If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know that we installed an incredible Ethernet based SAN back in December of 2008. It’s the Final Share SAN system from Maxx Digital which features some ethernet wizardry from the folks at Small Tree Electronics. We’ve been pushing the heck out of this system with two feature documentaries with over 350 hours of material and a couple of weekly series along with a myriad of projects pushing through the pipeline. It’s been a real workhorse for the shop.
So I get a call a few months ago that the gang at Small Tree is working on “something new” and would I like to try it out? You don’t have to ask me twice. Our current SAN essentially runs in three parts. You have the Mac Pro that is the central conduit. The RAID units attach to the Mac Pro, in our case these are two 16TB Maxx Digital units connected via SAS and are both running RAID 5. Then you have the ethernet switch where both the Mac Pro and all the clients connect together allowing all the data to be shared across the network. The client is whatever machine you want to connect to the SAN. Mac Pro, iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, etc… Anything with an Ethernet port can be connected to the SAN in a matter of minutes to either edit video or simply access the data.
This new idea from Small Tree is essentially an ethernet SAN in a box primarily designed for remote applications. The computer and RAID are combined into the box and 6 clients can connect directly to the box and start working. That’s it. If you need more than 6 clients, then simply add an Ethernet Switch off you go. The box they sent me has sixteen 2TB drives so we have a 32TB SAN running in RAID 5. In our case, since we already have all our computers set up on an ethernet switch, we ran the box through the switch to make it easier. As a side benefit to connecting through the switch, we can access all 64TB of our shared storage at the same time. The 32TB from the original SAN and the 32TB from the new SAN since it all passes through the same switch. Here’s a visual look at the differences between the two.
I say they primarily designed this for remote applications, such as live events or film sets, to make it extremely easy to network across multiple workstations without the need for Fibre Channel setups, network configurations, etc… Anything with an ethernet connection can easily edit using Apple’s ProRes codec, for example, and you can have 6 editors up and running in a matter of minutes without the need for a “network specialist.” If you can connect your computer to the internet you have the necessary skills to connect your computer to this SAN. It’s not rocket science.
But in my case, I see this as a real space and equipment saver in our Post House. We have all our equipment rack mounted including the computers and such. (you can see an image of our machine room here) By removing the Mac Pro from the SAN, that means we can now use that computer for another purpose and clear some room in our Rack. I can make that Mac Pro more productive for the shop rather than just sitting there playing “traffic cop” for the SAN. It’s a win-win.
It’s called the ST-RAID Mobile and is expected to be released in October 2010. In the early testing everything is moving right along. Took all of about 5 minutes to connect it and get running with it. It truly is a “SAN in a box.” More details as they become available.
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