StudioSysAdmins - Forum Post: 3810

Forums >> StudioSysAdmins Lists (via e-mail) >> discuss@studiosysadmins.com

Temporary Post House Build
Posted by: Andy Shepherd Date: 03-05-2010, 13:05:PM	Hey, So building on the lines of my previous question a few minutes ago, we're doing this all as part of an on-set edit, which will require us to essentially build a temporary post house on set. We have the following requirements: - Two stages each with: - Ingest via HD-SDI off back of cameras to ProRes HQ (25MB/s) - Simultaneous record of ProRes to local disk + shared storage - Shared storage: - redundancy for DR (ideally up to the minute sync) - guaranteed bandwidth for all clients (200MB/s) - preferred connectivity to stages (ingest) via fibre - preferred connectivity to edits via ethernet - a minimum of 11TB usable space - Edit machines (6): - 27" iMacs. i7. 8GB RAM, fully loaded. We've looked at EVOSAN (http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12) and it's totally unsuitable because of volume level locking. It's going back in the box as we speak. Any other ideas? We don't really want to go for an Xsan setup (we have enough of that at the office already!), and our limit is going to be around ?30k all in (with the potential to push another ?6k if really needed). Either purchase or rental obviously. Thanks! :) Andy
Re: Temporary Post House Build
Posted by: JJ Franzen Date: 03-05-2010, 13:10:PM	I can already tell you that the odds of you getting guaranteed ethernet b/w of 200 MB/s into an iMac is pretty much impossible. So, unless you mean 200 MB/s spread across all clients, you'll have to re-evaluate your edit stations. I wouldn't want to use anything less then 4G fiber to the edit station if you want that kind of guaranteed b/w and you can't put a fiber card into an iMac. And ?30K for the whole affair? Yikes. Sounds like you have a real challenge ahead of ya Lad. Wish I could offer more advice then this, but my small studio doesn't hasn't these kinds of challenges. Yet... Good luck, J^2 On Mar 5, 2010, at 10:01 AM, Andy Shepherd wrote: Hey, So building on the lines of my previous question a few minutes ago, we're doing this all as part of an on-set edit, which will require us to essentially build a temporary post house on set. We have the following requirements: - Two stages each with: - Ingest via HD-SDI off back of cameras to ProRes HQ (25MB/s) - Simultaneous record of ProRes to local disk + shared storage - Shared storage: - redundancy for DR (ideally up to the minute sync) - guaranteed bandwidth for all clients (200MB/s) - preferred connectivity to stages (ingest) via fibre - preferred connectivity to edits via ethernet - a minimum of 11TB usable space - Edit machines (6): - 27" iMacs. i7. 8GB RAM, fully loaded. We've looked at EVOSAN (http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12) and it's totally unsuitable because of volume level locking. It's going back in the box as we speak. Any other ideas? We don't really want to go for an Xsan setup (we have enough of that at the office already!), and our limit is going to be around ?30k all in (with the potential to push another ?6k if really needed). Either purchase or rental obviously. Thanks! :) Andy _ StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss
Re: Temporary Post House Build
Posted by: Andy Shepherd Date: 03-05-2010, 17:00:PM	Yeah, brainfarts earlier have made me leave out one or two valid points! 25MB/s to each station is what we're looking at. ?30k is what we're aiming for really, but there's a ?10k buffer. I'd like to keep it as low as possible, but I think it may well spiral to that full budget + buffer! The thing that's worrying me for one idea would be AFP's limitations - if we went for such a solution below, would AFP's lovely inefficiencies rear their ugly heads? (Luckily we have a partner who can almost replicate, and stress test this setup) Ethernet attached: - 2x Mac Pros on set - 6x iMacs in edit - 1x Mac Pro serving shared storage (SS) - HP Procurve (or similar) switch feeding to multiple (possib Small Tree) aggregated ethernet ports on (SS) Mac Pro Fibre - Infortrend 16 bay chassis hooked up to (SS) Mac Pro On top of that there'll be some hopefully more coherent brainstorming with myself tomorrow from the sofa. I'm starting to wish we could just go with fibre+Xsan rolls eyes Thanks, Andy On 5 Mar 2010, at 18:09, J. J. Franzen wrote: I can already tell you that the odds of you getting guaranteed ethernet b/w of 200 MB/s into an iMac is pretty much impossible. So, unless you mean 200 MB/s spread across all clients, you'll have to re-evaluate