[Steve Modica]

The only problem I’ve seen with thunderbolt so far is that it’s 4 lanes rather than 8. So an 8X 10Gb card can’t quite go line rate. it’s still very fast (700MB/sec), but it could be 1GB/sec with a line rate PCIE bus.
I’m sure with Tbolt gen3 it’ll get there.

As for other vendors, one major challenge will be hot plug and unplug.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

When you’re talking shared storage (over AFP, Samba etc), the clients can’t cache much. They have to let the server do that. So data needs to get to the server or from the server in a narrow window to make the frame rate.

Our own testing from a while ago showed you needed about 8 spindles to reliably capture Pro Res HQ. Obviously, things are changing now with front end caching and improved apps. Apple multithreaded their TCP stack as well.

Ultimately, it’s not about the size of the raid, it’s about the number of spindles. However if you get into buying enough spindles, you’ll often find that buying smaller drives to save money doesn’t save you much, so you’ll want to get the larger drives anyhow.

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

If you go to system preferences and “accounts” you can check login items (things that start when you login). I have a feeling an app is holding the device.

The “Force quit” idea is a good one. See what’s listed there.

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

Since Lion gives away Xsan, we’ve been getting a lot of iSCSI and AOE requests. People wants to use it.
Xsan admin is necessary and you’ll have to get one copy of OS X server for that, but otherwise, it’s free.
We’ve been certifying it with our Titanium box (using iSCSI target mode)
Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

My guess is that something has it open. Obviously the hardware works. So there’s probably an app running that’s opening the device preventing the eject (this might show up in /var/log/kernel.log or /var/log/system.log after you attempt an eject).
Check your login items and try turning off things you don’t use.. You can even go into launchctl and stop things that look suspicious.
Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

I’ve just started looking into this. Much of the answer will depend on the devices themselves.
With gigabit, one of the key features is flow control. You have to have some means of applying back pressure to the sender in an efficient manner. To date, Wifi cannot do that (and you’ll notice no one is saying the new wifi can).
One reason wifi can’t do back pressure is that it’s not full duplex. Only one side can talk at a time, and you’ll see things like collisions. I’m not a wifi expert yet, but I know a lot about military radio waveforms. I’m assuming wifi is CSMA like many radios (carrier sense, multiple access). The upshot is you’ll see collisions and things that will make it unsuitable when there are multiple machines around.

So the question becomes: can multiple antennas and multiple streams allow a device to do full duplex and flow control? Can a card be built that has multiple chips that can act as a “multiport” wifi card so it has higher bandwidth than the clients trying to access it? I’m trying to find that out.

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

For the record, we have hundreds of direct customers editing video over NAS and thousands more doing it with our network cards. You can certainly edit video over a NAS. It just requires an understanding of how networking and IO work together.

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

There’s very little online about them. I was able to figure out they don’t have their manual online and they don’t seem to support AFP (based on one of the 3 screen shots that exist). So it’s hard to say much about them.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

I’ve seen some buzz about Space so I spent some time trying to figure them out. From the 3 screen shots that seem to exist in the world, they don’t support AFP (so no netatalk). That means no “ignore permissions” capability which is a headache. NFS and FCP don’t play well, so you’re restricted to Samba.

Perhaps they’ve added AFP since that screen shot or would be willing to post their manual somewhere. As far as I can tell, they don’t post it.

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Steve Modica]

[Bob Zelin] “you are supposed to insult me at this point.”

Your mother was a hamster etc etc…

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications