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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Divinci Resolve With Cubix GPU Xpander

So I am about to pull the trigger on an overall editorial system upgrade for 3 FCP edit bays that will include a DaVinci Resolve panel and a cubic expander for our grading suite.

We're moving from direct-attached XRAIDS to a StorNext SAN, with a 20 port 4GB Fiber Channel Switch and 2 Rorke Galaxy HDX3 32 TB RAIDS with SAS dual controllers.

The Resolve room will be run on a new 12 core MacPro with 24G of RAM, and the ATI HD 5770 as the GUI card for Resolve.

We are going with the CUBIX Expander Rackmount 6 which can add six to twelve PCI Express (PCIe) slots to one, two or three computers. This allows us to configure it as three independent Xpander units order to provide flexibility for expanding either our Resolve suite and/or the other bays.

For Resolve we are going to start with two nVidia 4000's, a rocket and Kona 3G card in one of the expansion units, leaving us two open expansion units to either add more 4000's or say, make edit B a Smoke suite, or add a Rocket for dailies using RedCine.

For monitoring we are using a Panasonic V25 54" panel with our existing 14" Ikegami color critical CRTs as a secondary reference (which we may or may not keep).

Our understanding from our system integrator and BMD is that they have tested the Rackmount 6 configuration with two 4000's and we should be able to do 4K real time grading (at least in a half-debayer), but I can't yet get a clear picture on how many nodes etc...

But for color correction, color depth is far more important than resolution, so if we are grading 4K or 5K r3d's at half debayer we should be good.

Backup will be via a Quantum LTO-5 superloader.

Any feedback, comments or suggestions welcome.

Mark
 
My first reaction Mark is why 4Gb FC? 8Gig is the current standard and I wouldn't aim any lower than that. When we began our upgrades a bit over a year ago, 8Gig was very new and difficult to get but I went with an 8Gig switch and, eventually, upgraded the Atto cards to 8Gig as well. Right now our old Xserve RAID is reaching EOL at 2Gb and, whilst our two Infortrends are doing fine with 4Gb backplanes, the XRAID will be replaced with a Sonnet or an Infortrend with 8Gb. The performance out of these units will be perfect for EXR or DPX.

You might also look at your choice of LTO loader, depending on your software. I replaced our Quantum LTO4 with a Quantum LTO5 only to discover that Bru was no longer offering support for Quantum products due to Quantum's "lack of support for the Mac" according to Bru. This meant a rather expensive upgrade to PresSTORE and, even though it's a great product, I'd found Bru was great and a bargain and, quite frankly, changing packages has been a PITA. Careful the domino effect!

BTW, have BMD implemented support for the KONA card as yet? I know they said they were planning on it but I've seen nothing yet - might have missed it though.

Also, you might want to ensure StoreNext will support you with possible future solutions such as Avid ... If you feel there may be a possibility down the road. We went MetaSAN and, although it certainly has it's ... how can I say this - personality traits:-) ... we run it with FCP, Avid and everything else we use.
 
Shane Betts said:
We went MetaSAN and, although it certainly has it's ... how can I say this - personality traits:-) ... we run it with FCP, Avid and everything else we use.
Click to expand...

It certainly has and its got sharp teeth, Im not sure id go there again......
 
Mark Pedersen said:
So I am about to pull the trigger on an overall editorial system upgrade for 3 FCP edit bays that will include a DaVinci Resolve panel and a cubic expander for our grading suite.

We're moving from direct-attached XRAIDS to a StorNext SAN, with a 20 port 4GB Fiber Channel Switch and 2 Rorke Galaxy HDX3 32 TB RAIDS with SAS dual controllers.

The Resolve room will be run on a new 12 core MacPro with 24G of RAM, and the ATI HD 5770 as the GUI card for Resolve.

We are going with the CUBIX Expander Rackmount 6 which can add six to twelve PCI Express (PCIe) slots to one, two or three computers. This allows us to configure it as three independent Xpander units order to provide flexibility for expanding either our Resolve suite and/or the other bays.

For Resolve we are going to start with two nVidia 4000's, a rocket and Kona 3G card in one of the expansion units, leaving us two open expansion units to either add more 4000's or say, make edit B a Smoke suite, or add a Rocket for dailies using RedCine.

