[Jason Silzle]

As both Eric and Bob Said, limited throughput but we are doing something very similar to this and it is working for us.

Our components:

– MacMini Server 2.3ghz 4 Core i7 and i put 16GB of ram in it.
– Areca Thunder Raid 8050 with 24TB (8 3TB Hitachi Drives)
– SMALL TREE 6 port Thunderbolt Nic (Card/Chassis Combo)
– Studio Network Solutions “XTarget” Server and then iSanMP Clients

I would really recomend something like SNS Xtarget and iSanMP so you can hand out read/write limits to different vols or users. I also wouldn’t try to load up 6 boxes direct connect at te same time (via the Small Tree 6 NIC) but we chose 6 ports over 4 ports so we could simply have different stations at different times setup.

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

Update on the SNS system….

Well I have the system 90% up and running smooth as glass and it has been very fast (for a network).

I have one windows 7 box (running Paragon because the Luns are HFS+) and Edius 6.54 running fine. Then a second MacPro that dual boots between OSX FCP7 and Win7 Edius 6.54 and this one works flawless. I also have a MacBookPro (FCX) and it works great. However my editing box (Windows 7 Edius 6.54) won’t work. I will say the SNS guys have been helping my around the clock for weeks and we still can’t figure it out so I’m at my whits end and figured I would bring it up here. I believe it is really something inherent to my software/hardware combination and possibly some sort of I/O collision over the iSCSI.

I can see the iSCSI target and connect and authenticate through iSanMP but when I try to mount the Vol it always wants to format the Disk. I have tried everything from actually formatting a Vol to installing a new version of windows 7 on another disk and on that stripped down disk (Win7OS and SanMP only) it runs fine! I’m worried if I install everything else I need I will be right back to a non working system. Has anybody every experienced anything like this?

FYI… My system is not only a video editing system but also music production so the things that make my box different than the others is I have hardware inside like; UAD Card, TC powercore (via FW800), Grassvalley HDSpark Card. Then a ton of other software like Sample libraries, VST instruments (virtual synthes), Cubase 6.5 etc…

Anybody have any ideas?

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

Thanks Bob for the input. Yes it should be similar but I think I’m seeing a bit more performance and I’m assuming that is because of the “BLOCK” level access. The Promax system was using IP protocol not iSCSI.

The other things is I now have secure luns with user access setup by iSanMP login with varying Read/Write permissions and I love that.

Last but not least is the comparison of what we got in the end for the same money.

Both rigs well under $10K as mentioned below.

PMX——————————-SNS————————–
===============================================================
16TB______________________________24TB (thunderbolt expandable+)
Toshiba Desktop___________________Hitachi Enterprise
4Ports (4 clients)________________6Ports (6 Clients)
Windows 2012 Server_______________OSX (mac Mini) + SNS XTarget&iSanMP
IP File/Folder sharing____________Block Level Access w/Security

We are still in the midst of configuration so I will say the jury is still out but we have rock solid connectivity on a MacPro/Win7 Dual boot box plus a macbook pro and another separate Windows 7 box running Paragon (File system is HFS). I’ll report back with more details as we wrap up the install. The SNS guys have really been very help full with the setup so that is a great thing as well.

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

Thank you Eric for the input.

I (respectfully) hope your wrong, but you probably arn’t. I’m expecting 95 to 105MB/s with SanMP based on what I have heard from the sales team and what they say they see over iScsi protocal on 1GBe. The reality for us is most our work isn’t proResHQ but I would like to have that much bandwidth just in case. Even when We are just editing H264 sometimes it is a multi cam edit with 6-9 streams for that one editor. So, with 2 or 3 editors trying to do the same it might get dicey…? We will see

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

So now I will probably sound like a crazy guy with multiple personality disorder because my last post talked about going with ProMax and yet here we are doing something different.

Here is what I want to say right up front. i’m not paid by any of these guys I am simply looking for the best solution for my small business and our workflow.

