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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 :)

Thunderbolt XSAN

Andrae Palmer

Andrae Palmer

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Can a Thunderbolt device be connected directly to an XSAN without the need for a Thunderbolt to Fibrechannel adapter?
 
Andrae Palmer said:
What I'm wondering is if there will be a Thunderbolt switch... therefore bypassing the need to spend 5k on a FibreChannel switch. Since we have Thunderbolt now can't we just eradicate FibreChannel? Is it cabling that is the limiting factor?
Click to expand...

It's really an apples and oranges kind of thing. Andrae, can I come at this from a different perspective and ask what you're trying to accomplish? Sharing storage among multiple users, giving one user access to multiple storage devices, or something else entirely? Thanks.

d
 
In a very small facility I would like to have the capability of having four to six people sharing the same storage via Thunderbolt.
 
if you want to make a small xsan ( or metasan ), you could take a fibrechannel raid with 2 fibreports and connect to each port 1 mac. No fibreswitch needed.
There are even RAID boxes, as the Sonnet RX1600 that have 4 fibreports, so you can start with 4 workstations without having to buy the fibrechannel switch. The new Promise has 4ports on each of its 2 controllers, so in theory you could have 8 workstations. I did not yet test this configuration, but with other systems, if you have 2 controllers, try to avoid to use them both, as the speed goes down if you dont have a fibreswitch. Put all workstations on the same controller or invest in a fibreswitch. So for example : a small xsan for 2 high-speed users could be configured with a Lacie 12Big 24TB, incl. two 8GBit atto fibrechannel cards would set you back less than 15.000 $ and can easily be expanded. other users could still acces this xsan if you reshared it with ethernet. You still would need to learn to configure and maintain a xsan, or get help from a specialist to install it.
 
Think of Thunderbolt as a compact, external connector to a PCIe 2.0 X4 slot, because that's exactly what it is. It's PCIe based, so in order to offer up ports for SATA, USB, fiber channel, etc.. it needs a PCIe to whatever interface. Making a Thunderbolt device is almost just like making that same device as a PCIe expansion card. Just the connectors are smaller and you have to house the device externally. But this also simplifies the hardware process for a lot of common things we're all looking for. PCIe to SATA, USB, etc.. are commonly available everywhere. No need to develop new host chipsets or any such thing.

As for connecting to XSan or similar type of SAN storage, Thunderbolt may be ideal in some situations. ...Like using the Thunderbolt to FC adapter from Promise. Fiber switches are indeed overpriced, but they're a product that demands huge internal bandwidth (not so much by today's standards) and with a limited audience. I'm hoping that FC and 10G Ethernet switches will start to drop, now that they're speeds will become more mainstream.

Thunderbolt could work as you describe, with a switch, etc.. Someone just has to develop the product to make it happen. CalDigit already has something similar in their SuperShare SAN system. CalDigit uses a PCIe based interface system rather than Fiber Channel. So with the right communications protocols and a good switching system, I don't see why someone couldn't make a box that connects to Thunderbolt storage (or other types of storage: USB, SAS/SATA, FC), and allows multiple incoming connections via Thunderbolt for systems to share it. All possible...

FWIW, the CalDigit SuperShare is a pretty decent SAN system and it's priced aggressively. Still expensive, but cheaper than most other solutions out there with similar performance.
 
Andrae Palmer said:
In a very small facility I would like to have the capability of having four to six people sharing the same storage via Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea, running a network over Thunderbolt. Unfortunately, I don't believe there are any network protocols [yet?] for Thunderbird. You'd need something along the lines of TCP/IP for Ethernet, IP over FireWire, Fibre Channel or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). (Fibre Channel is both a protocol and a topology, which I guess is why we don't say FC over FC.)

I'm guessing you want high bandwidth to your edit bays, something more than the 75MB/s or so you'll get from Gigabit Ethernet. That probably means you're looking at 10GbE or FC. No cheap solutions, I'm afraid, if you want shared storage and the ability for high-bandwidth editing over your network.
 
Promise has their TB to FC adapter we have already discussed... The company I'm testing the TB to eSATA adapter for is also coming out with TB to 10G Ethernet and TB to Infiniband adapters. Thunderbolt supports higher-level protocols like TCP/IP, etc.. To make TB work as a network, I suppose someone just needs to make the proper switch and then the OS would have to support it, or the proper protocols over TB, or driver software to make it so... However, I don't really see a practical application here given that 10GE, FC and Infiniband already exist with a proven track-record. Yes, they're expensive and we can hope that changes... 10G Ethernet is about to become standard on a host of new workstation and server boards shipping with the new Intel chipsets. Like Gigabit Ethernet, the prices will fall. Gigabit wired speeds are no longer adequate for many installations now that people are so dependent on media and larger file sizes. ...Biggest issue I see with Thunderbolt in this sort of use is cable length. 4.5m (15ft) cable lengths are also allowed in the spec, but that's about it. It's not a long-distance system.
 
