steve.beres
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Hey guys,
Just to clear up some confusion about our system and offer some options.
We have an Apple Xsan based 32 TB SAN.
Our overall pipe speed "backbone" is 3.8 GB per second
Each machine can access up to 1.3 GB per second if that bandwidth is available. This is a limit of the PCIe bus on the MacPro (like Lucas said there are limiting factors to how fast you can make something go)
We use a 4 channel 4 Gb multipath fabric, that means a 16 Gb path to each machine.Normally the problem with doing that is blocking at the switch level, we've gotten around that by using a Qlogics 9000 series switch witch is wire speed up to 256 ports (1,024 Tb of threwput).
On the software side we run a modified version of Xsan client witch allows us to use some prefetching software that we've written to allow advanced allocation of space and predictive frame retrieval. That way playing back and capturing frame sequences can happen without intermixing.
So that's how we do it, as was mentioned before the .R3D files themselves are not that taxing, only the 4k DPX / 2k DPX. As more tools become available to work with the native .R3D files building an inexpensive SAN that can work with these files becomes a much easier proposition.
Again as mentioned before I totally agree with contacting APS (Apple Professional Services). At least here in the US their a really great group of guys, super easy to work with and vary knowledgeable.
Hope that helps a little...
Steve
plastercitypost.com
Just to clear up some confusion about our system and offer some options.
We have an Apple Xsan based 32 TB SAN.
Our overall pipe speed "backbone" is 3.8 GB per second
Each machine can access up to 1.3 GB per second if that bandwidth is available. This is a limit of the PCIe bus on the MacPro (like Lucas said there are limiting factors to how fast you can make something go)
We use a 4 channel 4 Gb multipath fabric, that means a 16 Gb path to each machine.Normally the problem with doing that is blocking at the switch level, we've gotten around that by using a Qlogics 9000 series switch witch is wire speed up to 256 ports (1,024 Tb of threwput).
On the software side we run a modified version of Xsan client witch allows us to use some prefetching software that we've written to allow advanced allocation of space and predictive frame retrieval. That way playing back and capturing frame sequences can happen without intermixing.
So that's how we do it, as was mentioned before the .R3D files themselves are not that taxing, only the 4k DPX / 2k DPX. As more tools become available to work with the native .R3D files building an inexpensive SAN that can work with these files becomes a much easier proposition.
Again as mentioned before I totally agree with contacting APS (Apple Professional Services). At least here in the US their a really great group of guys, super easy to work with and vary knowledgeable.
Hope that helps a little...
Steve
plastercitypost.com