Matt Geier
Forum Replies Created
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Small Tree is the company that provides Intel Pro1000 and 10GbE Network adapters to the Mac OSX market.
We have a card that is PCI X based for your G5…
The card you want is as follows;https://www.small-tree.com/Single_Port_Copper_PCI_Gigabit_Ethernet_Desktop_p/pxg1d.htm
If you have a G5 with Dual Ethernet ports, you do have a PCI Express version and would be a PEG1 instead of a PXG1D.
****If your Mac G5 only has one Ethernet port in the back, it’s going to be a PCI X Version.
Regards,
Matt G
Small Tree -
Jordan,
Yes it does happen often. I simply just do like you just did and try to help educate people from time to time 🙂 —
Chris —
You’re onto something there — 🙂
Matt G.
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Good stuff — What’s the config? 🙂
That said — I should talk about this — https://news.creativecow.net/story/863135
Small Tree to Preview Next Generation Storage System at Macworld Expo 2010
This PR discusses Small Tree’s work around FCoE. (Fibre Channel over Ethernet)
Matt G
Small Tree -
Jacob,
If you have 8100 enabled, you can pass up to 8100 in size. If you’ve got 9000 enabled, you can pass 9000.
Keep in mind the motherboard is likely the same (or very similar..) – There’s also a reason your Edge-corE switch is only set to 8100 as opposed to 9000 byte frames.
Secondly, you’ll only pass a Jumbo Frame packet in the case of a Jumbo Frame. If you pass a Standard Frame packet on a Jumbo Frame network it flows okay…because it’s less then your jumbo frame setting….
Just because you’ve got Jumbo Frames enabled, doesn’t mean it’s passing jumbo packets…just that it can which will be very integral in your video environment.
🙂
Matt G
Small Tree -
Hi Marcus,
Glad to hear things are moving for you for the time being. Let us know how this goes for you, as time will change, so will performance.
BTW – Just out of curiosity, how did you read the latency of the drives, was there a tool you used from the storage?
As for your comment about Small Tree cards and a G5.
It takes about 1Ghz of processor to fully power a single gigabit port full speed. So that means if you want to run 2Gb Ports at 100MB/sec, you need 2Ghz in your server just allocated for gigabit ports. If you can imagine putting a PXG6 in a G5 with Quad 2.44 (a little less than 5 Ghz of processor power) — you could bring it down pretty quick with 7-8 clients connected all going at once… Also compare to the driver now, the driver performance is much faster then it was on the G5. Even your Final Cut tends to process slower on the G5’s then they do now.(Fun Fact: There are still a lot of Apple G5’s out in the field and lots of them with Small Tree cards since 2004/2005….)
Matt G
Small Tree Forum – https://forums.creativecow.net/smalltree -
Hi Kurt,
I’d always follow specific requirements based on your applications.
Certainly the more memory you have, the better performance you will see in the system behavior because that’s less the CPU’s will be doing.
If there is a lot of memory, then your applications (like Final Cut) that do memory buffering, will run better vs not having enough memory to go around due to the lack of being able to allocate accordingly to the needs of your applications.
Do it — get the most you can —
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(ME): We are very aware of this. In this hypothetical context, the G5 would be acting as the link between the eSATA RAID arrays and the Mac Pro. All the video processing would be done on the Mac Pro, so in retrospect, I wasn’t worried about the capabilities of the G5 to process video. Even if PCI-X is comparatively slower than PCIe, does it really make that huge a different if all it’s doing is transferring information from one or two eSATA RAIDS by way of one or two 4-port PCI-X cards to the ATTO card and then to the Mac Pro? I guess my assumption is that a lot of processor work is being done on the HBA and eSATA cards, and that PCI-X is fast enough to accommodate 10-bit uncompressed and upwards.
Or am I wrong, horribly, wrong?
Here’s what you should really do, I think you are over doing your question.
(that’s not meant as a mean thing……just think about this for one second…)
Put the Mac Pro as the Server, Use the G5 with VPN, Final Cut (or whatever application) Put your storage behind the Mac Pro, and configure it for sharing across the network.
(as long as your application runs over a network, you can have it connect to things across the network…makes sense)
Connect Ethernet from G5 to Mac Pro and Share the storage from the server with the Mac Pro doing all the work, Server, Storage Server, Client, VPN, etc (Apple makes very good hardware as we all know…)
Find out if you can make that work with what you want to do. It might require you to continue further testing to see what kind of results you can achieve.
You are doing a couple of things by changing the G5 and the Mac Pro around.
1) Mac Pro has PCI Express…
2) Mac Pro has faster architecture then the G5 (and is also Intel based..)
3) It has better CPU’s for more Server activity…
4) It either has it now, or should have more memory then the G5 does now….Let me know ..
About the Fiber Channel related questions, I’m not an expert there….plenty of others here are however. I’ll defer to anyone else that has more knowledge on that type of conversation..
