[Matt Geier]

Chris,

Certainly glad to help you. I think at this point all of us here are trying to save you problems and money in the long term. 🙂

I would have called back except I failed to capture your phone number. (You would think I never forget do this since I’m the sales guy….but honestly, it was a pleasure helping you!) 🙂

When you get ready to change things, give me a call and I can help you again!

Matt

[Matt Geier]

Keith,

What Bob was describing is true.

Here’s the rule of thumb you want to use. This would allow you to determine if you’re going to have enough stuff to power your server configuration properly.

1Gb of Memory for every one client connected to the server
1Ghz of processor for every one gigabit port connected to the server.

This G5 you have, would be hard pressed to fully power a 4 port gigabit ethernet card, since that would be 5 total ports on the server.

In your case, the best thing to do is use this as an Edit bay, and put money into a new mac pro 8 core which is more then capable!

Thanks,

Matt G

Matt G.

[Matt Geier]

Chris,

Boy, I love it when these ‘intended to be simple’ conversations get drug out long. I will tell you I’ve been in this industry a long time, and even this thread is starting to confuse me. Just to clarify, I did read the entire thread before I decided to post myself.

I want to warn you about some things first, mostly your budget. The two major items here that suck up the money fast, are a Server, and the storage. To be honest, I concur with others here when I say you don’t have enough budgeted for this project, and here is the reason why;

You have 6 Mac’s using Final Cut, and they want to edit video in a shared environment. To do this the right and correct way, to keep yourself from having problems later, you need to understand what it takes to make this happen in an environment where you will not have dropped frames etc.

If you truly are working in just DV format’s and have no intentions of ever moving out of that, you can probably piece meal something together that will work for you. The chances of it failing in the future are high though. This isn’t because of you, but mostly because of the hardware you’ll choose to make your solution.

Here’s what I would envision in order to make this work correctly (this is coming from someone these forum people know, who can vouch for this from different points of views so this should be helpful to you)

Small Tree does what you are trying to accomplish. To boot, Small Tree sells an entire solution that they can manage end to end, remotely, so you don’t have to worry about this.

Storage – You should be budgeting for something that will stand up to what you need. In an DV editing environment, bandwidth certainly is a factor. Once you go beyond a DV environment, the requirements for “real time” editing in place start to change and you have to select storage that is actually capable of holding up. (Budget here should be 5-10K)

Server – All of your editing is going to change from working locally, to sitting everyone on a single (or multiple) server/s to accomplish the editing projects. This needs to have 1-2Gb of memory for every client connected to it. It also needs to have about 1Ghz of processor for every 1 gigabit port on the server. (Budget here should be 3-5K)

Managed Gigabit Switch – Managed Gigabit Switches have hardware ASICS inside with fans and are capable of supporting a lot of traffic with things like flow control (very important) and other features. This needs to be a Managed Gigabit Switch that will support Dynamic Link Aggregation. MACOSX Only supports Dynamic Link Aggregation. This also needs to have packet buffer memory of at least 8MB per port (this is very important for video editing). (Budget for this should be 1-2K) (vary by vendor / brand)’

There are also some other additional items that should be discussed about your environment because it should be looked at as a whole, not just, one side of what you are doing. The network needs to be configured to support your needs now, make sure you don’t bottleneck when you add traffic, and do other things like scale easily too.

The old saying is “you get what you pay for.” I will let you know that you should be looking of a budget larger then you are. It would not be unreasonable to plan on spending 9-15K to get into a solution that will work for you which includes all these items I’ve discussed, along with support so you don’t have to manage the solution before, after, or during the work flow.

If you’d like to discuss any of this, I can certainly help you. You can contact me by phone.

Matt G (Small Tree)
651-209-6501 x 1

[Matt Geier]

Eric,

I’m certainly not trying to start a conversation in the public forum that allows people to gather the wrong impression. People just need to be weary, when they are trying to set themselves up for Video Editing.

What I’m saying is that if a solution is not implemented and configured the RIGHT way, it will eventually fail, even if it’s working today. Have you ever heard of the “green light syndrome?” The idea is that if the lights are all on, my thing is working. When the lights do something other then stay green, I realize only then do I have problems.

Just try to remember that Small Tree is a bunch of Hardware Engineers that have a ton of engineering experience with fast I/O. They have engineered (or helped with…) some of the World Fastests and Largest Super Computers working at SGI and CRAY. Me Personally, I understand this because I sold to the Federal Government when I was at SGI, assisting with major installs for things like Satellite Imagery, Scientific Flow Analysys, and other types of “REAL TIME” deployments. Real Time super computers and fast fast I/O performance is something we understand very very well together. That’s where we focus our solutions.

