| Quantum StorNext is a pretty widely used solution in M&E, and will work with iSCSI LUNs. When I've used it in the past it typically wanted 2 standalone metadata controller servers to implement failover.
From your use of SMB I'm guessing you are Windows based? If you are running Server 2016 on those machines you could consider setting up Storage Spaces Direct, which lets you aggregate local storage into a large, shared storage pool, although at this point it might be more of a science experiment than anything else (the use case for Storage Spaces Direct tends to be Hyper-V VM storage for virtualization clusters rather than M&E applications). Still could be intriguing:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-direct-overview
Finally, these days SMB 3.1 performance over a high performance network is quite high. You said "I built an iSCSI SAN. It has two 60TB hardware RAID6 pools, which we've divided up into 12-16TB iSCSI targets." What kind of storage shares those LUNs over iSCSI? Is it a Windows box, Linux, or dedicated iSCSI arrays? If it's a Linux or Windows server, you could consider creating a local filesystem and sharing it via SMB to your 3 clients, you may in fact have enough performance for your needs without the complication of a clustered filesystem, or having to worry about an additional software layer for your storage.
JF
On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 9:35 AM, Trevor Murray <trevor@criterion.com> wrote:
Ive been using TigerStore for several years now (with iSCSI/Infiniband SRP storage) and its been rock solid. Support has been quick and helpful when Ive had concerns, and they've even provided custom builds of the client software when one workstation was having some unique issues.
The only frustrating point is that the TigerStore server and all the clients have to be on the same version of the software. As a result I do have to schedule downtime to update the server and every single client when I need support for a newer OS, linux kernel, etc. It doesnt happen often, but it would be great to only have to update the affected client in the case of OS compatibility. I dont have too much experience with other MDCs, however, and for all I know this might be the norm.
The storage-based pricing structure is relatively new (announced at NAB last year I think?) - pricing used to be based on the number of SAN clients. Were still on the old client-based licensing structure, but will be moving to the new storage-based one eventually. In my situation, the latter makes more sense as Im adding workstations more often than expanding the storage. Sometimes I set up test stations and dont want to buy another license just for SAN access.
On March 27, 2018 at 10:46:45, julian firminger (justdigitalfilm@gmail.com) wrote:
An inexpensive stable and reliable
software only solution is indeed a pipe dream. You should
care *a lot* about where and on what the MDCs run. If you
lose your MDCs you lose your whole operation and all the data....
SMB does not need to be a performance bottleneck with
3.1. I've seen pretty healthy workloads on
40G.
I cant speak to those you have mentioned but I would worry
deeply about putting a "cheap" overlay on top of your infra.
It'd be a bit like putting a cheap roll cage in a 100K sports car
you want to race on weekends. have you considered GPFS (cue
others on this list)
Julian
Firminger
Senior Systems Administrator
United Broadcast Facilities
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 4:29 PM, Perry
Paolantonio <content@studiosysadmins.com> wrote:
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We're a small studio (3 users, about a dozen workstations), that
specializes in film scanning, color correction, restoration. We're
dealing with very big files - a combo of large image sequences and
large containerized files (ProRes). We have a 40GbE network that
has been up and running for a few years, and all machines are
connected over SMB. Each workstation has a large local RAID, so
we've been able to limp along by reading stuff over the network
from one shared local RAID, doing something with the files, and
writing to that workstation's local RAID. But this has obvious
limitations, so over the past few months, I built an iSCSI SAN. It
has two 60TB hardware RAID6 pools, which we've divided up into
12-16TB iSCSI targets.
The hardware has been up and running for a while, but we're
using it the way we were local drives: A workstation will mount an
iSCSI target, and then use SMB to share that with others that may
need occasional access. This kind of works, but what I want is to
have multiple machines with read access on a target that one
machine has read/write access on. SMB is a performance bottleneck,
so I want to be able to connect directly over iSCSI.
So I am looking for a metadata controller for iSCSI on a 40GbE
network, software only, that will work with our existing hardware
installation. So far I've found a grand total of two options:
TigerStore (used to be MetaSAN) - about $1000/server but price is
tied to storage size. More space = more costs, so we're probably
looking at $2k to start, $3k by the end of the year. This seems an
arbitrary way to price, and it rubs me the wrong way. Also, I
haven't heard from them after trying to contact them a few weeks
ago with questions, so that's not encouraging.
iSANmp (Storage Network Solutions) - not a metadata server, but a
peer-to-peer system that requires the software be installed on each
workstation, at $200/seat. Probably in the $2500 range to set this
up. Also, each machine uses a USB dongle, so adding new seats is a
little bit of a pain.
*all* I want is a software solution. I don't need a turnkey system.
We can build the server or use one of our existing servers for this
purpose.I dont care if the metadata controller is running on
Windows or Linux, but we do need support on the workstation side
for Mac, Windows 7 and Linux (CentOS 6 and 7).
Is an inexpensive software-only solution to this problem a pipe
dream? I'm hoping to make a list of stuff to look at at NAB so any
suggestions are welcome.
Thanks!
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Thanks. That's very helpful. I liked what I saw at NAB last year when I first started to spec out this system, and in the back of my head, it's been between this and iSANmp. Just hoping there may be some other options to consider.