[Nathaniel Cooper]

Hey Rick,

Are you planning on getting 3 x enclosures, then sharing them out AFP? Or are you just planning on doing locally attached storage and want the same units for each workstation?

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
949.375.2738

Scuba Dive? https://www.postproductiondivers.com/

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
Facilis
MetaSAN

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Don’t forget:

Promax Systems
Studio Network Solutions

Both with great gigE solutions for video production. Yes, I work for Promax, yes, I used to work for SNS 😉 Both, great solutions.

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Thumbs up!

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Bob, you crack me up, even on a thread talking about the dream of technologies you have IT DOESN’T WORK in all caps. I love it!

Nate Cooper
949.375.2738

[Nathaniel Cooper]

But there’s always strings attached.

Nate Cooper
949.375.2738

[Nathaniel Cooper]

If I’m reading this correct you are only using the Terrablock as a single volume and then hosting it out via AFP. In a sense, you’re using it as fast locally attached storage.

Have you tried having the 5 editing suites mount the ingest volume as read only via Facilis. Then mount the same volume via the AFP share. It’s a good workflow that I’ve seen work. It lets you keep the speed of the SAN for reading files, while giving everyone read/write access to the NAS volume. Yes, it’s the same volume mounted twice, but it can work and will likely increase the speed your getting out of the existing hardware.

That being said, it is a 5 year old system, which tends to be where you start seeing a lot of problems with any storage. So if you have the budget, it’s a good idea to start looking at other options.

If you have a VAR that knows MetaSAN and your using a dedicated metadata controller, you should be good. Personally, I’d go that route, just because it’s more proven in the market right now.

One other option would be to contact Facilis directly. I’m sure if you’re an existing user and are considering making a switch to a competitor they will likley work with you to keep you as a client.

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Apple changed the IRE settings in 10.6, but there shouldn’t be a change from 10.6.4 to 10.6.6. The changes they did to the IRE settings can make a file look ‘darker’ on the screen, however it’s actually more acturate to the video. But, this should have been updated when you moved to any version of 10.6 and should affect non pro apps and pro apps just the same.

Is the video outputting okay after you do your work in FCP? Do you have a reference monitor output? If so is it darker there too?

You may want to try trashing your FCP prefs and rebooting, if you haven’t already.

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions

[Nathaniel Cooper]

First off, that’s great that you’ve had the system up and running 5 years and have been happy with it. Always a good thing to hear.

One thing I would note, I haven’t seen many users out there succesfully running the file locking in Terrablock yet. If someone has seen otherwise, please jump in. From my understanding they tried to release it last year, it fell on it’s face and now the GigE side of File Locking is working, but the fibre side still needs some patches. Again, if anyone has heard different please chime in, the last time I looked into this was 2 months ago.

As far as metasan goes, it can work great and can be a headache. As with most things, it depends on how you set it up. I assume you would use the Xserve as the metadata server. They say you don’t “need” one, but in my experience it is definitely good to have. If you don’t have a dedicated metadata server for metasan, you can easily get into a fixable yet annoying circumstance where you need to do a strange boot up sequence to get your media back online. Other than that, it’s a pretty nice little software for sharing and a great alternative to Xsan.

What exactly doesn’t work for your volume based workflow with CatDV? Have you talked to anyone at Squarebox about it? I’ve seen many users be very happy with CatDV in volume locking SANs.

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Tolis BRU PE is a solid product. Good choice.

Assuming you are wanting to use the Mac Pro tower you made reference to, there is no internal LTO option. There are no LTO drives that will physically fit in Mac towers, unless you are comfortable using a hack saw and don’t mind voided warranties…

I’ve never used/supported any of the SAS cards in your link, but Areca is a good company as far as affordable companies that support Mac go. They make a lot of RAID controllers that I’ve seen work well at a very reasonable price. Based on that, it seems like a good choice.

In regards to Michael’s Cache-A recommendation. If you can spend the extra their entry solution, the Prime Cache-A, is a fantastic unit and light years beyone what your talking about, however the starting price is $7k USD. Based upon your previous post I assume you want to stay in the 2000 to 3000 Euro range, in which case your going down the right path, just find an external LTO.

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Start with something like this:
https://www.promax.com/Solutions/FastMAXMiniSAS/

Attach it locally to a single workstation. Share the volume out using AFP by doing the following:

– Connect both workstations to each other with GigE, this can be direct or through a switch. As long as they can ping each others IP addresses you’re good.
– Set up the storage locally to the more important workstation, we’ll call it Mac1
– On Mac1 go to System Prefs>Sharing
– Select File sharing and turn it on
– Under ‘Shared Folders’ hit the ‘+’ button and select the storage you want to share
– You should see the other worksationk, we’ll call it Mac2 under the users column on the same screen, make sure Mac2 has read/write previledges.

– Go to Mac2
– Open your Harddrive, on the left side under ‘devices’ you should see an option that says ‘shared’ with Mac1 underneath it.
– Select Mac1
– There will now be a ‘connect as’ button, hit that
– Put in your user name and password for Mac2 and hit ‘connect’

You should now be able to read/write to that storage from both workstations. This will not give great performance, if you want to help it a bit you can use jumbo frames and add a GigE HBA. But you should be able to do light DV/HDV work sharing that way. It’s a good solution if you need to keep costs way down.

Then when you are ready, you can take the same storage and dedicate a Mac tower to hosting out the storage. This will allow you to increase performance later.

Nate Cooper
nate.cooper@promax.com
office: 949.861.2725
cell: 949.375.2738

I support:
Xsan
MXFserver
Promax ShareMAX
EVO/SANmp
EditShare
MetaSAN
Small Tree
NAS solutions