[Jonathan Loomis]

To echo Bob yes if you can setup a robust 1Gb network than setting up a 10Gb network is not much of a jump. The issue for us in this case – and Bob can attest to this – was the LaCie hardware. The RAID controller was a piece of junk. As DAS the LaCie we used worked ok but over any network 1G or 10G it was awful.

All in all to echo Bob once more you want to invest in solid gear from the get-go. If you know what you’re doing network-wise or find someone who does you should be fine. As soon as we replaced our LaCie with a Thunderraid2 from Maxx Digital our problems disappeared.

– Jonathan

[Jonathan Loomis]

Hi Craig,

There are many NAS systems suitable for video editing but I would not recommend the 8Big as the storage component in a NAS. As I understand it with most video you’ll primarily be concerned with sequential read/ write speeds rather than random r/w you’d see with a mail server or database.

If your needs dictate a shared storage solution make sure your throughput requirements are met by both the Synology RAID hardware and your network. A NAS will also require more tuning and/ or support hours than editing off of internal RAIDs so it’s well worth it to find an expert you can reach out to if you run into issues. We currently have 2-4 Premiere editors at a time working successfully in H.264 off of a Maxx Digital Thunderraid2 and Mac Pro server on a dedicated 10GbE network.

– Jonathan

[Jonathan Loomis]

Hi Olivier,

After troubleshooting/ testing every other component in the signal chain (NIC’s, client machines, switches, cables, server, software, etc.) we ended up replacing the LaCie 8Big with a Maxx Digital 48TB ThunderRAID 2 and haven’t had any issues since. The RAID controller on the LaCie for whatever reason just can’t negotiate traffic properly from multiple clients. In the words of LaCie’s customer support the 8Big units (and probably their others too) weren’t designed to do this and therefore they don’t offer support for this kind of networked setup. Thanks again to Ryan and Bob over at Maxx Digital for their help getting us a better rig.

Final working signal chain ended up being:

Thunderraid2 -> Mac Pro server -> Promise SANlink2 -> Netgear XS712T -> Promise SANlink2’s -> 4 – iMac/ Mac Pro Premiere CC 2014 clients

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Jonathan Loomis]

Thanks for the input Bob. Anyone know of any good way to secure these towers in a rack?

[Jonathan Loomis]

Thanks for your response Bob. And yes, the preliminary issues with our storage were discussed but I’d like to know what the big differences are between these various Thunderbolt disk arrays before we invest in one. In real world terms will we see much performance variation between a Promise R8 vs. a Thunderraid2 vs. a Sonnett RAID array? If the differences are negligible I’m inclined toward the 48TB Thunderraid2 for more disk space (having enough available space to run RAID6 vs RAID5). Whatever we decide on will be shared out on a separate bus as the NIC on a Mac Pro.

[Jonathan Loomis]

Thanks again for the response Bob,

All of our clients are using Premiere CC 2014 and sometimes After Effects running through 10GbE Sanlink2’s. We updated the switch firmware which looks like it helped read speeds a little but writing from multiple clients still chokes up pretty badly. I had our 3 editors test out their Premiere workflow yesterday and things seemed functional for the most part. Today we had a couple additional editors throughout the studio connect over gigabit to transfer some files as well as use After Effects and that seemed to result in more stuttering playback and hangs in Premiere, so maybe we’re just limited to a very few number of clients?

We managed to isolate the issue to the storage by running r/w speed tests directly to the server’s local drive over the 10Gig network. Since the network had no trouble maintaining consistent speeds during these tests that leaves the connection to LaCie as the only possible bottleneck. After reaching out to their support the answer I received was basically that the 8Big was not intended or designed for file sharing at this capacity and that they don’t support it.

At this point I’m wondering if setting up something like SNS’s iSCSI server/client target/initiator software might help manage the random read/writes coming from multiple clients better? I don’t have any experience with it so any input anybody has on it would be very useful. Other than that, it sounds like replacing the RAID array with something like a Maxx Digital is the only other thing I think we could do.

– Jonathan

[Jonathan Loomis]

Thanks for you response Bob (however loaded). Swapping out the Mini for a Pro and putting the Sanlink and LaCie on separate buses was the next step I took in troubleshooting, but even though speeds are slightly better I’m still largely getting the same results with more than one client connected. I’ve tried over both afp and smb without much difference, and jumbo packets are pinging to the server so the switch is definitely sending them.

The part that boggles my mind though is that even when I connect clients over gigabit ethernet to the XS708e the same problem occurs: one gigabit client connected gives r/w of 100-110MB/s, but as soon as a second connects both of their speeds get choked up and they end of fighting over about 100MB/s of total bandwidth (one will be around 30-40MB/s with the other around 60-70MB/s). I think you can agree this is well below what the Mac Pro, Sanlink, and LaCie are all capable of, I’m just not exactly sure why it’s going on. sysctl.conf settings are below:

net.inet.tcp.doautorcvbuf=0
net.inet.tcp.doautosndbuf=0
kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=8388608
net.inet.tcp.sendspace=4000000
net.inet.tcp.recvspace=4000000
net.inet.tcp.maxseg_unacked=8
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
net.inet.tcp.win_scale_factor=7

Any helpful response is appreciated. And yes, this was definitely not my choice for a shared storage solution but I’m the guy who has to try and make it to work.

Thanks,
Jonathan