Network video editing

[Strikermed]

Hi, I'm new to this forum, but I follow Linus on YouTube.

I welcome and info and/or suggestions on whether this situation is possible and if so any suggested hardware and equipment I should look at.

So here it is. I'm wanting to edit HD video using a much larger capacity drive which can be accessed by several computers. What I want to do is take an old system and create a RAID array (suggestions are welcome on which Rads) and install FreeNas. I already have a synology with a 1Gb connection, but it isn't nearly fast enough. What I hope to do is take 2 1gb 4 port server Nic and use them in the FreeNas build and my PC and aggregate them so I get a 4Gbs connection. I would like to connect my computer and the FreeNas to a smart switch so that I can transfer files between the FreeNas, synology NAS, and my PC.

I would use the Free NAS as the media drive for editing projects using adobe premiere and after effects.

My question is: will this work? I saw that Linus was working on a similar setup and I wanted to know if this is an effective way of using network hardware for editing. Will the connection also be as fast as a 6Gb SATA connection or close to it?

Have many questions as I'm relatively new to advanced networking and especially the lingo.

[KTFO|SGTmoody]

With the NIC cards.  only some work with workstations  you would have to reasearch which one you want to get and make sure its compatible for desktop PC's  as well as those cards supporting Link Aggregation

 

Raid would be a must with this. Allthough I have never tested a raid setup over a network  I know i get around 850Mbps   ish when moving files from one HDD to another  so the limitation here is probably going to be the network (as you have reported seeing)

Remember to keep in mind you measure network usage in  Mega Bits per second    rather than Mega Bytes Per Second        Its easy to get confused sometimes compering network speeds and data speeds on hard disks

 

Personaly im am close to saturating my 1Gbps port when moving large files over the network.  I have to admit I have never moved a file over the new sata 3 so i couldt for sure say what level of trafic is generated at those speeds let alone raid.

 

I would build the PC and raid properly first and just stick with a 4G Aggregation between the PC - Switch and NAS  and see what hapens

 

With your Two  4 port gig cards.  You plan on putting them both in the FreeNas?  this would in effect give you an 8Gbps link from the switch to the FreeNas  but everything else will still run at a gig.  So you would need a Card in your PC and a Card in the FreeNas.

if you did plan on putting two 4 port NICs in the Free Nas then I would consider this overkill.

[Strikermed]

Thanks for the reply!

 

To answer you questiong about where I would put the 4 port NICs:  I plan to put 1 in the home built NAS and put another in my PC.  This would essentially give me 4 gigabit connections between the 2 (or very roughly 400ish megbytes).  I believe I get about 400MB transfer with Sata3 which can run up to 6Gigabits...  I'm sure I have a bottelneck somehwere.

 

So what I need answered is will this work.  I keep running into articles and posts that are 2 years old that say it doesn't.

 

I'd also like to know anyone's suggestions on whether they know which server 4 port cards work in a PC build.  I'v seen various intel cards at different price points, and I'm wondering what works.