Matt G.
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Hey Chris,
(you said..)
I don’t know if you’re associated with Small Tree or not, but that’s my point. Apace has 4-6TB solutions that run under $10,000. Add a $800-$1000 switch and a few network cards and you can have an entry level system that works right out of the box along with great customer service for between $10-12,000.I do work for Small Tree (just to clarify — and I’ve only been public about it since we have our own forum here on the cow now https://forums.creativecow.net/smalltree)
(you said..)
I am NOT associated with Apace. I’m just a customer with 25 years in this business who’s seen countless computer, non-linear editing and storage companies tout products that don’t work the way they’re supposed to, or fail repeatedly. Apace’s products do exactly what they claim, they’re rock solid, and their customer service is excellent.I’ve also heard good things about them. I often talk about vendors that have good products.
When you consider the complexity of shared video editing, along with the demands placed on the hardware, and the need for 24/7 reliable performance, solutions like their’s just seem to be a no-brainer to me…especially considering their systems work with Avid, Final Cut and a whole host of other NLE systems, including Harris VelocityQ, Canopus Edius, Sony Vegas, and Adobe Premiere.This is very important when you choose a solution obviously is how it’s going to work for you and how it’s going to be supported after it’s installed. Very critical when you are in a production environment.
When we were researching systems, they were the ONLY company that provided me with a list of past clients to contact to get feedback. All of those companies (four of them) were using Final Cut. All had similar experiences to mine in terms of service as well.Apace was the only company that gave me a money back guarantee…in writing!
I also have to compliment the reseller we dealt with…IEEI out of California…who got me estimates within hours, provided answers to all my questions, setup phone conferences with Apace engineers and our IT company to help with deciding what periperhals to buy (switch, network cards etc.)
https://www.ieei.com/ieeibroadcast/vstor.shtml
I rarely…and I mean rarely tout a product, company or service…but after the frustration I experienced trying to get answers about shared storage, these guys are a breath of fresh air..and their stuff just plain works.
This is great!
I wish in your research, you’d look at Small Tree. Go ahead and shoot over to our forum and read about some of the GraniteSTOR solutions we’ve got.
Aside from that, I agree with you in the fact that references help sell and close. That’s why, Small Tree no qualms about giving our potential buyers real world users that have great success to talk to!
When a company like the guys at Small Tree have been engineering and designing real time shared storage solutions that are not only high bandwidth but very fast performing configurations, we understand where you come from and what you are saying.
Real Time engineering is what Small Tree engineers have been doing for the last 25 years from their times working with SGI, CRAY, and a few other places that deal in the same type of technology!
Good luck in your searches!
Keep Small Tree in your head as a valuable resource for Real Time Shared Storage solutions, which are OSX focused and Ethernet based networks!Matt Geier
Small Tree -
Spencer,
I’ve provided some kind of responses below —
(you say..)
Preface: there is a small film studio being started up in eastern Europe, and I was invited to make an “inexpensive” (Yes, a very dangerous word to mention) and simple Fibre Channel network to accommodate their video demands. Little did I know there were some inherent flaws in my setup, and I had some incorrect conceptions about the nature of FC and SANs…(my reply..)
I already see a couple of problems with the statement. Fiber Channel, Inexpensive, and Simple ….well frankly, Fiber channel never has been any of the above.The last time I talked to a customer who wanted to do a fibre channel san on their 4 Mac clients (last week..). They were getting quotes of 20K just to get it in the door…..
I gave them a 9K quote to use an Ethernet based solution, and they will be lasting a lot longer then that Fibre Channel SAN they looked at!
(you say…)
Running on the G5 are two extra 4-port eSATA cards, that connect to two rack-mounted eSATA RAID arrays.We can’t do local storage on the Mac Pro, so it was decided that the G5 would be the server.
(To elaborate, the Mac Pro is in the studio, and the studio needs to have as minimal noise as possible. Mac Pro’s usually don’t generate too much noise, and we have it in a sound-dampening box, whereas the G5 and it’s loud RAID arrays get to make as big of a racket as they want, since they’re located in another room)
(my reply..)
They do know that the G5 is going to offer much less performance then the Mac Pro don’t they? — it’s a completely different hardware architecture, not to mention PCI X…..not PCI Express. Even using a Mac Pro Quad Core would be better then using a G5….Perhaps they are okay with the performance of the G5 vs the Mac Pro…(you say..)
