Shared storage for 3 x FCP suites

Hi there!
I'm currently working on a project that requires 3 FCP suites (iMacs) to have identical media. Each suite has its own G-RAID. At the moment we are doing our daily digitising / ingesting with a laptop hooked up to a fourth G-RAID, and then copying the media onto the 3 other G-RAIDs. Naturally, this is getting to be a bit of a pain and pretty time-consuming. I'm wondering... Is there not a simpler way of having shared storage, without having to buy an XSAN or EditShare etc.? What do other small-scale operations do to solve this problem, I wonder? ....An XSAN or Editshare system would not only break the budget, but is way beyond our requirements I think.

Look forward to hearing some of your thoughts,
Thanks v.much in advance!!

Rob

An XSAN and Editshare...that is not possible because you are on iMACS! No network cards for those solutions. You're choices are VERY limited.

What is your budget, because I know of a solution that would require buying a MacPro, ethernet card, Ethernet switch, then hard drive RAID. $14000 or so. And that is on the CHEAP end of very manageable.

If you are looking for one in the $2000 range...you will be looking for a long time.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Shane is alluding to a Gigabit based SAN solution

[library.creativecow.net]
[library.creativecow.net]

And here's a similar thread:
[forums.creativecow.net]

Hi Shane - thanks so much for your swift response. I'm a big fan of your articles, tutorials, and blog etc.!

Our budget is definitely in the $2000 range - so I guess we'll just carry on as we are for now...
It's good to know that certain options simply aren't possible with our budget, however, so I'm glad I asked.

Thanks again!! I'd best get back to copying all that media!

isn't there software that will compare the contents of 2 drives and ensure they are identical?
that could make life a little easier,
especially down the road, when someone ads a music track, or downloads some graphic elements.


nick

Carbon Copy Cloner.



www.strypesinpost.com

yeah!

but i reckon you'd be best to leave your render files out of the equation.
too complicated and messy.
maybe set renders to another drive altogether for safety?


nick

The downside of working shared stations, is that it's relatively pricey. I'm wondering if EditShare has a solution to rent the licenses.

Within 2K, you're seriously not going to be able to cut off shared storage, as you need loads of bandwidth and you need a SAN set up. So you need to plan the flow of the projects beforehand, or stuff like this can get very very messy in the middle of a project.

You can make copies of the rushes to like say 2 hard drives, have 2 editors work off them, and each render to that external hard drive, and then finally compile everything together for the final edit. Not exactly a RAID 5 type of workflow though...



www.strypesinpost.com

Editshare would solve your imac problem since it's all ethernet based but not your price point problem.

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

There needs to be an EditShare Lite, or Mac-only or Windows-only versions. Although even now it looks pretty scaleable.

- Loren

Today's FCP keytip:
Invoke your Remove Attributes dialog over any selected clip(s) with
Command-Option-V !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Hi people!
I'd just like to say a massive thank-you for all your great advice! I'm across the 'Pond' in the UK and have been completely snowed under at work, so apologies for not posting sooner. I found the similar thread on Creative Cow (http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/197/856323#856323) particularly interesting; and for the time being I think a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner will at least make my life a little easier (thanks to Nick and Strypes) .....until the company can afford a proper solution.

Cheers all!

Rob

What format is the video you're editing?

Would a gigabit router work, keeping the media on one machine and the render files local to each?

There's probably a number of editors working together where the amount of money for shared storage makes sense, I'd argue that if you had three editors working full time you can't afford to NOT to have shared storage.

We have seven systems accessing shared data, first if we didn't have shared data I think the amount of redundant storage would be costly, secondly, shared storage enabled us to completely re-engineer our workflow so there is very little latency in terms of project setup, waiting for and finding assets etc., which has significantly increased our capacity and throughput.

Shared storage is something that as editors we all conceptually understand but if you haven't worked with it its hard to appreciate how much better it really is. Typically in editing there's a lot of overhead associated with just the management of data, we have one full time person whose job it is to just wrangle the data, get it in-get it out and make sure when the editors start work the only thing they have to think about is editing. Its amazing how much more creative people can be when much of the administrative burden is removed.

When we bring in the occasional free lancer or visiting editor they are amazed at how "easy" and "fun" it is working in this environment.

Thanks for your post, Chuck. I usually work at facilities with shared storage, so going back to a small-scale operation is tough, .... especially when I'm having to manage all the data as well as edit! Shared storage unfortunately doesn't seem to be a viable option for us at the moment, but if the current contract leads to further work next year then perhaps the bosses will re-consider.

Best Wishes,
Rob

Hmm... The Bob Zelin and Walter Biscardi articles seem very interesting...

What I'm curious about is whether they have a software to manage conflicts resulting from multiple read/write requests from the same block. Also, supposing one machine is rendering, another is doing a tapeless ingest, and yet another seat is going to tape. How would the load be balanced?



www.strypesinpost.com