PROMAX: These guys were awesome and really worked with me to come up with something we thought would work, in the end it simply wasn’t the right solution for us. We have some tools that really need “BLOCK LEVEL” access and a true SAN environment and the “Platform Studio” wasn’t able to provide that. I will say it was a very nice box with a good Xeon setup with fast components and over a 1gigE I got about 80MB/s consistently (peak of 95) but we really hoped to be able to pull 3 streams of ProResHQ and this wouldn’t do it. Some of our other programs wouldn’t work at all because they saw this as a network resource (LR4) in in Edius we saw some dropped frames and PCI Buss loading problems. I must say the guys at Promax stood behind their product and really appeared to cared about us as a client. They were very friendly about allowing us to change directions and didn’t hit us with any silly restocking fee. I’m not sure if they would always do that or not but there were also some other mitigating factors that wouldn’t make sense to go into here. Bottom line…. Great box for some people and good service and support so go check it out.

I’ll go start another thread with what I have decided to do so check that out! maybe it can help someone else out there.

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

OK so here is the deal I went to NAB for the sole purpose of learning more about NAS and SAN environments and after doing all that and with my IT background all I can say is…. I GIVE!

I have been won over by the guys at Promax! Ultimatly it all boils down to what do you want to do. Spend time monitoring your network or making money editing and producing products. While this is a huge expense for me I must say Adam of at Promax was incredibly helpful at tailoring something that will work well for us and gives us room to expand. I am also excited at the idea to have support and a team of knowledgeable people in the same county that can help should we need it.

We are only in the pre-sales/sold stage, in other words I don’t have the box here in the studio yet so I’ll have to update you all soon to how it is performing but I must say Promax is making every effort to deliver the box this Friday (earlier than they originally planned)and that is pretty impressive.

Thank you all for the great input and I look forward to letting you all know how it works!

here is the product we ordered “PLATFORM STUDIO”

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

Thank you David it does help. In fact I have been speaking with Adam over in your Santa Ana office. I sure wish you guys hadn’t moved off Technology drive (that was about 3 minutes from my place).

He told me about a something that might work well 😉 but I fear it is still just out of my league at the moment. I’ll be doing good to bring on the employee 🙁

What a blessing too have to much work to get done by myself. Now, if the revenue would just be too much!

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

Thank you for the time Bob. I get it, I am just struggling with “How hard can it really be”. I spent many years as a IT network admin and used to build editing workstations for people so i feel like I have enough understanding to be dangerous.

Example: just last night to try this out I setup My macbook pro running Jumbo frames and a windows 7 64Bit running jumbo frames. The MBP bombs out on Jumbo frames with the router so I set it back to auto Then I attached (to the MBP) a small Mini G-raid (FW800) and I shared that out to the windows box and I was able to play the one stream of HQX (Grass valleys edit format – similar in size to DNXHD) and it worked fine without dropped frames at about 20% network utilization with peeks up to 60% over 1GigE. This was via a cheep off the shelf Netgear R6300 home internet Router. So I kind of figure how much better could it work if it the MBP was running JUMBO frames and if this was a peer to peer connection using my windows boxes second 1Gige nic port?

Oh can someone please tell me do i need a crossover cable these days to do that? or are the nics smart enought now to work peer to peer?

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

Thank you very much… Advice well taken 🙂

I apologize to all if I seemed to rough in my reply above, I was taken back at the responses and the hit me as less about helping and more like a cautionary tale of “Don’t do it” that felt like there was an underlying, “Just buy my product instead”.

Again I didn’t mean to offend.

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media

[Jason Silzle]

Thank you Alex for the pointers towards FreeNas and just help in general.

Everyone else… Well.. Guys I appreciate the honesty about how hard this is going to be but at the same time it feels a little like your just using the COW as a place to hand pick customers. instead of offering advice of how it could be done (the very idea behind open FORUMS!!) your drive traffic back to your products. Well i don’t want to spend my time as an IT guy and I even need to spend less time editing and more time managing my business so I would be happy to by some of your products if the markup wasn’t so obscene. Really $10-15K for parts that on the open market cost less than $3-4K? I get that your time is worth something like mine. I also get that not everyone in the world is going to buy your products so the markup needs to be high but don’t bust my chops because I want to try to save a buck. Just offer some advice, share, point me in the right direction. I simply don’t have those kind of resources at this point in the game.

I guess I would have expected some of your responses if I was on your private companies forums but I just expected the Cow to be a community of people here to help others DIY.

If anybody else has any advise as to how TO do this I would love to hear it.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Jason Silzle
https://www.dovedigitalmedia.com
Owner/Founder
Dove Digital Media