Why do we need SO MANY SERVERS??

[LinusTech]

5 hours ago, Shutter said:

So, I work with cameras and footage on major motion pictures. I used to own two Red Helium cameras like you use, (now upgraded to become monstro), also own two Alexa SXT, Two Amiras, and Two Alexa Minis. I say this not to brag, but to give background. I have dealt with a lot of footage data in my time.  I've had some near misses losing footage. (Once, sleep deprived working long days on a major Superhero movie, I accidentally deleted all of the day's footage and had a panic attack before I realised that I had 2 other copies). I've never lost any footage because of safeguards I have in place.  Seeing Linus copy the footage off in file explorer without any checksum made me feel an undue amount of stress.  I typically run an MD5 checksum on the source and destination though there are faster checksums out there that are plenty good enough for the application. MD5 is required by many of the big studios or insurance companies.    I know youtube is a different world than I'm used to but man checksums are like a warm blanket. Going without checksums is like rock climbing without a rope.

 

Have you ever been burned by not verifying your footage?

 

Why not use LTO for long-term storage of the original "negative" and process out high quality compressed proxy files that you can use to edit etc.  In most cases, a good quality proxy file is more than usable and waaaay smaller.   A LTO archive with a robotic loader is way less expensive than two online raids.  Especially if you consider the electricity cost. 

 

You should do a video about how much data you would be shooting if you weren't shooting compressed raw on red and instead of shooting something like the Arri Alexa 65.  I Just finished a couple of superhero movies shot on it, man that camera kicks out a lot of GB.  so nuts.

We typically don't wipe our mags or SD cards until the project has at least been started. Shoulda showed the magnetic whiteboard for managing media... But forgot

[Zodiark1593]

11 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

We typically don't wipe our mags or SD cards until the project has at least been started. Shoulda showed the magnetic whiteboard for managing media... But forgot

Part two...

 

Or part 1.1.

[unijab]

24 minutes ago, ichihaifu said:

I came here wondering the same. Most likely an oversight at design stages.

Redundancy. Load balancing. Easier maintenance.

 

They already kind of have something like this in place in case their primary share fails as I could see, but it requires them to change network maps, and I can see this being a major pain in the ass when it happens.

If they do the redundancy part correctly, they could set up 2 storage boxes, split the high performance storage between them in separate storage pools and serve them to 2 separate CPU/GPU virtualization servers hosting their VM's doing video activities (split the resources in both cases, so in the worst case there is only degradation). This means you can move the servers doing work live from one host to another, while taking literally half of your storage down if needed, without anyone needing to do anything extra on their workstations.

You could even go full gung-ho and fully equip both parts of the redundant parts with all current resources to avoid any possible degradation during maintenance if needed.

 

But as I mentioned they already have something like this in place, so its probably something they don't want to dedicate time for (its basically redoing the entire infrastructure design, which would probably seem like a waste of time at this stage).

 

The petabyte server is already 2 nodes for Redundancy & Load balancing.

 

So like I asked, what is left there that you want to virtualize?

[ichihaifu]

10 minutes ago, unijab said:

 

The petabyte server is already 2 nodes for Redundancy & Load balancing.

 

So like I asked, what is left there that you want to virtualize?

I recall that petabyte was only archive server, where frankly this (load balancing, as you put it) is not even needed.

High performance storage to me looks like a 'janky hack' that only somehow achieves fail-over.

It could all be integrated to a single SAN system and just made available as separate high performance pool to working hosts.

[unijab]

35 minutes ago, ichihaifu said:

I recall that petabyte was only archive server, where frankly this (load balancing, as you put it) is not even needed.

its a cluster so it is needed

 

35 minutes ago, ichihaifu said:

High performance storage to me looks like a 'janky hack' that only somehow achieves fail-over.

what

 

 

It could all be integrated to a single SAN system and just made available as separate high performance pool to working hosts.

 

So you want him to rearrange his whole system just so he can create a SAN network to the editing workstations?

[iris7]

54 minutes ago, ichihaifu said:

High performance storage to me looks like a 'janky hack' that only somehow achieves fail-over.

I don't think failover is the correct term(if a box goes down, there isn't a secondary box for all the traffic to be routed to immediately).  They are using file replication.  For the most part, their setup for their storage servers seems pretty normal for a small business. 

54 minutes ago, ichihaifu said:

It could all be integrated to a single SAN system and just made available as separate high performance pool to working hosts.

I don't think you quite understand the difference between a SAN and a NAS.  If they wanted to create a SAN, they would need to change a lot of hardware around.

 

[ichihaifu]

3 hours ago, iris7 said:

I don't think you quite understand the difference between a SAN and a NAS.  If they wanted to create a SAN, they would need to change a lot of hardware around.

 

I do know (and if you simplify it, they are quite similar). As for hardware, not a huge amount: they already have all the necessary equipment to do a basic level SAN, they'd just need to rearrange it and redo the systems running on the hardware to accommodate that.

3 hours ago, unijab said:

So you want him to rearrange his whole system just so he can create a SAN network to the editing workstations?

Simply put, "yes".

But if you see what I initially said, at this point it would be a waste of time because they are already imitating a fail-over.

 

Edit: A very simplified image of what I had in mind:

[mfitz50]

Its as linus already said, knowledge and cost. ceph is not exactly an easy thing to maintain and you basicly end up needing a dedicated engineer to maintain those systems

[dersuperpro1337]

Compared to all your in depth dicussions about virtualization and load balancing between servers, I have a rather simple question:

Your 24 slot Supermicro NVMe and SATA Servers - How are they set up in terms of RAID? 

