Networked A/V Storage Recommendations?

[Case]

I did a quick search on the subject of the forum and came up empty handed.

I'm thinking that networked storage in our small studio might be a good investment. However, with the higher data rates required by the high definition formats, I'm sure I would need to step up the speed from the gigabit ethernet LAN we have now. Probably optical.

Is anybody doing this? If so, what do you recommend? Of course, I'd like it to be affordable. Right now we have three edit workstations, two built around Edius NX-Express (pci-e) cards, and RAID 0 SATA storage.

If you can give me some recommendations, or point me in the right direction where I can find good information, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

[UlfLaursen]

Hi

I just got a "ready NAS NV+" from netgear. I have not tried to import directly from the box, but it should be no problem over GB-LAN.

As default the netgear uses something called X-raid. If you buy a box with 2 x 500 GB disks you get 500 GB to use and the other disk as mirror. If you add another 500 GB disk you have 1 TB in total useable, and 1 500 GB disk as security. That way you can expand the volume without having to move data and reformat etc. You can of course configure traditional raid 0,1 or 5 too.

/Ulf

[Case]

Thanks for getting back to me Ulf. Sounds like the Netgear approach is RAID5, in which one drive stores the data needed to rebuild any one other drive in the array that fails. However, I think that RAID5 requires a minimum of three drives (two data, and one for fault tolerance), so I guess that the two-drive arrangement is probably RAID1 mirroring, not RAID5.

What I'm really looking for is network storage that will replace some or all of the onlilne workstation storage. Here at Marsh Video, we have two or more edit stations in simultaneously in use at least half the time. It'd be great to have shared storage for a lot of reasons in our environment.

The problem with ethernet, whether gigabit or slower, is that it is a "contention" system, in which when more than one stream of communications is going on at the same time, collisions take place that reduce the effective throughput. Of course, what this means for wordprocessing is a one second wait for your data instead of a half-second wait, but for video it could mean dropped frames or more.

So, I was wondering what people were doing. Is gigabit ethernet good enough? Is optical better? Is optical really needed? If so, what have others done with practical and affordable optical. Etc.

Thanks for your reply.

[GrassValley_BH]

Hi Case,

RAID3 "dedicates" a drive for parity. RAID5 stripes the parity data across drives. Three drives are minimum for either configuration, so you're right - a two drive configuration will be fault-tolerant, or striped, but not both.

There are some advanced network functions that can ensure full connection bandwidth to each client point-to-point. Link Aggregation can ensure that a server with more than one network interface can send full-speed to a client.

For example, if you have 2 clients and a server connected with one Gigabit network interface each on a Gigabit switch, the server can only spit out 1 Gbps max (theoretical), so if all clients are requesting data, each client will get < 1 Gbps each.

Now if the server has two Gigabit network interfaces that are link-aggregated connected to the switch, and the switch supports link aggregation, then the server has an effective 2 Gbps of outgoing bandwidth, with up to 1 Gbps max to each client (a client can only "accept" one interface-worth of bandwidth from another host).

Of course most standalone RAID boxes don't have link aggregation, so it's a matter of how much bandwidth your switch provides, how much data the RAID box can actually pump out of the Gigabit port (sometimes it's not even near 75% of max), and how much data your client machine's Gigabit interface can accept (again, not always max as it depends how/where the interface is connected on the bus).

[SRsupport]

Brandon,

The one I asked you about for my friend runs smooth.
I am thinking of getting one myself.
It has Link aggregation802.3ad based Failover, Load balancing

http://www.thecus.com/products_spec.php?cid=12&pid=32

[GrassValley_BH]

Yeah that one's quite nice.

[Deeter2]

Steve,
where did you get "Thecus"..(and how much $)
When you click Where to Buy it only shows in the Far East.

[SRsupport]

Newegg.
To save some money buy the empty case and by the drives separate.
You can save up to $400. That is with 5 1tb drives.

Check the compat list on the drives for the unit. :)

If you are uncomfortable adding you own drives and doing your own raid. New egg also has them with drives.



Steve

[Deeter2]

Would appreciate posting YOUR review when you get it going.
Thanks!

[rone]

I built one based around an old system running Naslite with gigabit.

It's okay and you can just about edit HD - but it's got quirks for instance to get best throughput you have to use FTP, not very applicable for editing. The support is lousy considering it's a paid for programme.

My aim was to centralise back-ups but it did allow me to test the theory of network editing for not much cash, especially if you've got an old box somewhere.

I don't run raid either.

[Deeter2]

"Just about"
is like ALMOST winning the lottery...
Interesting...

[Case]

I think I'll just take it a step at a time. I'll use the gigabit ethernet lan. If it works, it works. If not, I'll investigate upgrades.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep an eye on the thread for more.

[rone]

"Just about"
is like ALMOST winning the lottery...
Interesting...

I say that because somethings work really well (for instance DVC-PROHD), but higher bandwidth and effects can strain it.

The throughput on backing up is about 1GB per minute.

[rendercom]

I think I'll just take it a step at a time. I'll use the gigabit ethernet lan. If it works, it works. If not, I'll investigate upgrades.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep an eye on the thread for more.

You can do a little trick. Get a CCNA certified and design your network using a VLAN model. VLANs are networks isolated in LAYER 2 of OSI model instead of LAYER 4 that currently work LANs for. This will give you more bandwith because in VLANs traffic doesn't broadcast all over the switch to deliver a package, because the router should have set a gentle routing table.

Of course you should have at least 4 NICs Ethernet 1Gbps in your server, properly configured with redundancy to increase bandwith and prevent collisions. Doesn't have to get a fiber conectivity.

But that applies for storage only. Meaning that you should have another server for your daily work including operating system, mail, dns, dhcp, networks policies, active directory (if you own a Microsoft network), etc.

Also you could search for a SAN (Storage Area Network) solution.
You could read more about it in http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/pr...p_hdprimer.pdf

Regards.

[STORMDAVE]

I'm using my DVStorm machine as storage via gigabit and it's working fine so far. If you plan to go through a router so you can feed more than 1 computer data, you need to do a RAID 5 or RAID 0 if you don't need parity. I would build a separate machine and install Windows XP Pro on it and use it as a server. NAS' always have a problem of hitting 50MB/sec max as I've been doing some research on them for quite some time. My other choice was an external eSATA RAID5 setup but I needed to share that between 2 computers and it would be hard because I am in an Apple & Microsoft environment and I can't use either file system, so on the Windows side all drives are NTFS and shared. Under OSX those drives are seen as regular SMB networked drives without a file system and on the Windows side (dual boot Mac Pro) those drives are shared with drive letters. Been working like this for over a year, good way of working.