[Marcus Lyall]

Ah! Didn’t get the whole Ghz per port equation. It all fits!
That would explain the issues we had. Well, anyway, the G5 has been banished to the corner. And the Intel is doing it.

We’ve had some issues with the switch configuration, which have lead to the server disconnecting, but we have a lead on how to sort that out.

We’ve also realised that we need to keep the edit machines online, so we’re going to have to jig things around a bit.

But at this moment, I’ve got 4 simultaneous renders going on in AFX, all pulling files from the server. Which is kinda nice, as long as it doesn’t fall over.

Server is currently spitting out 380mb/s and taking about 12% of the cpu. Rendering to local drives. Sweet. I might even get home before midnight.

[Marcus Lyall]

OK. So we got the Intel box today, and on a brief test, with fairly empty drives, this is what we got.

3 streams of 1080P Pro-res422HQ playing on 3 machines simultaneously in FCP.

Activity monitor on client machine was showing network in rate of about 90mb/s on each machine. Server showing a peak of 360mb/s network out. This is with a 4 port Small Tree card. Still waiting for the 6 port to arrive.

Very little latency. Maybe a bit less than my local 8 bay connected via the Highpoint. Hmmm.

Will ask my tech friend to post the HP commands, or at least where to find them.

So final config will (hopefully) be:

Apple MacPro single Quad core with 8gb of RAM
Atto R380 raid card.
Small Tree PEG6 ethernet card
Proavio S8MS with 8 x Seagate 1.5tb drives.

Procurve 2810 switch. 6 ports bonded for Server. Other Macs connected via dual ethernet cables. Jumbo frames.

Procurve switch configured with one VLAN for the edit machines, and another for the office machines.
I guess we proved a few things.

1) “Buy cheap, buy twice.”
2) The G5 and Small Tree ethernet cards don’t play well together.
3) You need someone who really understands gig-e switches to sort this out for you. But the rest ain’t so bad.
4) If you do it yourself, allow a week longer than you think you need.
5) It is possible to build a semi-ghetto San with a little help from your friends.

Thanks to Bob, Simon, David, Small Tree and Evan for your invaluable help. I’m sure this won’t be the end of it.

Now, anyone know how to make Bru Server work properly? 😉

[Marcus Lyall]

So here’s where I’m at.

Proavio Chassis with Seagate 1.5 tb drives working, for the moment. ATTO card working.

Procurve switch very difficult to configure but working. On a mac, you need a serial to rj45 cable to do it.
And a degree in computer science. No tech support to speak of. You are on your own.

First Small Tree card was DOA, but replacement now working. Although not in a G5 as hoped.
Technical support from Small Tree very good. Big up Chris.
If in the UK, probably just as easy to buy from Small Tree direct.

So we’re getting an Intel Mac Pro as the server. Not really a ghetto san anymore. My tech friend has had a week of frustration and staring at the terminal window and a large pile of ethernet cables.
Certainly not for the faint-hearted.

Almost there.
Will publish test results when we get the new server. Will also try to put up some details of our process for future reference. Big job on though so might take a while.

[Marcus Lyall]

Thanks David, My typo. It was the Rs8ms.
Just got it delivered. But missed the courier for the Atto card. Damn!
Still, this means we’ll try with a Highpoint card and and 8 bay raid tomorrow, and then with the Atto next week. So we’ll have a speed comparison…

Any suggestions on a good method to benchmark this?
I have 4 Mac Pros here I can test with for playback.
2 with Decklinks, One with a Kona, and one with nothing.

[Marcus Lyall]

Ghetto SAN day(s) is getting closer.
Thanks for the advice so far.

Seem to have made the usual schoolboy errors.
Seagate Drives. Check.
Highpoint cards. Check.
G5. Check.

But now on my way.

A small tree 6-port card arrives tomorrow.
Will order the chassis tomorrow. Probably the Enhance RS88.
Sending back the Highpoint 3522 and going for either the Areca 1680 or the ATTO R380.
Dunno if I can send back the seagate 1.5 tb’s.
So advice on which card is less likely to screw up would be great.