My point here really is to say that Small Tree understands that setting up a Real Time video environment is not trivial and there are several factors to take into consideration and planning when doing so. It’s not trivial, and people should realize this and turn to people who have done this and understand what it takes to make it right. We have tested products and we have designed our own solution with the needed components to make a real time environment fast, reliable, scalable, and more productive!

[Matt Geier]

Oren,

I read your post, and if you like, I can talk to you about this if you get time.

Bandwidth requirements are certainly going to need reviewed to determine what your network should look like.

The other item that needs addressed is your plan to move forward and if you are intending to edit ProRes any time in the future.

Without rambling here, you want to be careful about the solutions you look at because the majority of them will not spec this all properly because you have to consider, bandwidth, disk latency, and also other components like switches and servers that will properly work in the configuration.

The reality from my perspective is that you are doing the same thing a lot of people are doing in your business. You can likely run an entire network with Gigabit connections and a Managed Switch / Server / Storage combination to accomplish your Centralized Shared Storage requirement, while introducing “real time” editing over the network wires.

Give me a call if you like and we can discuss how you get into a solution like this for less money then you might be expecting!

Matt G
Small Tree
mattg@small-tree.com
651-389-9959

[Matt Geier]

Ian,

Bob is right.

What’s the problem you are trying to solve by thinking that you need to buy this software?

Perhaps Bob, or myself, or someone else here, can lend some alternative direction for you to look into that may be more cost productive.

Thanks,

Matt G

[Matt Geier]

Hi Eric,

I thought I would chime in on this one, just because I want you to be careful.

If you have plans to edit Pro Res from these boxes you are looking at, please please please, make sure you know they will do it without a doubt. There are a few reasons I suggest making sure, which really means, making a phone call to these vendors, and asking specific questions about the performance of the SAS Card, Drives, and Bandwidth capabilities.

The RAID cards and storage should be specs that meet the specifications that final cut requires for real time performance. There really are no other products on the market that do.  (esata, other sata raid controllers and other SAS raids.. we’ve tried almost all of them at this point).  Many of them go fast, however the fastest once tend to have the worst real time characteristics and even 2 or 3 streams of low bandwidth video tip them over.

In terms of comparison, use a Small Tree RAID solution. The latency on the Storage RAIDs are low enough that they will be able to support 6 x Streams of ProRes422HQ minimally. The latency will be very key here using ProRes422HQ streams, and again, you’ll be hard pressed to find anything out the box that works well to do this right!

Still, I would encourage you to make the phone calls to these vendors and see what details they can give you about latency performance of the RAIDs and also performance of the SAS Card (Specifically what size I/O’s it capable of outputting at once) – this is very important, because this will really determine what Video the card is really capable of editing in “real time.””

Do post us back with your research results, I’m sure we are all wondering now….

Just my $.02

Matt

Matt G.

[Matt Geier]

Simon,

Yes you should use Enterprise class drives in your RAIDS. Mostly because of the disk vibrations. Enterprise class drives vibrate less then normal desktop type of drives do. Also, there’s the factor of latency and how fast it would take them to spin.

Just my $0.02

Matt G

[Matt Geier]

Sergie,

After reading your post, and then Bob’s post, I think there’s confusion here.

If you are trying to do HD Uncompressed over GigE that will not work.

However, I THINK what you are trying to do is HDV and that is only about 3-5MB/sec requirement and yes, it will work over Gb Ethernet.

There are some things that I would suggest, such as implementing a Shared Storage environment by putting in a Mac Pro or an Xserve, then Install a Multi Port Ethernet card from Small Tree.

You don’t really need Link Aggregation in this case, because what you can do is connect each client system directly to a port on the server using the multi port card.

After you do that, you’d set up Jumbo Frames and dedicate your FCP editing to that portion of the network.

Let me know if you’d like to discuss this in detail.

Thanks,

Matt G
Small Tree
651-209-6509 x 1

Matt G.

[Matt Geier]

Morgan,

Bob is right! – Software like Tiger Technologies will only really shine in environments that are big and complex, like clusters etc.

What you are trying to implement is something that Small Tree is known World Wide for and have Post Houses and Video Editors doing successfully.

Small Tree would suggest taking your storage and putting it onto an XServe with enough memory to sustain your client access and Final Cut editing needs. (I assume you’re using Final Cut??)

Installing a Small Tree network card that you can use to Link Aggregate ports together, creating a bandwidth pipe to be used for Jumbo Frame network which will support and house your video editors.

Implement a Managed Switch between your Server and Clients to support your Link Aggregate. (Just like Bob said)

If you are looking for an end to end solution that you would like to have Supported by Small Tree, we can pre-configure the needed items so that you can unbox, so some simple set up with our Support, and get to working!

Let me know if you’d like to discuss this further. Feel free to email or call …

Matt G
Small Tree
651-209-6509 x 1

Matt G.