inexpensive SAN for small studio ?

What is the best SAN solution for a small studio ? Something that could support 3 or 4 so computers and does not cost more than the computers combined.

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does not cost more than the computers combined

how much did you pay for you computers?

how much it will cost doesn't necessarily depend on the number of computers you want to connect, but the total number of video streams you want to be able to handle ... do you imagine each of these edit stations to be simultaneously handling just 1 or 2 streams of DV ... or are you envisaging each of them massaging 4 streams of uncompressed HD (!) ... or somewhere in between?

admittedly some systems will have a per seat license fee, but as food for thought, a low cost option you might consider would be an EditShare Metro system. no per seat license -- a 4TB system would support 20 DV25 streams or 4-6 compressed SD/HD streams ... not sure of the US$ price but it would be something in the 20K region
[www.editshare.com]

Metasan is worth looking at. You're looking at $1000 per client, then enough money for a RAID and a fibre switch.

Graeme

CalDigit will offer a SAN by NAB that will allow multiple users to connect to multiple HDPro's, workstations or a combination of both.

The CalDigit Switch has a street price of $4500.00 & we'll seat you for free with our SAN software. HDPro storage devices range from a 2TB at $3999.00 to a 8TB at $9999.00.

The CalDigit Switch will enable you to scale up as much as you would need. It's not Fibre Channel either, it's 20GB second direct connect or ePCIe connection. See more on this great product here: www.caldigit.com/hdpro.asp

I agree with Graeme about MetaSan. We use it for 2 seats in a remote truck.

In addition to the software license you will need a fiber switch, and fiber cards and adaptors for each computer. You also need fiber cable to connect it all up.

In our installation we do not use a separate computer to act as the metadata server, either of our workstations can handle the task. With four seats you may want to consider using a fifth system as a server.

You should also take a look at the maximum bandwidth of your drives. If you have four systems each pulling several streams of video you may exceed the speed of just one array. You might have to have more than one raided together. Make sure you switch has enough ports to support all your gear.

Depending on how critical to you your edit stations are you might consider having this done by someone who has experience in this area. It is possible to do it yourself certainly, but remember if it goes down you will have four editors getting paid to play cards while you get it back to working.

-Vance

Thanks for the heads up on that Jon, at first glance its looking pretty darn good !

Dare say this isn't your area but whilst copy writing (and proof reading) is a an art all its own and certailnly not one of my skills, I do think the line about the 2TB Limitation in Windows might be trying just too hard ;-)
"CalDigit?s team of highly qualified engineers have worked tirelessly for to overcome this issue."

Cheers, looking forward to hearing more about your SAN in April.

Andy

How much a SAN costs is directly proportional to the amount of research your prepared to do.

There are different types of SAN's, sharing at the volume level and at the file level. Each has different costs and strengths depending on how you want to manage your workflow.

If you don't have a competent system administrator and most of your work is editorial I generally recommend that people check out shared volume SANs first, like Facilis Terrablock or Commandsoft's FibreJet. Terrablock performs very well, pretty much plug-n-play but its a bit pricey.

I'm installing a Fibrejet SAN next week with five FCP suites and 11 terabytes for approximately $30K.

I have used XSAN and I understand XSAN2 is supposed to be much easier but if you don't need to share assets at the file level I wouldn't recommend it.

Anyway, good luck, the more research you do the more money you'll save.