This looks scary….
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/197/856578

Big issue I have here is that there are very few integrators in the UK who are clued up about this stuff. So this forum has been really useful. I get all your comments about getting someone to do this for me, but it appears all of you are across the pond. Which makes it tricky for on-site tech support.

One further question. Is there anyone in the Seattle area who is clued up about this stuff? I may need to replicate this setup on location for a job there in February.

Plan is to get it working over here next weekend(s), wiki it all up, and then take some of the components out to Seattle, and set it all up again there.

Ah. The joys of flying raidsets transatlantic! Time to foam out the pelicases.

As you can imagine, this won’t be a mission-critical component of the job, just a nice bonus if it works. So… any Seattle area San dudes in the house?

Thanks all for the advice so far.

[Marcus Lyall]

waiting for some gear now.
will try the g5 first.

found this on my travels…. looks like areca is the way to go.

https://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/6-sas-raid-controllers-roundup.html

will try the highpoint for comparison.
keeping it ghetto….

thanks for the advice so far guys…

[Marcus Lyall]

G5 is a PCI-Express type so PEG6 is the go, no?
If no joy, then I’ll switch to Mac Pro…

Takes a while for this Smalltree stuff to arrive though. Can aggregate the two ports on the G5 in the meantime… Just to test..

My ghetto theory… start with most basic setup and work my way up to inevitable costly solution… therefore proving to myself that it’s worth spending the money all the way.

Techy mate is really techy. (He’s writing me an app in C++ at the moment). Hoping a lil’ old HP switch won’t outfox him.

[Marcus Lyall]

Can play back one stream of uncompressed SD from 1 machine to another. Not 3 at the same time. Or at least, I haven’t tried it.

Getting another drive card isn’t an issue. I have to say though, the Highpoint cards have worked pretty well as local storage. Got 4 of them in the studio, all running 8-bay raids. Shipped the drives and cards over to the states, plugged ’em in there and run them straight away.
Had the normal odd drive fall over, but nothing unrecoverable in 3 years so far. Reason for sticking with Highpoint was more to keep everything compatible, in case the drive needed re-purposing.
Areca card is much the same price as Highpoint….

Sounds like I need the Small Tree PXG6 whether I have a G5 or MacPro, correct? So may as well try it out in the G5, just for fun, I guess.
Then stick it in a Mac Pro when, as you predict, that doesn’t work. Just so I can get ordering. These things take a while to arrive over here.

REPLY – if you have 2 ethernet ports on each MAC, you don’t need a gateway – just create two independent networks. No big deal.

Ah. There was me thinking I’d need both internal ports as linked agg on the client end…. No advantage there then?

[Marcus Lyall]

Replies to your replies.
Thanks for the info to date…

REPLY – without setting up link aggregation, you will never get the thruoughput that you need. You need a switch that supports dynamic link aggregation, flow control, and jumbo frames. And you will need a large fast drive array that can support multiple workstations pulling data at a very fast rate.

So is the 2810 a switch I can use? Apparently it has….
IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Protocol (LACP) and ProCurve trunking: support up to 24 trunks, each with up to 8 links (ports) per trunk
Jumbo packet support: supports up to 9,216 byte frame size to improve performance of large data transfers

Is this what we’re talking about? Or is dynamic link aggregation different? Fast drive array should do about 500 mb/s. So all good?

REPLY – you mean the Power MAC Quad G5. It wont’ work. 4 Gig’s of RAM is too small, unless you only have 2 clients.

So If I put in 8 gigs, it’ll do 4 clients? Only 3 clients will need FCP speed. But 8 gig for good measure?

REPLY – you will soon see that even if you have the right switch, and setup link aggregation, the Highpoint card exhibits severe latency

I can play back uncompressed SD without latency over my office network Gig-e from any of the 3 machines I have with Highpoint cards already.
Does this change with multiple clients? I’ve just bought a bunch of SATA drives. Can you recommend a more suitable controller card?

REPLY – if you think that 2 ethernet ports is enough for link agg, you are dreaming. We use 6 now on all systems – even small systems. Even 4 was pushing it (unless you have only a couple of clients).

