Jordan Woods
Forum Replies Created
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just start calling around to different integrators, find ones you like. There are a ton of them, some large some small. In terms of post workflow and SAN design/integration I would go with SanTech. These guys offer full support and can back it up. (https://www.santech.tv)
If you are really worried you can call around hoping to speak with post production execs and ask who did their integration and if they recommend them. Google any large Los Angeles facility, call, and ask for VP of Post Production or a chief engineer. It might seem “invasive” but you’ll definitely get your answer. I would be willing to bet a bunch of them are lurking on this forum 🙂
-Jordan
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If we start working 8GB/s wirelessly … I’m wearing a lead suit to work. That just freaks me out
🙂
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It sounds like you have a very big task, and it also sounds like this is a new venture for you. A file level SAN that runs uncompressed HD smoothly is not exactly a DIY activity. In my experience, if you post the following information, you will get exactly what will work for you:
–some questions seem stupid, but necessary since a SAN is built not only for current needs, but future as well.
-How many seats are uncompressed (current and future)
-How many concurrent streams are used by the uncompressed editors
-How many seats are compressed (current and future)
-How many concurrent streams are used by the compressed editors
-How much space do you estimate you will need
-Do you have technical staff
-and the most important… How much money are you willing to spend to do this correctly? This answer will probably answer the top questions for you. Here is a good example:-2 editors of uncompressed HD – minimum 500MB/s if “extra streams”
-any other editors of “offline” = 30-50MB/s misc…
-probably need 10-20TB of space if you edit a feature, more if it’s a documentary-plan to go above $30,000 to do the above correctly.
There is no “one” way to build a SAN, there are too many variables. You have to find what will work and how much you want to spend to get that to work. Call a bunch of integrators in your area and get some quotes… that will do wonders for pointing you in the right direction.
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All drivers are supposed to come in the Mac OS… but yea, I don’t like that I can’t go to LSI site and download drivers either.
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It is possible the drives came from the same lot. If that lot had an issue in manufacturing you are seeing them all fail at the same time (cascading failure)
or the box is just bad. Hey, on the bright side, your box hasn’t caught fire, like older 1TB firewire ones.
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it is 3 years old and lacie has a 2 year warranty, rough. It sounds like it lived an extra year past its expiration date. I would back up data, and walk slowly away from it.
it could be possible you have cascading drive failures though. Are you sure all the drives you place/replace are 100% verified good? you aren’t buying drives at Fry’s right? If so, never ever ever buy from them, I watched them throw drives across the floor, in their packaging… but still terrible.
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the vendor??? You are calling Commandsoft and they are throwing their hands up? Or by vendor do you mean your “integrator” doesn’t know what is going on?
-jw
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I’m not to sure about that setup… but I can tell you, when you are trying to step through frames that are 12MB+ in size across gigE, that will not be fun. I used to do a lot of rotoscoping back in the day, and doing that cheaply was not fun at all.
I believe what you mean by “editing SAN” is an actual fibre SAN. There is not really a difference between editing SANs and VFX SANs. I’m not sure what you think are small IO packets are when you are talking about 2k or 4k frames… small IO packets to me would mean that you need to access a lot of Word documents or text files, at which time a “database SAN” would work great.
Bigger question- If you are working in 2k or 4k uncompressed why would you want to do an Ethernet based solution? just go with a standard fibre solution. You still need to pass IO fairly quickly. You may not need to stream it at 24fps, but at least when you step the frames you aren’t waiting a minute for the update.
-jw
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On a dual port card you will sustain the same numbers as a 4 port card with your setup… the reason: your 24TB fibre array will only be so fast.
Don’t waste your money on the 4 port. The theoretical limit on 2 port is 800MB/s. You’ll probably see 500-600MB/s read/write depending on the setup and how the manufacturers raid performs. If you need more than 500 per station I would love to know what work you are doing.
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It sounds like you are going to attempt XSAN the cheapest way possible. I am very surprised Bob Z didn’t jump on this post yet, it almost sounds like a fake posting, just trying to temp Bob to nail him to the boards. 🙂
But seriously, it is a very bad idea to build an xsan how I imagine you are thinking. More than likely you don’t need the power of fibre or a large file level system. Post your bandwidth needs and expectations of your work environment and i’m sure somebody will come up with a better solution for you. Most xsan deployments are well over $30,000 (that is one of the lowest numbers I’ve seen… but that is do to it correctly and not have issues later down the road) I’m not bashing xsan, i’m just saying you need to do it right.
-Jordan
Senior Systems Engineer
Active Storage Labs
Los Angeles, CA