flyinghaggis Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 We're setting up a video editing lab for 20 computers during the summmer and ideally we'd like them to have access to networked storage of some kind so pupils can work on a video project from any PC in that room. It would also make backing it up and recovering it easier aswell. We don't want to put it on our main file servers because of the size of space required and the fact that it'll affect other more critical facilities (home areas/user profiles/etc) I'm trying to decide on whether to get a dedicated NAS server or just build a PC/Server and fill it with disks. I think that given it will be used for video editing for up to 20 concurrent users it'll need to be relatively quick. It'll also need to be fault tolerant so I'm think RAID 5 is pretty much a given. Don't know if we'll need SAS/SCSI (10k/15k) drives or if we'll get away with SATA ones(7.2k)? We probably don't need a dedicated hi-spec server for the thing so even a modest spec desktop might be OK. Does anyone know if there's such a thing as a RAID controller that will fit in a regular desktop PC using SATA HardDrives? I'm trying to think if there's a cheaper way to do the above rather than spending a fortune on high end NAS servers which will probably be overkill for our needs? Has anyone tried to implement anything like the above?
sahmeepee Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 Does anyone know if there's such a thing as a RAID controller that will fit in a regular desktop PC using SATA HardDrives? I'm trying to think if there's a cheaper way to do the above rather than spending a fortune on high end NAS servers which will probably be overkill for our needs? Yes they exist: [ame=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sata+raid+controller+site%3Aamazon.com&aq=f&oq=&aqi=]sata raid controller site:amazon.com - Google Search[/ame] You might also be interested in: Openfiler — Openfiler - Open Source Storage Management Appliance
flyinghaggis Posted June 18, 2009 Author Posted June 18, 2009 Do you know if there are any that can also do RAID 5?
mattx Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 Just finished setting up a FreeNAS box for video editing stuff for our year 8's Two 1 Tera Byte drives mirrored & it works like a charm. FreeNAS is brilliant with vast support and knowledge out there. FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home
john Posted June 18, 2009 Posted June 18, 2009 If you are looking at serious use and that it may expand, consider getting one of the Sun 7000 SANs, they can be used as giant NAS boxes as well as many many other things (and can be NAS and SAN at the same time!)
flyinghaggis Posted June 19, 2009 Author Posted June 19, 2009 (edited) Just finished setting up a FreeNAS box for video editing stuff for our year 8's Two 1 Tera Byte drives mirrored & it works like a charm. FreeNAS is brilliant with vast support and knowledge out there. FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home Cheers for the info. I was tempted to try a standard desktop PC with a SATA RAID 1 (2 Mirrored Disks) configuration but wasn't sure if it would be OK performance-wise for 20 users doing video editing simultaneously. How have you found it? As a side note how does the file serving performance of the FreeNAS server compare with a Windows Server 2008 (plus does it handle AD Intergration/NTFS Permissions OK)? Edited June 19, 2009 by flyinghaggis
mattx Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 Cheers for the info. I was tempted to try a standard desktop PC with a SATA RAID 1 configuration but wasn't sure if it would be OK performance-wise for 20 users doing video editing simultaneously. How have you found it? As a side note how does the file serving performance of the FreeNAS server compare with a Windows Server 2008 (plus does it handle AD Intergration/NTFS Permissions OK)? You can use AD for authentication and if you turn on the extended attribute support from the CIFs service you get better attribute settings on the share. So yes setting up a share with relevant file permissions is bit fiddly but possible - I have details on doing it should you want to give it a go.
strawberry Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 will be important with these file sizes that its fairly local to the machine, if the machines are all on a gig switch with the fileserver usign teamed network cards you'll see a big difference!.
flyinghaggis Posted June 19, 2009 Author Posted June 19, 2009 will be important with these file sizes that its fairly local to the machine, if the machines are all on a gig switch with the fileserver usign teamed network cards you'll see a big difference!. Aye, planning on putting the NAS on the same network switch (in the same Room) as the Video-editing PCs to cut down on traffic. We'll probably try and see if we can find a Gigabit switch as suggested (or at the very least a gigabit link for the NAS Server).
mattx Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 Aye, planning on putting the NAS on the same network switch (in the same Room) as the Video-editing PCs to cut down on traffic. We'll probably try and see if we can find a Gigabit switch as suggested (or at the very least a gigabit link for the NAS Server). If going to the FreeNAS route make sure your gigabit NIC is support by FreeBSD: FreeBSD/i386 6.3-RELEASE Hardware Notes
steveg Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 If you fancy building your own pc to do this, the motherboards i've just put in for our new ict suite pc's include 6 sata ports which support raid 5. They are Asus m3n78 pro's, also have gigabit network built in. - a basic pc cost us under £300 each, inc the operating system, so you should be able to build a NAS box and put in 6 1tb hard disks for around £500. Steve
enjay Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 You will have trouble doing this from a regular PC if you have 20 clients - Windows XP will only handle 12 concurrent connections. Instead consider something like a Buffalo LinkStation Pro (note the Pro, regular ones don't play with AD), which will set you back a few hundred quid for a terabyte of space, plus has a USB port to add an external disk should you so desire.