Because afaik, you cannot Hardware RAID NVMe on those server boards without dedicated PCIe U.2 RAID adapters.

What do you use? Windows Storage Spaces? Proprietary OS / "NAS" software RAID?

[kasugatei]

@LinusTech

Nice video from the technical side, HOWEVER I am bit disappointed that the actual workflow is a still pretty much manual. I would suggest to take a look at MAM (media asset management) software suite. Why MAM?

 

-all people can see the current status of the video

-process automatisation (eg. automatic transcoding, file QC, archiving etc.)

-introduction to proxies (small size videos for preview all of the videos for easier searching for videos)

-one of the MAM suites which I worked with has a Premiere plugin which enables seamless sync with the MAM database without needing to manually enter data etc. 

-last on this list, but DEFINITELY not the least - metadata. You can design your own fields for each asset (video) and make all video information easily searchable. Eg, you can have a one field for the script, one for the category, one for cameraman(s), one for editor etc. and your imagination is the limit. So in the end, if you for some reason need all videos ever recorded which are about eg. Samsung smartphones, it is easy peasy search (if you did the metadata design well in the first place).

 

The down side is that MAM software is a on a expensive side, but I was able to see how it enhanced the workflow of some of the major broadcast houses.

[Sugarkryptonite]

Anyone know what software they use for the mirrored backups the second a change happens on the first server?

[iris7]

 

Just now, Sugarkryptonite said:

Anyone know what software they use for the mirrored backups the second a change happens on the first server?

PeerSync

[scottyseng]

3 hours ago, dersuperpro1337 said:

Compared to all your in depth dicussions about virtualization and load balancing between servers, I have a rather simple question:

Your 24 slot Supermicro NVMe and SATA Servers - How are they set up in terms of RAID? 

Because afaik, you cannot Hardware RAID NVMe on those server boards without dedicated PCIe U.2 RAID adapters.

What do you use? Windows Storage Spaces? Proprietary OS / "NAS" software RAID?

If I remember right, it was mentioned during a WAN show that they used windows storage spaces for the NVMe server.

[LeapFrogMasterRace]

u dont

[Jirayr]

On 6/24/2018 at 2:51 AM, nicklmg said:

Thanks to Zhiyun for sponsoring this video! 
Buy Zhiyun Smooth 4 on Amazon at http://geni.us/yjvB4X
Buy Zhiyun Smooth 4 at http://geni.us/LI2zPT

 

 

Guys why are you compressing red files into mp4 ? If you just use Red files in the premier pro they'll work much more smooth then compressed mp4. There is a plugin (If I'm not wrong it is in Red website). If you work with Red raw footage it is way more easy and smooth. And If you are out of time you can just compress into small resolution edit it with that resolution then replace file with Red project file. If this will catch your interest let me know If I can help you with that. Love your videos watch them every day! Guys you are Great !

[Petas3]

Hello,

 

in the video you mention and showcase your "replication software" running the almost real-time copy magic.

Can you disclose what solution you use?

 

EDIT: I can see it now: PeerSync

 

Thanks

 

PS: 13:37 niceee

[snake_t]

I really want to know how you implement the "Shared Folder Recycle Bin" mechanism in Windows!

As far as I know windows shared folder doesn't have the recycle bin feature, only the program called "Samba in Linux does!

I searched for days to find the best answer as soon as the vid came out, but still no go.

Linus, please tell me! I want to know the answer desperately!

[Entrak]

On 6/30/2018 at 10:22 AM, snake_t said:

I really want to know how you implement the "Shared Folder Recycle Bin" mechanism in Windows!

As far as I know windows shared folder doesn't have the recycle bin feature, only the program called "Samba in Linux does!

I searched for days to find the best answer as soon as the vid came out, but still no go.

Linus, please tell me! I want to know the answer desperately!

Seems that PeerSync offers archive-mode for deleted files:

 

https://kb.peersoftware.com/peersync/how-to-articles/archive-deleted-files-folders

Since it syncs from NAS to Backup-NAS, it checks the primary NAS for any unmatched files and folders, then moves the files found to the designated 'deleted files'-folder you've set on the Backup-NAS, instead of outright deleting them from the Backup-NAS as well. 

[general_ro]

On 6/23/2018 at 9:51 PM, nicklmg said:

Thanks to Zhiyun for sponsoring this video! 
Buy Zhiyun Smooth 4 on Amazon at http://geni.us/yjvB4X
Buy Zhiyun Smooth 4 at http://geni.us/LI2zPT

 

 

 

Followed you advice and ordered Zhiyun Smooth 4 from link you provided.

To be honest it really feels like a SCUM (screen attached)

[Hazizi]

On 6/24/2018 at 11:31 AM, LinusTech said:

Ease of use and availability/support at the time I was setting this up. 

 

*pretty* happy with it. 

 

Only a little bit of virtualization going on. Our domain server (only partially deployed because frankly we didn't really benefit that much for how long it was taking to troubleshoot) but the heaviest use is stuff I didn't want to talk about for security reasons. 

Hi linus,

 

Is PeerSync do the archive work for the accidentally deleted files?

[superninja]

Question what was the audio recording method on this?

[GDRRiley]

22 minutes ago, superninja said:

Question what was the audio recording method on this?

lav or on camera shotgun