For monitoring we are using a Panasonic V25 54" panel with our existing 14" Ikegami color critical CRTs as a secondary reference (which we may or may not keep).

Our understanding from our system integrator and BMD is that they have tested the Rackmount 6 configuration with two 4000's and we should be able to do 4K real time grading (at least in a half-debayer), but I can't yet get a clear picture on how many nodes etc...

But for color correction, color depth is far more important than resolution, so if we are grading 4K or 5K r3d's at half debayer we should be good.

Backup will be via a Quantum LTO-5 superloader.

Any feedback, comments or suggestions welcome.

Mark
Click to expand...

Is the AJA card supported for Resolve yet, so far as I know the guys at Da Vinci say they hope to support it soon....I have a card (works fine) but not in resolve. Note the HDMI only works in DVI mode at the moment but passes for hooking up to the V25. Id also use a BM HD Link to insert the LUT in to the V25. Also if your switching 3D modes on either the HD link or AJA ie Onionskin/mux to SbS or whatever. The V25 (V20 in our case) monitor swicthes to an odd display. So it only really works when the source is locked down properly top SbS. As of today so far as I know few apps support dual link via HDMI so in practice either via AJA and BM are both SbS. But it seems to work OK though.

Also consider catDV for your content management on the SAN. BRU works well with the Tandberg T40 auto loader, apparently reported some where on this board BRU were not supporting Quantum for some reason.

Make sure the SAN has dual metadata controlers and the metadata store is raid 1 and the whole issue has a UPS behind it. We used the D link switches for the metadata LAN, can't recall the model number.

What tech monitoring do you propose ?

Id be interested to know how the Cubix works out and how many node you get, we have Resolve with one 4800 and hope to add Cubix and another 4800 or pair of 4000 cards to it. A Great grading system though.
 
Shane Betts said:
My first reaction Mark is why 4Gb FC? 8Gig is the current standard and I wouldn't aim any lower than that. When we began our upgrades a bit over a year ago, 8Gig was very new and difficult to get but I went with an 8Gig switch and, eventually, upgraded the Atto cards to 8Gig as well. Right now our old Xserve RAID is reaching EOL at 2Gb and, whilst our two Infortrends are doing fine with 4Gb backplanes, the XRAID will be replaced with a Sonnet or an Infortrend with 8Gb. The performance out of these units will be perfect for EXR or DPX.

You might also look at your choice of LTO loader, depending on your software. I replaced our Quantum LTO4 with a Quantum LTO5 only to discover that Bru was no longer offering support for Quantum products due to Quantum's "lack of support for the Mac" according to Bru. This meant a rather expensive upgrade to PresSTORE and, even though it's a great product, I'd found Bru was great and a bargain and, quite frankly, changing packages has been a PITA. Careful the domino effect!

BTW, have BMD implemented support for the KONA card as yet? I know they said they were planning on it but I've seen nothing yet - might have missed it though.

Also, you might want to ensure StoreNext will support you with possible future solutions such as Avid ... If you feel there may be a possibility down the road. We went MetaSAN and, although it certainly has it's ... how can I say this - personality traits:-) ... we run it with FCP, Avid and everything else we use.
Click to expand...

Hey Shane,

Thanks for the feedback!
Turns out we are going with an 8G switch (bad copy over from an old quote).
We are selling our XRAIDS so will only be running the Rorkes.

Also, thanks for the heads up on BRU support for the LTO5. We are currently running BRU, on a DLT machine, but it seems weird that BRU wouldn't support LTO 5, but seeing the other threads on Reduser, particularly by Jeff Kilgore, that seems to be the case. I'll have my team check out the alternatives. Seems going with an HP LTO-5 drive and sticking with BRU would be the best bet. Retrospect sucks.

Cheers,

M
 
Talk to Torrey Loomis from Silverado Systems
He's also here on Reduser.net he deals with this kinda stuff, I believe he was testing one out.
 