In an ideal world, and what made conceptual sense in my head, was that the G5 would host the SATA drives, the SATA drives would appear on the desktop of the Mac Pro, and that SAN software was not needed, because there was only really one computer accessing the data on the G5. Since the G5 would simply be acting as the server, it seemed like we wouldn’t need SAN software…So continuing on, just a few more questions for you all to ponder and debaucher,
Yes — you can successfully deploy a Mac Server, and put all your users into it, and use the server for the point of access, taking advantage of the storage….(this is how these Ethernet based configurations work…without SAN software, and over AFP…)
As it is with Fibre Channel, I believe in general (and someone can correct me …) is that you are required to put a software license on every person’s machine accessing the storage…because Fibre Channel is not traditionally deployed behind a “server” as much as it’s storage, hanging of switches….
(you say..)
We simply want a setup where we can store a bunch of video files in a location separate from where they would presumably be edited– hence, the Mac Pro in the studio, storage in a separate room. And it needs to be fast:As I “understand”, something such as 10-bit uncompressed video is too fat to stream over a Gigabit Ethernet. It appears that it might have been possible to stream it over a 10-gig-Ethernet or Bob Zelin’s 4-gig-Ethernet solution, but that is unfortunately out of the question at the moment, as we have the Fibre Channel cards, and want to work with what we have.
(my reply..)
Gigabit speeds on a Mac Client out can be achieved at 70-80MB/sec
10Gb Speeds on a Mac Client *10.5.8 can sustain 450-500 at the server with multiple incoming connections out per client (per client will run around 250-300MB/sec…)(you say..)
The simplest solution seems to be a Fibre Channel RAID storage unit. This seems like the best solution, the correct, way to develop what already exists.(my reply..)
No…the Simple way, would be doing this with Ethernet, where you don’t have all the nasty overhead of san software, read / write permissions, etc….Matt Geier
Small Tree
https://forums.creativecow.net/smalltree -
Chris Said..
Perhaps this is a Mac thing…but in our Windows based facility using the Apace vStor, we can share our office IT network right along with the vStor’s shared video storage using just one 48-port switch. I don’t recall the brand or anything, but it was an $800 switch recommended by Apace. We can also set-up one of the 4 edit systems to act as a gateway of sorts for our office PCs (11 of them) to have access to the audio and video on the vStor with no noticeable impact to editing performance. The vStor also works happily with Final Cut and the majority of systems they sell are to Final Cut facilities.(Reply)
It’s a Mac OS Limitation of how fast AFP allows you to go. 30-50MB/sec with no Jumbo Frames and 70/80MB sec with jumbo frames are achievable and sustainable under OS 10.5.8.Chris Said..
The Apace vStor can use jumbo frames, but it’s default from the factory uses an MTU of 1500 and we consistently got read speeds above 75MB/sec and write speeds above 60MB/sec. We eventually enabled jumbo frames on the vStor (and the $25 intel GB ethernet cards from TigerDirect in each workstation) and saw about a 20% increase in read/write speeds. Each workstation has 2 ethernet cards, one that uses a static IP address to link to the vStor, with the other using static IP addresses to connect to the office network.(Reply)
I suspect this is referring to Windows or Linux? … because a that $25 dollar Intel card for a Mac is closer to $99.00 from Small Tree.Chris Said..
Now I don’t know if this is all the exact same thing as what’s being discussed here…but we were told repeatedly by other companies (EditShare, Studio Network Solutions, Tiger Technology and others) that what we’re doing could NOT be done using one switch. I’m here to tell you it CAN be done and is being done everyday in facilities using Apace products. We get 3-4 real-time streams of DVCPro50 video across 3 edit systems, with the fourth getting at least 1 or 2 real-time streams while being used for compositing. We see virtually NO hiccups, no pauses, no issues whatsoever. I can count on one hand the number of times playback has paused or stopped during editing in 18 months of use. I can count on one hand the number of times a render stopped or had corrupt frames. I can count on no hands the amount of down-time or file corruption we’ve had (since it’s zero).I have no idea how the engineers at Apace achieve this kind of performance when everyone, and I mean EVERYONE else says you cannot do it. But I’m here to say they do it.
I realize the thread is talking about a DIY sort of scenario with Macs, and perhaps using one switch isn’t possible with them. But it IS possible with affordable, turn-key products that just plain work. No fuss, no headaches, no figuring anything out.
(Reply)
It’s possible with Mac’s certainly — However, it’s easy to get corruption if the network, server, and storage are not all doing their part correctly. This is so in any network where you have real time access or other simultaneous access.The fact remains that there are Mac focus solutions from places like Small Tree, Maxx Digital, and ProMax, on the market that are run over Ethernet networks to SAS/SATA based Storage.
Chris said…
So my advice is STOP trying save $5000 or $10,000 and build a system from existing components. Just bite the bullet and pay for a system that’s gonna work and has a 5 year warranty and FREE technical support. You’ll be glad you did.(Reply)
Yea, good advice… I say don’t spend $20,000 when you can spend half of that and get into an Ethernet based solution for Mac that was designed for Real Time Video Editing in a Shared Storage environment – shoot on over to Small Tree’s forum and read about GraniteSTOR!Good luck