[Matt Geier]

Marc,

What do you want to know ? 🙂

It’s Ethernet Storage. If you’re familiar with any AoE storage, this is no different really. The one exception would be that Small Tree writes our own AoE driver for the RAID Vendor that we offer.

Configurations span from 4TB (entry) to 24TB. The nice thing about it and perhaps one of the biggest compelling pieces is the ability to just keep adding more to the network as your requirements increase. Simply because it’s Ethernet, as long as you have something to keep connecting to, you’re in good shape.

The other thing of note would be that we can connect them with either 10Gb or Multiport Gigabit (link agg) – The 4TB RAID will go 200MB/sec. There are two Ethernet Ports on that unit. The bigger RAIDS will do 500MB/sec.

As with any storage we simply suggest putting it on your server, and then making sure the server is adequate enough to support the editors, in addition to having the needed bandwidth.

From a $$ standpoint the best comparison I can give here is as follows… (rough numbers of course)

AoE Storage – $1000.00 per TB
compared to
FibreChannel Storage – $1500.00 per TB

What more do you want to know?

🙂

[Matt Geier]

Marc,

I can lend some insight here as to the problem you’ve mentioned.

There are only two manufactures of a 10Gb card that are going to be able to be supported on a Mac (today) – Mryinet (Their own Mac Support), and Intel (Mac Support by Small Tree Communications).

Here are some data numbers around each of the cards —

The Mryinet 10Gb PCI Express card performs at a 9.5 Gbps.

The Intel 10Gb PCI Express Card performs at a 9.9 Gbps.

When we install either of these cards into a Mac, we can only get them to output 180MB / sec. Why? It’s because of AFP limiting the traffic. The limitation is not with the card. The limitation is with AFP. Only Apple can make that better.

It could be said that if you installed these into a Mac that was running another protocol that was not AFP, it *might* go faster then 180MB/sec – it’s hard to say without actually testing it, and a lot of that testing never gets publicized or communicated back to the right places, even so.

Some additional notes:

If you are thinking about running 10Gb at your client, I would inquire as to what you’re doing that you need the bandwidth for? If you’re doing Uncompressed HD formats, 8bit *might* work on Gigabit since AFP lets us get 180MB out and an 8bit stream needs about 127MB of bandwidth…

Given that, I would simply propose that you keep using Gigabit on your clients, and put them into a Managed Switch. Then you either use a multi-port Gigabit Card in your server, OR, a 10Gb card in your server. – Either of these implementations under AFP will support up to 600MB/sec of bandwidth.

You can successfully use a compression, such as ProRes 422, which I hear is very good, and that will be able to be done on regular Ethernet. (35MB/sec)

Hopefully that helps.

Matt G.

[Matt Geier]

Francis,

I admit I had been watching this thread and now I cannot help myself but to share my opinion. I thought I might share a few important points. As a matter of fact I had a conversation with someone else earlier in the week that asked me this very question. So these thoughts are fresh.

From the research I’ve done the Drobo is a good Direct Attached Storage (DAS) device.

Here’s the Transfer Rates direct from their spec off the website –

Max Sustained Transfer Rate
FireWire 800: Up to 52MB/s reads and 34MB/s writes
USB 2.0: Up to 30MB/s reads and 24MB/s writes

One note to make is that this is with no IO’s (Input Output) going on. This device is good if you only have just one computer, maybe two. If you have plans for anything else beyond that in the long term the transfer rates will not stand up in a “Shared” environment. Needless to say a Video Editing Shared Environment.

So, with regard to Final Cut, if you do DV25 and DV50 and you do very little of it, one of these Drobo’s, could effectively support a couple editing clients at best.

You have to know the math about what this looks like in the network to really know how your going to be able to plan long term for growth and additional editing suites.

Just know that your Ethernet Ports will go 100MB/sec. Don’t overlook the idea of taking advantage of something additional you already have on your computer. Ethernet Storage is the next best thing to this Drobo that I could suggest. Ethernet Storage is scalable short term and long term. It is going to be more expensive, but that is so for anything beyond where the Drobo is. Take a look at Ethernet Storage There are some Vendors listed in there that would be helpful for you to know, for now, or in the future when you need this later.

I think I’ve talked enough now and given you plenty to think about. Let us know if any of this was helpful at all.

Thanks,

Matt G

[Matt Geier]

Michael,

Hi –

I wanted to give you my two cents also. With regard to DVCPROHD over a Gigabit port, your talking about pushing anywhere from 12 – 20 MBytes / sec for a single stream, depending on what compression you’re using etc. Doing the math, you could fit 3 streams over a single gigabit port using Jumbo Frames on your clients, maybe four if you’re lucky, but that’s pushing it.

With that said, a lot of it comes down to how fast the storage is going to read and write off the disks. I’m not personally familiar with the product you mentioned to figure that out, so maybe someone else can chime in.

My main point is, regardless of your storage, you want to match your network bandwidth that your storage reads and writes to it’s potential, because ultimately, that will be how fast you can go on the network over gigabit. You want to make sure you use the storage to it’s fullest capabilities, otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table for whatever you decide to buy.

Matt Geier