[John Veron]

You MUST have the ISIS client connection software in order to access the ISIS.
Unless you purchase a special computer form AVID that shares out the ISIS to other computers.
This is because ISIS uses its own protocol to the storage and not SMB, NFS or CIFS.

This again means that you can not simply access the ISIS 5000 with Linux for example, as there is no Linux client software. That’s at least based on my 2 years old knowledge.

Both Facilis and ISIS offer Bin Locking, so there is no difference in a project sharing workflow.

However, ISIS 5000 is qualified and tested by Avid. The user interface to maintain the storage is fantastic. It is absolutely rock-solid.

Check Youtibe for some ISIS “How To” videos. I am sure you will find more information there.

[John Veron]

Hi,

I’ve read your post and was wondering why you are looking at an Isilon for the kind of work you want to do.
Are there any IT features that you require that makes you want this solution?

There are heaps of vendors offering scalable (not auto balancing though) storage that does it in one 3 HU box at a fraction of the price.

Editshare, Facilis, GBlabs, Smalltree, etc.
They all are well suited for many streams of compressed (and even uncompressed HD).
Looks like a waste of money to go for Isilon unless you need all the other features.

Regards,
John

[John Veron]

Hi,

This has nothing directly to do with your problem but I agree with Bob.

I personally did quite a lot of tests with he EonNAS 3000 series.
Its an IT product and crap with anything else.

I was shocked how badly it performs and how unreliable the monitor graphs of the web GUI are.
Infortrend support admitted that they are totally unprecise.

The CPU and RAM specs are terrible too I should add.
Try to deactivate all internal bells and whistles to enhance performance.
I really hope it is just a switch problem.

Good luck with this but you really have the wrong product I am afraid.
/j

[John Veron]

Don’t go for XSAN. Forget about it.
Apple is doing consumer products nowadays. Do you really want to invest money into an Apple driven central storage solution that is supposed to work for few more years? Especially when your revenue depends on it?

My advice: Get an Ethernet based solution from one of the many vendors here.

I know so many people who invested in a complete FCP editing environment, including FCP server.
All this is pretty much useless now. Our industry moves so quickly and any missed update sets you behind your competition.

I know others who got an expensive XSAN and are now looking for ways to replace their not-so-old gear with supported products that are actually being developed.

What I want to say: Think about alternatives! MacMini as a production SERVER? OMG….

[John Veron]

Hi,

I don’t know how to configure a Promise Vtrak but I can tell you that RAID0 is very very bad.
Try RAID5 at least, it will still be ok performance-wise.
In RAID0 you loose one disk and everything is GONE.

Write-Thru is usually not very good.
Please try to enable Write-Back. This means that the data is cached by the controller and then written to disks.
The controller essentially says “I got the data, continue to give me more”. With Write-Thru it will write the data to the disks first before doing anything else.
this option can be switched on/off during operation and for testing the best performance.

Cheers

[John Veron]

Hi,

I think XSAN and StorNext based systems are out-dated in a compressed video environment.
XSAN architecture is too expensive and not supported (you can not call support), that’s why its free with the OS.
FibreChannel is a waste of money in a compressed world IMO and I still can’t believe that Apple actually suggest to replace a server with a MacMini…..

If you just want to play around and see what you can get out of the system, then try SANmp or FibreJet.
Disadvantage: It’s volume level locking.
Advantage: At least with SANmp you can get a free trial.

Advise: You will need iSCSI (maybe from Studio Netowkr Solutions) to talk on a “block-level” over ethernet to the storage.

I suggest you go to Vimeo or Youtube, I bet someone has posted a video explaining this.

Cheers.

[John Veron]

I see, well I personally think that not a single NAS solution will be able to give you the performance.
You need block-level access to the disks, not file level.

A NAS “translates” the computer request for a file to a location in its file system on its storage.
There is quite some overhead which makes it slow. On all of them.

Editshare, ISIS 5000 and others won’t cut it. Too expensive to get this massive performance.
Better to look at FC based storage such as Rorke, StorNext, EVO, etc.

But even then it won’t be cheap and you need to throw a lot of disks at it.

[John Veron]

Hi,

I don’t post often but I am going to propose something completely different here.

Please contact someone in your area who sells FusionIO cards.
Ideally not an IT vendor (as they have no clue what we guys do).

FusionIO cards are similar to SSDs (well, not really). They sit in the PCIe slot as storage.
You can bundle multiple together to provide even more performance using a FusionIO software called Sphere.

Now, ONE card can easily give you 4K uncompressed! I benchmarked 1.4 GBytes/s .
They are expensive though and can only hold 420 GB (the ioFX card).

While they appear expensive you will save A LOT of money when you try to get that performance through a disk array.

Ask the Fusion Guys for advise on how to serve out the cards over FibreChannel to other computers as you would with normal storage.

You could use SANmp or FibreJet (SANmp is cheaper) for sharing.
Good luck!

Oh, and curious to hear what the others say!

[John Veron]

Hi Ross,

You should get more quotes and talk to resellers/system integrators to understand what technologies are currently available for collaborative editing.

You have the choice between FibreChannel and Ethernet. For what you want to do, Ethernet based storage systems are fine.

Try to find a reseller that knows these technologies and is willing to educate you. He should NOT push you towards a solution but rather suggest a few options.
I live in Sydney as well and you may want to try the typical and well established resellers such as Digistor. Amber, Future or StormFX.
Ask for a meeting to discuss your needs, go to more than one and then make up your mind.

There is no point to go through all the various technologies and products here. They are all good.
Once thing to consider:
Make sure you can get the support once the central storage unit starts to fail. If the reseller is only a box-dropper and does not even know how EXACTLY the system works, then that’s a bad sign.

Editshare may be too pricey for you but then again, their APAC HQ is in Brisbane. Excellent if you require top support.

Regards.