, just to read them. So, a Bru backup, needs Bru to restore. Retrospect needs retrospect and so on. Windows Backup (its a software built in to Windows) seems to be common across Windows systems.”
you can look back through my post history in the various COW forums and see that i have talked a lot about SDLT and LTO based archive (not backup) systems. i personally don’t believe in backing up a RAID-5 array such as Xsan. that’s why its RAID-5. have a few spare drives around to hot-swap if a drive fails. i’ve never lost media on a RAID-5 because someone was always around to hot-swap when needed. be sure to show your staff how to do this procedure.
at a former facility, we used the SDLT-600a, an ethernet-based SDLT drive. it was slow, but it worked great for archiving projects and was accessible to all computers on the office network. it used FTP and all the employees knew how to use FTP. i had researched LTO options using BRU and Retrospect with an attached LTO4 drive, but what stopped me from getting it is that it wasnt as easy as FTP (everyone needs to know how to use this system and there were definitely a few people that would never be able to learn a Retrospect or BRU-based system), and it was only available on one computer. another thing that became a huge concern was whenever the SDLT drive went down, we would lose access to our entire archive. the few times the drive broke were very critical. i would only recommend a tape-based system if you can afford 2 decks to minimize downtime. that former facility ended up getting an LTO4 system for archiving their RED footage and its been working great for them. but i know that my counterpart over there is the only one that knows the system, and personally that would drive me mad. my goal has always been to make it as easy as possible for an editor to access old footage when needed as quickly and easily as possible.
i now recommend to my clients a bare hard drive based system, where you archive your projects to 3 different drives – 2 in-house and 1 out of house that you rotate on a regular basis. a tape library should be done in the same way. hard drives are extremely cheap and getting cheaper at a faster rate than tape. then get a hard drive bay like Bob suggested above. i have been using eSATA “toasters” at a few facilities and they have been awesome. you load 2 hard drives in the top like a toaster, copy what you need, and eject.
regarding the “30 year shelf life” that Bob pointed out, i’m sure its true. but you need to keep those old decks around. tape companies advance their technology by creating new tape systems. when hard drives advance, they usually keep the same interface. look at the last 20 years and compare the different tape formats against the different hard drive interfaces. its definitely easier to hook up an old hard drive than an old tape. but you have to remember that hard drives don’t have the shelf life, so i recommend to my clients that they test their drives every 6 months and replace them when needed. thats why there are 3.
i’ve been talking about archive and not backup. for backup, i recommend that you have daily backups for your computer’s boot drive, which in many cases contains all your current projects. i would go with a cloning system like Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac) because you can get back running right away. in my experience, i have never needed an incremental backup system because no one every says to me “hey, i need a file i accidentally deleted 3 weeks ago.” its always been “crap, my hard drive died and i have to print this tape today and make FedEx.”
as for the SAN, since its RAID-5, i wouldnt worry about backing it up regularly. its more important to create a workflow for dealing with your media before loading to the SAN, and archiving after the edit is done.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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and further, how do you author a play-only Blu-Ray in Toast when you have separate audio and video assets (H.264 and AC3 files)? it seems like it only accepts assets as single audio/video files. if there’s a way, i could skip using Encore for play-only Blu-Rays
thanks
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com