iSCSI GIGe or 10Gige solutions

[Jay Radcliffe]

My 4k figure was an all in cost. Design, installation, hardware, cabling etc.

I would have to say that if your looking to pipe high bandwidth storage needs you need a high end managed switch with a lot of throughput.

We looked at all sorts of solutions for our Post house, our main problem was using eSATA, firewire and SATA drives/arrays all over the place. Our main goal was to collaborate among our 3 suites with the intention of adding a 4th. We looked into iSCSI and 10GbE is EXPENSIVE! We looked at SAN's and they were all very high priced... it was brought up that FC is old technology, it is not, it is the highest performing, lowest latency technology which is now at an okay price with a roadmap going to 16Gb!

So, that led me to 2 solutions, 1 the Facilis Terablock... and the other the Atto FastStream (also sold by Sonnet as the RX1600Fibre). We compared the two for overall cost to provide Uncompressed HD to 2 workstations and Prores to the 3rd and 4th (when we add it)... we would have had to buy 2 Facilis boxes at about $50,000 plus HBAs and such... that was out of our $24,000 budget! The FastStream was able to meet our performance goals with one unit and can serve 4 users via 8Gb Fibre channel. We now get 2 streams 10-bit each on 2 workstations and the remaining workstation gets about 15 streams Prores HQ! Atto claims to be able to handle 6 streams of 10-bit uncompressed and 2K film... We purchased through a dealer who put the whole thing together for about $20,000 including 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters and SAN Software for 3 workstations.

Still, we look at expanding, we are going to partner with someone across the country, and using 10GbE iSCSI would be great for that, depending on the performance of the internet, we could give each other access to the video assets at our respective locations... but it seems to expensive to do right now... I heard that late 2011 / 2012 is when we will see general adoption and lower prices!

 

[Jay Gannon]

Still, we look at expanding, we are going to partner with someone across the country, and using 10GbE iSCSI would be great for that, depending on the performance of the internet, we could give each other access to the video assets at our respective locations... but it seems to expensive to do right now... I heard that late 2011 / 2012 is when we will see general adoption and lower prices!

Have fun getting your hands on dedicated fibre these days, very very hard to get now for interstate/country links. Glad you got a system that worked for you in the end, and as I said before, 4k would be the bottom end of my per port pricing for 10gige, its not a cheap technology, your switch is not going to be your only investment, and buying a cheap unmanaged Dell switch will not cut it.

 

[Joe Carney]

Arista has a 24port 10gBaseT switch for under 20K USD.

http://www.aristanetworks.com/en/products/7100series
They use Cat7 wiring up to 100 meters.

 

[Jay Gannon]

I'd go with the Force10 S2410 and Fiber NICs if I was building a small facility at the moment. I've worked with Foundry since the beginning of 10GiGe and have never been let down. A good reseller should have it for somewhere in the 15-17k area.