your edit stations. I wouldn't want to use anything less then 4G fiber to the edit station if you want that kind of guaranteed b/w and you can't put a fiber card into an iMac. And ?30K for the whole affair? Yikes. Sounds like you have a real challenge ahead of ya Lad. Wish I could offer more advice then this, but my small studio doesn't hasn't these kinds of challenges. Yet... Good luck, J^2 On Mar 5, 2010, at 10:01 AM, Andy Shepherd wrote: Hey, So building on the lines of my previous question a few minutes ago, we're doing this all as part of an on-set edit, which will require us to essentially build a temporary post house on set. We have the following requirements: - Two stages each with: - Ingest via HD-SDI off back of cameras to ProRes HQ (25MB/s) - Simultaneous record of ProRes to local disk + shared storage - Shared storage: - redundancy for DR (ideally up to the minute sync) - guaranteed bandwidth for all clients (200MB/s) - preferred connectivity to stages (ingest) via fibre - preferred connectivity to edits via ethernet - a minimum of 11TB usable space - Edit machines (6): - 27" iMacs. i7. 8GB RAM, fully loaded. We've looked at EVOSAN (http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12) and it's totally unsuitable because of volume level locking. It's going back in the box as we speak. Any other ideas? We don't really want to go for an Xsan setup (we have enough of that at the office already!), and our limit is going to be around ?30k all in (with the potential to push another ?6k if really needed). Either purchase or rental obviously. Thanks! :) Andy _ StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss _ StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss
Re: Temporary Post House Build
Posted by: Gord Breckenridge Date: 03-05-2010, 18:55:PM	I'm starting to wish we could just go with fibre+Xsan rolls eyes This would be more convenient but would put you well over your ?30k buffer.. Will you be running Server on the Mac Pro that is serving shared storage? Client has file sharing, but it's not as robust as server. On 2010-03-05, at 2:00 PM, Andy Shepherd wrote: Yeah, brainfarts earlier have made me leave out one or two valid points! 25MB/s to each station is what we're looking at. ?30k is what we're aiming for really, but there's a ?10k buffer. I'd like to keep it as low as possible, but I think it may well spiral to that full budget + buffer! The thing that's worrying me for one idea would be AFP's limitations - if we went for such a solution below, would AFP's lovely inefficiencies rear their ugly heads? (Luckily we have a partner who can almost replicate, and stress test this setup) Ethernet attached: - 2x Mac Pros on set - 6x iMacs in edit - 1x Mac Pro serving shared storage (SS) - HP Procurve (or similar) switch feeding to multiple (possib Small Tree) aggregated ethernet ports on (SS) Mac Pro Fibre - Infortrend 16 bay chassis hooked up to (SS) Mac Pro On top of that there'll be some hopefully more coherent brainstorming with myself tomorrow from the sofa. I'm starting to wish we could just go with fibre+Xsan rolls eyes Thanks, Andy On 5 Mar 2010, at 18:09, J. J. Franzen wrote: I can already tell you that the odds of you getting guaranteed ethernet b/w of 200 MB/s into an iMac is pretty much impossible. So, unless you mean 200 MB/s spread across all clients, you'll have to re-evaluate your edit stations. I wouldn't want to use anything less then 4G fiber to the edit station if you want that kind of guaranteed b/w and you can't put a fiber card into an iMac. And ?30K for the whole affair? Yikes. Sounds like you have a real challenge ahead of ya Lad. Wish I could offer more advice then this, but my small studio doesn't hasn't these kinds of challenges. Yet... Good luck, J^2 On Mar 5, 2010, at 10:01 AM, Andy Shepherd wrote: Hey, So building on the lines of my previous question a few minutes ago, we're doing this all as part of an on-set edit, which will require us to essentially build a temporary post house on set. We have the following requirements: - Two stages each with: - Ingest via HD-SDI off back of cameras to ProRes HQ (25MB/s) - Simultaneous record of ProRes to local disk + shared storage - Shared storage: - redundancy for DR (ideally up to the minute sync) - guaranteed bandwidth for all clients (200MB/s) - preferred connectivity to stages (ingest) via fibre - preferred connectivity to edits via ethernet - a minimum of 11TB usable space - Edit machines (6): - 27" iMacs. i7. 8GB RAM, fully loaded. We've looked at EVOSAN (http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=12) and it's totally unsuitable because of volume level locking. It's going back in the box as we speak. Any other ideas? We don't really want to go for an Xsan setup (we have enough of that at the office already!), and our limit is going to be around ?30k all in (with the potential to push another ?6k if really needed). Either purchase or rental obviously. Thanks! :) Andy _ StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss _ StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss _ StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss
