HS San

	Re: HS San by Bob Zelin on Apr 23, 2009 at 3:34:14 pm without being "too insulting", let me just say this. If your "network experts" don't understand the concept of link aggregation, and how to trunk ports together on your network switch, and get MAC's and PC's to talk to each other, you will fail. End of story. You said that you can't afford fibre. This means that you are going to use iSCSI or just ethernet. Ask your experts if they understand what AFP and SMB are. Ask them if they have had success with SMB from MAC's on PC networks. If they look at you with blank stares, you will fail. If they can't instantly answer what link aggregation is for, and that they can do it (and have been doing it to improve network speed in the past), then you will fail. there are companies on these forums that do video shared storage systems for a living. All the IT network people that network computers for data (like student database information) can't understand why this is any different than sharing video. Well - I guess you will find out soon enough. Bob Zelin Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Bob Zelin on Apr 24, 2009 at 2:38:39 am Mr. Miller - building a shared storage enviornment for a video facility is the most technically complicated task of all tasks in the professional video business. This is like trying to get you to understand Forier Transforms, or Advanced Chemistry by someone responding to you on a web forum. These questions cannot be answered by a silly article that I wrote, or some two paragraph answers that you get on these forums. The best solution for you is to look into a turnkey solution from Apace Systems, or EditShare, etc. where a video dealer will come in and make things work. This is what most schools do. If you want to be the big hero, and show your department head that you can accomplish this for zero money, and build a complex shared video file sharing system for no money, you will fail. I have dealt with countless IT departments -most of who know dramatically more about computers and networking than I do - and let me assure you, they just don't grasp the concept of the bandwidth required to play back video streams across a network, with SUSTAINED PLAYBACK (no dropped frames). Let me propose a quick test for you. Take two MAC's. Plug in an ethernet cable between them. Turn file sharing on, on MAC # 1. Now, playback the video media from MAC 1 using MAC # 2. Look - it works ! OK, so now MAC # 2 is playing back video media on MAC # 1. Open FCP on MAC # 1, and play back the same media. Look - both MAC's crash. Do you know why ? Show this to your IT department. Ask them why this happens. Companies like Apple have entire educational departments for XSAN, just to assist universities in doing this type of task, for classroom enviornments. This process is not easy. It will not be answered in an article. It will not be answered in a user forum. If you don't like these answers -well, that is too bad. You need HELP from a professional that does this for a living, and countless universities have contracts with professsional dealers (both video and computer) that assist the school. You want to be the big hero by showing that you can make this happen, but you will fail. The article that I wrote refers to Tiger Technology MetaLAN, but this is only one part of the equation, and this part is only $295 per FCP client - which is CHEAP. You need a managed switch, you need a server, you need drives, you need a RAID card, you need all of this configured correctly. In the process of figuring out how to do this correctly, I have failed over and over and over again, but kept at it to figure out all the right settings, all the right products, to make this work. It took a long time to figure out - and I had the help of experts. There are countless companies that make wonderful Shared storage systems, at all kinds of prices. If you want a "free" system, you still need the knowlege of the details of how to do this. As I said before when you said that I was INSULTING YOU, if your IT techs can't answer exactly what link aggregation is, and how to configure your network switch, you are simply wasting your time. Bob Zelin Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on Apr 27, 2009 at 7:46:52 am [Chris Miller] "f that fails, well I will search for something cheaper/ free. I did find this free software incase all else fails. It is linux based, would someone mind telling me if they think it would work, I will ahve ALOT of time to tinker with it to make it work. Link: http://www.openfiler.com/" Chris, You're getting terrible advice. You think going with Openfiler is free just because it's free to download???? Think again. iSCSI is no different than fibre channel. It's not network file sharing - it's a real SAN. In other words you can't share a drive with multiple clients unless you have expensive software like Xsan or MetaSAN managing the write permissions. At the very least you'll need to spend $600 per client for MetaSAN. This is far more expensive than MetaLAN (from the same company). That said, it won't work anyways. Openfiler does not work well with GlobalSAN AT ALL. I say that from first hand experience. The least expensive option is using Apple File Sharing using a real Mac as a server, a managed switch, and an IT expert who knows how to tune the TCP settings and the network environment for video editing. This is essentially what Walter and Bob's articles are about. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on Apr 27, 2009 at 11:45:13 pm [Chris Miller] "There may be a change in plans. We found a partial turnkey solution. We may invest in a SATABoy (that is what the company reccomended we use over their other more expensive products) with a few alike things to the previous systems. Anyone here familular with Sata boy?" It's a storage array that the vendor can configure as fibre or iSCSI. There are dozens, if not hundreds of similar products. If it's fibre, it will probably work fine but there's still no guarantee. You'll also need fibre channel cards for every mac, plus a switch. You'll also need the full version of MetaSAN for each client (not the price-reduced iSCSI-only version). This is a very expensive option comparatively. But I'm guessing you want the iSCSI option, in which case you will have serious problems. GlobalSAN is untested on the vast majority of iSCSI target products and will likely either perform poorly or simply not work at all. Chances are it runs Linux or Solaris, so you will have problems. Small Tree sells a Mac iSCSI initiator, but there's no guarantee that will work either unless they've tested it themselves. On top of that, the RAID controller has probably not been tested to run a RAID formatted with the HFS file system. That probably doesn't matter, but it's still an unknown. These things are extremely complex and something simple like that could cause a major problem if nobody's bothered to test it using a Mac client. I don't know the price but I'm sure the Sataboy still costs a few thousand at least. Add a switch and six licenses of MetaSAN to that and you're spending a decent chunk of money for something that is completely untested for Mac clients - let alone video editing. Among the community of customers who run Macs, you'll probably be the only one. Look at the message board on the SNS website. Look how many dozens of iSCSI products people have problems working with Globalsan. And look at the Xsanity forum and see how many problems people have with random fibre switches and other products. For a lot less money you can do a non-SAN AFP file sharing setup like in Walter Biscardi's article using the cheapest Mac Pro as a server. Again, this option is CHEAPER than the Sataboy iSCSI solution. You don't need MetaSAN at all (read Chris Blair's reply). Or use MetaLan, which is a similar solution except that it uses a Windows server instead of a Mac. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on Apr 27, 2009 at 11:13:47 pm [Chris Miller] "I am looking into getting either MetaSAN or MetaLAN. Now I will ask, which one of the two should I use? I got the Hardware setup from Mr. Zelin's article" MetaSAN is not for the hardware in that article. MetaSAN is for fibre or iSCSI. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on Apr 28, 2009 at 5:07:22 am [Chris Miller] "Its managed... Would it work?" Based on the specs, I'd have to say no. You want one that supports 802.3ad LACP Link Aggregation, the only type of trunking supported on the Mac platform. It says trunking, but it doesn't specify if it supports the right kind. So chances are it doesn't. Link Aggregation isn't necessary for smaller setups, but for yours you'll want it. It also doesn't say if it supports jumbo frames, which you need. It probably does support it, but if it doesn't say so then don't risk it. Honestly, Bob made a good point asking if your IT guys knew what Link Aggregation is. You asked if a switch was okay that didn't list either of the crucial features. So you're not really sure what to look for, let alone what it is or how to set it up. My suggestion is to by the switch and necessary ethernet cards from Small Tree Communications. It costs more to buy from them but do it anyways. Then you'll be a customer of theirs and they can help you set it all up to work well for video editing, as they are experts at IT stuff for video editing on the Mac. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Bob Zelin on Apr 28, 2009 at 12:55:54 pm everyone here - especially me, should feel like an idiot. This kid is going to build a high speed san in between math homework?. What forum is this? Are we writing to make ourselves feel important? What school is going to allocate funds solely based on a students opinion - and this opinion is based on a single user forum, and a general overview article that I wrote. Come on. Bob Zelin Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on Apr 29, 2009 at 9:49:49 pm I assumed he was a teacher. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on Apr 29, 2009 at 9:39:32 pm [Chris Blair] "So if you take two 1GB ethernet cards and aggregate them, they operate as if they're one 2GB card. Link 4 cards and you effectively double the bandwidth capability to 4GB." That's actually not entirely true. The max bandwidth is still 1gbps per session regardless of how many ports you trunk. On the server end it's great because each client has an equal portion of the combined bandwidth (up to 1gb). But no single client can transfer a single stream faster than 1gb, even if you trunk 2 or 4 ports on the client end. An alternative to Link Aggregation is to simply assign each port on the server it's own subnet. So each client is masked off from one another. This only works if you have equal or less clients than you have ports on the server. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on Apr 30, 2009 at 3:43:58 am [Chris Blair] "I think I pointed that out in my post when I said you couldn't expect those line speeds and that it was a simplistic explanation of how things work. Naturally if you're using a connection with a maximum throughput of 1GB, you'll never exceed that. I was just trying to explain the theory behind link aggregation...that combining cards can give you a significant boost in speed." You did point out that you don't get the full 1gb. I was just clarifying something. If you combine ports on the client end as well as the server, you still only get 1gbps per stream, contrary to what common sense might dictate. Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index

	Re: HS San by Sean ONeil on May 1, 2009 at 1:07:06 am Chris, I admire what you're doing because I've been there and done that. But you're not listening. I'll repeat what Chris Blair and I have both said. You cannot share an iSCSI "server" (it's actually not a server, it's called a "target") without having a copy of MetaSAN on each Macintosh computer. MetaSAN is expensive, more than what you sound like you want to pay. It requires activation, so you can't pirate it and use one license on all machines (not accusing you of considering that, I'm just saying). It also requires an additional ethernet port in all your Macs, and an additional switch dedicated for MetaSAN's metadata traffic. [Chris Miller] "The only issue I see now is in the iSCSI access software for the MAcs themselves. Ideas? Does Apple make any free add-ons for it, like Microsoft does for Windows XP/Vista." No Apple does not provide one. SNS does, it's called GlobalSAN, as I though you already figured out. And I'll say it again, it doesn't work with Openfiler. On top of that I can tell you it doesn't work with FreeNAS iSCSI either. You'll spend hours setting it up, you might be able to connect to the iSCSI target. Then when you format the disk as HFS it will crash both machines. Or if it does work the performance will be horrific (like 5MB/s). These are the kinds of issues you can look forward to. Look at the SNS fourms. ATTO also makes an iSCSI imitator for the Mac, but it's not free. And who knows what that one works with. [Chris Miller] "The guys at small tre also reccomended using Open-E as a server software. IT is not as pricey as others and may be able to get an educational discount." Last I checked GlobalSAN does actually work with Open-E. But you're still making a giant mistake going down this path, and again you seem completely oblivious to the fact that you need MetaSAN to run any shared iSCSI system. Again, I've been down this path so i understand what you're going though. The difference is that I did this in 2005-6 using old PCI-X equipment that was otherwise collecting dust. It's 2009 and there are now cheaper and/or better options. A DIY iSCSI setup is the absolute last thing I would tell anyone to do. If it has to be DIY, then just turn a Mac w/ a CalDigit card into an AFP file server. I would even recommend DIY fibre channel before suggesting DIY iSCSI (Open-E allows fibre channel target, and it actually does work). iSCSI is a mess with standards nobody adheres to. And it's totally unreliable in any Macintosh environment unless you are using a turnkey solution from people who specialize in video post production. And when you add up all the costs, it's barely cheaper than fibre channel (which is vastly better). Sean Respond to this post   •   Return to posts index