dhicks Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 Has anyone tried to implement anything like the above? Each of the PCs in our media suite has an extra harddrive and network card. The idea is to link all the computers together on their own dedicated storage network, share each spare harddrive out over this network with NBD Server for Windows, aggregate all the shared block devices into a RAID array using a Linux-based server using Linux software RAID (mdadm) and then share the RAID array out again as a file system all the PCs can access. -- David Hicks
sahmeepee Posted June 19, 2009 Posted June 19, 2009 Each of the PCs in our media suite has an extra harddrive and network card. The idea is to link all the computers together on their own dedicated storage network, share each spare harddrive out over this network with NBD Server for Windows, aggregate all the shared block devices into a RAID array using a Linux-based server using Linux software RAID (mdadm) and then share the RAID array out again as a file system all the PCs can access. Stupid question: are you taking steps to prevent the computers being turned off then? Presumably you would need at least RAID6 or RAID5 and one or more hot-swap drives for this to be safe. Sounds like some fairly fearsome hackery. Good on you!
dhicks Posted June 21, 2009 Posted June 21, 2009 Stupid question: are you taking steps to prevent the computers being turned off then? Presumably you would need at least RAID6 or RAID5 and one or more hot-swap drives for this to be safe. Sounds like some fairly fearsome hackery. Good on you! We aren't worried about the computers being turned off - this is a private all-girls school, our pupils are well-behaved when it comes to IT. The media suite itself has 18 machines in, all arranged in a horeshoe around three walls of the classroom with another set of tables in the middle where pupils can do non-IT work - the teacher can spot a computer being turned off. I plan to use RAID-1- - mirror sets of harddrives, then combine those into one large volume. I figure RAID 5 would generate too much traffic. -- David Hicks
xeberdee Posted September 3, 2009 Posted September 3, 2009 The best NAS servers for video editing I know are from Apace Systems - vStor. Dedicated linux based editing solutions. They are pricey, but the performance of these specially designed video NAS servers is really better than anything else I have tried (Edit share, or Avid's stuff etc.) Apace vStor comes bundled with vshare which is a convienient tool for push pull of data to either backup or other edit locations for sync.
Chillibear Posted September 5, 2009 Posted September 5, 2009 (edited) Just a few things to consider: Remember to work out how much bandwidth you'll need to get off your storage system. My normal procedure when specifying edit suite environments for a client is to check what codecs they will be editing in: 10 Bit uncompressed SD?, 8Bit, just DV or are we in HD land? I'm guessing since this is class setting we're probably talking about SD DV so about 4MB per second for a video stream. Now how many concurrent streams to a client? Depends on how clever they get with the editing, but say two, so we're looking at most at running 160MB per second off your storage system, probably less in reality. Now that's when if you're building it yourself you need to check the sustained read (and to a lesser extent write) performance of your raid controller. If you buy a good raid controller (eg something like a 3ware 9650SE) it should be able to handle at least 400MB/s reads from a RAID5 pool. So how many disks? Well how much video do you want to store? I'd certainly opt to have a decent number of disks to spread the access over, say half a dozen or so. A raid card with that number of ports will be about £400-500 ish. I'd have thought SATA will be fine for your needs, SATA disks typically can sustain 50-70MB/s transfer rates depending on make. Look for disks with good seek times. Edited September 5, 2009 by Chillibear
whitenight639 Posted September 6, 2009 Posted September 6, 2009 I used freeNAS and but found it lacked proper AD support, I moved to Openfiler, and it's great.
mattx Posted September 6, 2009 Posted September 6, 2009 I used freeNAS and but found it lacked proper AD support, I moved to Openfiler, and it's great. Lacked proper AD support ? Along what lines ? I have it working alongside AD without a problem !!
m25man Posted September 6, 2009 Posted September 6, 2009 Whilst building your own NAS is commendable is it really worth it? With devices like the Terastation/ReadyNAS/Thecus etc etc etc all with built in Media services as well dual Nic's and every concievable accessory all in a box that can be locked in a switch cabinet has a 3 year warranty and anybody can fix it when it goes wrong why would you even consider it! Yeah, building your own NAS for home use is without doubt a worthwhile venture but commercially and long term, is it worth it? Home brew NAS is for garden sheds and Hak Shacks. I really couldn't be bothered any more. Give me a nice shiny cube with 4 2TB disk's in it any day:p
whitenight639 Posted September 6, 2009 Posted September 6, 2009 Lacked proper AD support ? Along what lines ? I have it working alongside AD without a problem !! on there wiki, the bit that I read said they had the AD or LDAP page but it didnt work yet, Think the wiki probably wasn't up to date, I didn't spend ages with it I moved to openfiler and found it much more usefull as it easily pulls in AD users and you can do adjust share sizes and such on a per user or group basis. Another reason I chose openfiler is because of the linux filesystem as oppese to the FreeBSD one wich im not familiar with and don't fancy having to learn about should the array fail and I have to recover data (although it will be backed up).
Hacksawbob Posted September 6, 2009 Posted September 6, 2009 I have a mac suite to get working with video editing. I am going to have all the video editing happening locally on the machines then back up overnight I will prevent raw unedited footage going to windows server based home areas by limiting the size of them through quotas. Personally I think editing needs to be local regardless of the speed of the NAS, my gut feeling tells me to avoid anything where the footage resides anywhere but local due to bandwidth requirements. Then upload the compressed edited footage when done. Another thing you may want to look at is the format you are shooting, I am going to be doing all my footage on the new JVC camera which shoots strainght to quicktime format it means no transcoding between camera and editing, more suited to final cut though.
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