Re: Temporary Post House Build
Posted by: JJ Franzen Date: 03-05-2010, 19:20:PM	On Mar 5, 2010, at 3:54 PM, Gordon Breckenridge wrote: Will you be running Server on the Mac Pro that is serving shared storage? Client has file sharing, but it's not as robust as server. I second this. You really want to make sure you are using SL Server to do the re-share, and also, DO NOT USE AFP. Period. Ever. I know I am prejudiced, and AFP may have advantages over NFS that I am not aware of, but it has been my experience that you will get much better performance and reliability via NFS. I can't recommend NFS instead of AFP strongly enough for a workflow like you are describing. J^2
Re: Temporary Post House Build
Posted by: Gord Breckenridge Date: 03-05-2010, 19:30:PM	i second this, I am using NFS over a bonded pair of ethernets to host user homes from an xserve, and it works great. Much faster and more reliable then AFP ever was. And on OSX server setting up shares as NFS mounts is super easy. On 2010-03-05, at 4:18 PM, J. J. Franzen wrote: On Mar 5, 2010, at 3:54 PM, Gordon Breckenridge wrote: Will you be running Server on the Mac Pro that is serving shared storage? Client has file sharing, but it's not as robust as server. I second this. You really want to make sure you are using SL Server to do the re-share, and also, DO NOT USE AFP. Period. Ever. I know I am prejudiced, and AFP may have advantages over NFS that I am not aware of, but it has been my experience that you will get much better performance and reliability via NFS. I can't recommend NFS instead of AFP strongly enough for a workflow like you are describing. J^2 _ StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss
Re: Temporary Post House Build
Posted by: Jean-Francois Panisset Date: 03-10-2010, 01:25:AM	I haven't tried this on OS X so I don't know how easy it is to make it work, but something to keep in mind with bonded GigE setups is that it is generally difficult/not possible to get greater than a single GigE link speed for a single TCP transfer. So bonded links make sense to a server which would be serving out multiple connections at the same time, but usually doesn't make sense on the client side if that client is reading a single "stream" at a time. Since the original poster is looking for 25MB/sec/client, that shouldn't be a problem on the client side though. JF On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Gordon Breckenridge gord@anthemfx.com wrote: > i second this, I am using NFS over a bonded pair of ethernets to host user > homes from an xserve, and it works great. > Much faster and more reliable then AFP ever was. ?And on OSX server setting > up shares as NFS mounts is super easy. > > On 2010-03-05, at 4:18 PM, J. J. Franzen wrote: > > On Mar 5, 2010, at 3:54 PM, Gordon Breckenridge wrote: > > Will you be running Server on the Mac Pro that is serving shared storage? > Client has file sharing, but it's not as robust as server. > > I second this. ?You really want to make sure you are using SL Server to do > the re-share, and also, DO NOT USE AFP. ?Period. ?Ever. ?I know I am > prejudiced, and AFP may have advantages over NFS that I am not aware of, but > it has been my experience that you will get much better performance and > reliability via NFS. ?I can't recommend NFS instead of AFP strongly enough > for a workflow like you are describing. > J^2 > __ > StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list > StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com > http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss > > > __ > StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list > StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com > http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss > > StudioSysAdmins-Discuss mailing list StudioSysAdmins-Discuss@mailman.studiosysadmins.com http://mailman.studiosysadmins.com/mailman/listinfo/studiosysadmins-discuss

A networking group dedicated to improving infrastructure, workflows, and support across the Entertainment Industry.	We can also be followed on:

	Site Search: