[Ian Karr]

Chris,

As you can see, we are all 100% committed to helping each other, and sometimes the best help is to say “don’t do anything yourself”, as Bob has recommended.

I’d probably go with Bob’s advice. There are way too many things that can go wrong…or partly wrong. Knowledgeable professionals will set you up right the first time…and when you consider how much time they’ll save you, they’re a great value. Forget about obsolescence. We’re all obsolete anyway.

There are definitely advantages to shared storage, so if you’re company is growing and/or you’re wasting a lot of time copying stuff over to external drives, it can be great. We put our first SAN in 8 years ago and have never looked back.

The 20k seems steep for a do-it-yourself deal. For the same money you can install a TURNKEY solution and have it supported by people who know their *&%t.

If you’re really masochistic and decide to do it yourself, you’ll save a lot of money buying the Qlogic switch, the SFPs and the HBAs on ebay. Hey…as long as you’re up for some punishment, you might as well take a chance on used gear!

Back to your initial question….

It is possible to set up a simple volume-level SAN using the equipment and software you described (although I think you’ll need more SFPs). Here’s the general order of what you’d need to do, which will ideally scare you off and give you a better idea of why Bob said what he said….

1) Run fiber optic cable from the switch to each suite in your facility and equip each mac with a fibre channel card.

2) Set up and build your array using whatever level RAID you like. If you ever work with uncompressed HD you’ll need to use RAID 0 (which offers no redundancy), RAID 5 (which offers some protection at the expense of some speed and storage space) or RAID 50, which is basically two RAID 5 arrays that are software-striped together. This is a good safety-performance compromise. If you want RAID 50 –which is what we use– you’ll need to set up two arrays, each with half of the drives in your box. Array 1 would be directed to FC port 0, Array 2 to FC port 1. Then you’ll need to create separate LUNs on each array that equal the number of partitions you want to end up with. For example, if you have 3 suites and you want each suite to have its own partition, you’d create 3 LUNs on each array. So there would be six total LUNs…3 pointed to FC port 0, 3 pointed to FC port 1. Consult the manual for how to access the interface on the array box to do all this. 😉

3) Once the arrays have been properly configured, connect a mac to the box using the fiber optic cable(s), open Disk Utility and create the software stripe. Grab one LUN from Group 1 and one from Group 2 and stripe them together in the RAID submenu. Make sure you’re pairing these LUNs up, or you won’t be getting the highest throughput. The newly-created RAID 50 partition should come online and mount. Repeat for as many LUNs as you have.

4) Configure and zone your FC switch. This really separates the pros from everyone else. You’ll need to assign two ports to your storage and set up zones between each channel of storage and each channel on your mac(s). Again, check the manual to see how to configure your switch. 😉 Connect the storage and each mac to the switch.

5) Install SanMP admin, convert the RAID 50 partitions to SanMP partitions and add user names and passwords.

6) Install SanMP client on each machine connected to the storage

7) Come to the realization you probably should have had a professional help you!

Seriously, it IS possible to do it yourself, but prepare to be frustrated and spend a lot of time before it’s all working perfectly. Good luck!!!

Ian

[Ian Karr]

Bob, Ernesto, Everyone…

Thanks so much for the help.

Well, it took a while, but I found out what was up. It wasn’t the drives at all. It turns out there was a bottleneck getting through the fibrechannel interface. Specifically, the arrays and partitions were all configured to travel through FC port 0. FC port 1 had no traffic. Basically the throughput of the RAID exceeded the bandwidth of the single channel. That’s why, no matter how many drives I striped together, the speed remained the same.

So…

I reconfigured the box. Set up 2 RAID arrays, then partitioned them into 5 separate LUNs. The volumes on RAID 0 were directed to FC port 0, RAID 1 was directed to FC port 1. Then, in disk utility, I striped equal-sized partitions from both RAIDS together to create Raid 50s. The thing is bookin’ now.

Ian

[Ian Karr]

Thanks so much for your help and feedback, Sean.

Unfortunately, I already did that test. When the drives were two Raid sets (of 5), not striped together, both sets had the same throughput. I suppose, according to your theory, one drive on each side could be bad.

Also, all 10 drives show up with green lights and seem to check out. I suppose the next test I’ll do is unbundle the raid and check the throughput on each drive by itself.

[Ian Karr]

Sean,

Thanks for the feedback, but it appears not. I’ve also tried striping all 10 disks together as one unit, and still no performance difference. It’s always around 180mb/s.

I’m beginning to think it might be related to the fibrechannel interface. Both ports light up and seem to be okay, but If only one port is working, that might explain the limitation.

Mr. Zelin???

[Ian Karr]

Thanks for your help, Bob.

Yes, it’s a 16 drive unit…but only 10 drives currently in it. 5 on each side of the array. (configured left-to-right as drives in the first five slots, then three empty, then 5 drives, then 3 empty).

In the admin program two RAIDS show up…RAID 0 and RAID 1. I’ve sliced each one into 5 equal slices. I’m trying to use disk utility to software stripe the slices from each RAID together end up with 5 x RAID 50 “partitions”. No matter what I do-stripe or not, the performance is exactly the same.

Bob, if you have a moment, please email me (ian@ikacollective.com). I may have an opportunity for you…

Thanks!

Ian

[Ian Karr]

just found the answer on the apple site. it appears it IS the 2.2 to 1.8 deal. What’s curious is that the KONA for PC codec doesn’t take this into account….

[Ian Karr]

Hi there…

If you’re using the new drivers with FCP 4.5, you’ll need to download the “legacy” presets from the website. I had the same problem and Kona Support told me that the new drivers only install presets in FCP 5.X. Apparently something changed in how FCP presets are handled. Worked like a charm.

Also, as they say here in NY….not for nuthin’….AJA has great tech support people that actually answer the phone and know what they’re talking about. I know that sometimes calling tech support is like admitting defeat :).

[Ian Karr]

[Shane Ross] “ow it was shot determines how it will be captured. If you shot 720p60, then you will capture 720p60 at 59.94. If you shot 720p24, then you will capture 720p24 at 23.98 fps. “

Thanks for the quick response, Shane. I’ll definitely talk to the transfer house and get their two cents.

The only thing that’s still confusing is that, according to Panasonic and Apple/fcp docs, everything shot on DVCPRO HD is recorded at 59.94/30fps…regardless of whether you set the camera to 24fps. The timecode is also always base 30. The literature says that if you shoot at 24fps, the camera adds pulldown during the recording to bring it up to 59.94 @ 30fps. It sounds similar to “24p Advanced mode” on the DVX.

In my case, I know that the DP set the camera to shoot 24fps (I’ve done some 24fps captures)…and I also know that the raw tape played out of the deck shows timecode that indicates 30fps. So it seems that the literature is correct.

Since the pulldown is intrinsic to the recording, it seems it’s just a matter of when to remove it. During capture? Or later? Does it even matter?

Ian