Filip Vandoorne said:
if you want to make a small xsan ( or metasan ), you could take a fibrechannel raid with 2 fibreports and connect to each port 1 mac. No fibreswitch needed.
There are even RAID boxes, as the Sonnet RX1600 that have 4 fibreports, so you can start with 4 workstations without having to buy the fibrechannel switch. The new Promise has 4ports on each of its 2 controllers, so in theory you could have 8 workstations. I did not yet test this configuration, but with other systems, if you have 2 controllers, try to avoid to use them both, as the speed goes down if you dont have a fibreswitch. Put all workstations on the same controller or invest in a fibreswitch. So for example : a small xsan for 2 high-speed users could be configured with a Lacie 12Big 24TB, incl. two 8GBit atto fibrechannel cards would set you back less than 15.000 $ and can easily be expanded. other users could still acces this xsan if you reshared it with ethernet. You still would need to learn to configure and maintain a xsan, or get help from a specialist to install it.
Click to expand...

With this setup could two users write to the same file? I'm judging that an MDC can't be thrown in so it eliminates users having the capability to write to the same file?

Jeff Kilgroe said:
Promise has their TB to FC adapter we have already discussed... The company I'm testing the TB to eSATA adapter for is also coming out with TB to 10G Ethernet and TB to Infiniband adapters. Thunderbolt supports higher-level protocols like TCP/IP, etc.. To make TB work as a network, I suppose someone just needs to make the proper switch and then the OS would have to support it, or the proper protocols over TB, or driver software to make it so... However, I don't really see a practical application here given that 10GE, FC and Infiniband already exist with a proven track-record. Yes, they're expensive and we can hope that changes... 10G Ethernet is about to become standard on a host of new workstation and server boards shipping with the new Intel chipsets. Like Gigabit Ethernet, the prices will fall. Gigabit wired speeds are no longer adequate for many installations now that people are so dependent on media and larger file sizes. ...Biggest issue I see with Thunderbolt in this sort of use is cable length. 4.5m (15ft) cable lengths are also allowed in the spec, but that's about it. It's not a long-distance system.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input Jeff. Since our studio is very small... a 15ft cable restriction would not be a problem. Glad to see that my thoughts of having a Thunderbolt network is not that far fetched. I hoping that the TB to FC adapter won't be outrageously expensive.
 
"With this setup could two users write to the same file? I'm judging that an MDC can't be thrown in so it eliminates users having the capability to write to the same file?"

the xsan or metasan cannot let 2 user write to the same file - why would you want this? no system would do this. reading the same file is no problem. for finalcutpro7, if 2 users are using the same project file, you get a warning when you would overwrite the other users work.
i have installed several systems this way with 2 to 4 users in metasan, but you could just do the same with xsan. only both machines would also be metadatacontrollers - as in the metasan setup. Normally i implement xsan mostly with 2 seperate metadatacontrollers, and for more than 4 users, but in a small setup would work too. you could even avoid a sofisticated setup with open directory servers and just use posix users to control the permissions on the shared san. The easiest is to make sure that each workstation uses the same account id when using the san volume. I need to test these setups with Lion and the new xsan, but in metasan and 10.6 it just works fine.
 
Andrae Palmer said:
I hoping that the TB to FC adapter won't be outrageously expensive.
Click to expand...

Since Xsan is now part of Lion (both Server and client) the economics of an Xsan/Fibre Channel network is likely to change dramatically. And if the Promise SANLink means you can use an iMac for editing instead of a Mac Pro (assuming you don't need PCIe slots...), the costs will change that much more. Change is fun.

d
 
Filip Vandoorne said:
...you could just do the same with xsan. only both machines would also be metadatacontrollers....
Click to expand...

Filip, I've heard later versions of Xsan require dedicated metasan controllers, but I'm not positive on that...Do you have any thoughts on using the new Lion mini server as an Xsan controller and/or metadata controller in a video production environment?

d
 
Directly connecting to the FC RAID with both computers acting as MDC's... what happens when both computers attempt to write to the same file?
 
Andrae Palmer said:
Directly connecting to the FC RAID with both computers acting as MDC's... what happens when both computers attempt to write to the same file?
Click to expand...

The SAN node sees multiple system access the same as multiple application access. The one that opens the file for writing first is granted ownership. Subsequent attempts from other users or applications are denied, being told the file is locked or in-use. Multiple apps/users can READ a file simultaneously in a proper SAN. However, multiple users or apps writing to the same file does not happen. Ever. You would NEVER want this. The only real-world exception to this is a database model. Database systems utilize the same database file and have multiple clients, but that is a client/server model and each client sends requests or queries to the database server. The server is responsible for managing and sequencing all I/O. Clients never physically touch the actual database file directly.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
The SAN node sees multiple system access the same as multiple application access. The one that opens the file for writing first is granted ownership. Subsequent attempts from other users or applications are denied, being told the file is locked or in-use. Multiple apps/users can READ a file simultaneously in a proper SAN. However, multiple users or apps writing to the same file does not happen. Ever. You would NEVER want this. The only real-world exception to this is a database model. Database systems utilize the same database file and have multiple clients, but that is a client/server model and each client sends requests or queries to the database server. The server is responsible for managing and sequencing all I/O. Clients never physically touch the actual database file directly.
Click to expand...


Nicely described. Thanks.
 
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