So a small tree 6 port ethernet card will make a big improvement?
Thing is that most of the time, the server / network will be used for AFX rendering. So not such an issue. It’ll be kinda rare for my system to be playing out to more than 1 or 2 FCP clients. Thus the slightly ghetto nature. I agree that if I had a small edit facility with simultaneous FCP edits, this wouldn’t really work. But I don’t.

REPLY – so you expect to run 5 FCP clients, with a server that has 4 gig of RAM, and only 2 ports for link aggregation.

Not exactly. Most of the throughput is going to be AFX rendering.
The Mac Mini is for rendering from Watch folders. The G5 is for archiving to tape. (LTO-4 via PCI-xATTO scsi card) It would be nice to hang other spare machines off this network to use as a makeshift AFX render farm. (There’s some other 8-cores we could hook up)
The 3 Mac Pros will all have fast local storage, but I want to store some assets on a server to avoid duplication and make it easier to back up at the end of projects. But obviously, I want to build it so I ideally can edit from the server where possible. But happy to build this capability up over time. No need for 10gig Ethernet just yet. Nice to be able to play back single streams of Pro-res HD to check renders without dropped frames though.

REPLY – even if you were an IT person, this is a difficult process. There are lots of steps to go thru. And you CANNOT share the office IT network along with the shared storage (which needs to be a dedicated network), using Ethernet port 2 on your MAC Pro’s, with static IP addresses. Your PCI-X MAC G5 doesn’t support Jumbo frames, so you won’t get any bandwidth.

Yep. not planning to share office network with video. Just wondering whether they can be run as separate VLANs on the same switch.
Can always get a basic gig-e switch for the office network. No biggie. I think there’s one in a drawer somewhere. And yes, a Small tree PCI -X card that supports Jumbo frames for the PCI-x G5. Sound like a plan?
Static IP’s in place already.

REPLY – they are called SWITCHES these days, not hubs. Do you think that Linksys ethernet cards from Office Depot are going to work for this application ?

Not quite sure what you mean here? But I’m in London. We don’t have Office Depot. I think you’re saying that I need a decent ethernet card, yes?

REPLY – so you are not an IT person, but you are going to configure 2 different VLAN’s, and share the single switch ? And you are going to create link agg on one of the VLANS?

No. I was going to get my techy friend to do it. He seemed quite savvy on switches and the like. But wanted to get some advice, thus the posts.

REPLY –
your proper IT person will have no clue as to what any of this is.
There are lots of people that you see on these forums – LOTS of manufacturers that do shared storage for video enviornments. But you try it – you try to get this to work with your IT guy.

Kinda depends on who your IT guys are I guess… Some are better than others…

REPLY – advice – study what is available to you on Creative Cow. Read this forum. Contact the people that do this for a living.
Save money – be a hero to your company.

It’s my company, so no risk of being fired! In fact, the whole set-up is really a thing for me that has grown slightly out of hand.
As I say, the shared storage isn’t mission-critical, just useful. The ghetto vibe is because the situation doesn’t quite merit a major purchasing plan just yet.

So to recap…..

1) Does the Highpoint card give worse performance when serving multiple clients than other cards?
2) Does the Highpoint card give worse performance when serving multiple clients over a network than when used as local storage?
(ie, we assume the normal network bandwidth issues, but is there a particular issue with a Highpoint card serving multiple clients, rather than just one?)
3) Is the Procurve 2810 switch capable of dynamic link aggregation, and flow control?
4) Can I create two linkable VLANs on the procurve 2810, one for video, one for office?
5) Or do I just use the Procurve for video, and get another switch for the office and use the Small tree-d PciX G5 as a gateway between them?
6) Or , if the Procurve isn’t going to cut the mustard, what’s the switch to buy`? And why?
7) What are your thoughts on putting one of those 6 port small tree PCix card bad boys in the maligned G5, after putting some more ram in it? Jeez, it’s tempting. Using the G5 will save me a few quid.
8) Or do I bite the bullet and shell out on a 2nd hand Quad Core Mac Pro? Is there a big difference in performance between the two?
9) Seasons Greetings!

[Marcus Lyall]

check in sequence settings. video processing tab
motion filtering quality should be set to best.