From what I understand Mark, Bru utilises more of the Mac OS tools for communicating with the library, where others like PresSTORE seem to write their own tools. This means that, when a company like Quantum decides to let Mac systems fix their own problems (only my assumption from what Bru have published), this leaves Bru a little more exposed to incompatibilities. Of course, I could be totally off base here but that's how I understand it. It's a shame because, for us here in Australia, the support for Quantum hardware is AMAZING and I really like Bru. Damn!
 
Hi Mark,

I'm traveling and have a crap connection or I'd check, but I'm pretty sure Shane is speaking specifically about Quantum, not LTO-5 in general. I got a quote with my maintenance license for BRU for a stand alone LTO-5 HP unit so I know they support some brands. I'm ignorant about tape loaders because I don't need one.

One more thing to consider is the sound level of the enclosure. Rack mount enclosures typically assume data room / datacenter deployment, and thus can be pretty loud.

The low noise level was one of the things that attracted me to the soon to be released JMR solution you let me know about in December.

Unfortunately that product will require purchasing integrated storage which isn't a good fit for me.

Steve
 
All of our gear (macs, servers, backup, and RAIDS, etc.) are located our machine/data room, so noise isn't an issue. We like our rooms quiet :)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that BRU wasn't supporting LTO-5 in general. I meant Quantum specifically.

I think we may end up going with the HP LTO-5 based on the fact that BRU seems to support HP machines with an ATTO controller.

Plus I feel better about HP reliability and support than Quantum.

Which HP unit are you looking at? I'm looking at the HP StorageWorks MSL2024 1 LTO-5 Ultrium 3280 FC Tape Library BL531A.

A little more than the Quantum unit, but not much...

M
 
We are using a Tandberg T40 library which has an HP drive in it, it can accept a second LTO5 drive and run double headed if needed. Bru server runs the back ups. Also we use DAX archive from catDV to link media to the media catalog which helps automate the archive and restore. What this means is you can retrieve a shot in the middle of a clip rather like a doing a data conform.

The only set up point is the LTO drive needs direct connect if its via FC to the host BRU server. Im told SAS is a better bet as it removes the FC layer of code. Its not been problematic so far. When the system has been optimised i.e. block size and write cache set up, with fast storage the LOT5 is very fast.
 
Hi Peter,

So what exactly does certification mean? Does it mean BMD won't support any product other than what is listed?

Seems there are some big holes there with current generation 12 core Macs, SAN solutions other than XSAN, no 8GB FC HBAs, no rack mount solutions for PCI expansion, other monitors, etc...

Is BMD planning to ramp up its testing and certification program to allow for more flexible configurations?

M
 
Hi, 'certification' means we have tested the item and verified its operation. If vendors send us other items we can schedule those for test. In many cases non certified items will work equally well, we just haven't tested nor will test every variation. We could not say we support every non-tested device nor would we say, 'its not certified so don't call me'. We would consider the specific situation but bear in mind, the non certified items would raise suspicion first. The idea of certification is to provide a known and tested standard so you can be confident in operation. Like everything in our industry, it's a moving target so you can expect new items and changes to the list from time to time.
Peter
 
Guys,

Update on our final config. With Resolve 7.1 update, you need to have a DeckLink HD Extreme 3D+ card, since reference monitoring comes off that card, not the GUI card as the configuration manual states. So no go on the Kona card. Fortunately we can migrate it to another room.

We are going with the Rackmount 6 expander as we have been assured by Blackmagic that it will work just fine. In fact, they have apparently done a lot of testing on it (even though it is not officially "certified.") In our world, rackmounting is the only way to go.

The SAN and all devices will have 8G FC cards with the exception of the Quantum LTO-5 i40 scalar, which only needs to be 4G. To keep that happy with BRU, we are using an ATTO controller.

Can't wait!

M
 
Mark Pedersen said:
Guys,

you need to have a DeckLink HD Extreme 3D+ card, since reference monitoring comes off that card, not the GUI card as the configuration manual states.

M
Click to expand...

So are you using an HDSDI out on the 3D+ card with external monitoring or is there a means of using the internal scopes via an out output on the 3D+ card ?
 
craigjkharris said:
I know that AJA makes great cards, but why would anyone expect BMD to support a direct competitors product?
Click to expand...

BM told me other cards would be supported, however we have a BM in our Resolve. My guess is they will support other cards but new releases of features will lead on BM card configured systems.
 
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