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Storage Server - is this feasable for RED 4K Editing

Go to solution Solved by ItsJo,

Alright, thank you everyone! We decided to go with a DAS instad of a NAS.

Hello everyone! I have some Questions about a project I am currently planning. Maybe you can help me, that would be super awesome :)

A friend of mine is a indie film maker. He is currently editing on a Mac Pro (trashcan) and copying his files from external HDD's to his internal SSD or HDD to edit. He sometimes filmes on a 4K RED and so his internal SSD really doesnt do much for him.

I suggested a RAID 5 Server with FreeNAS, connected via 2x 1Gib Ethernet to his Mac so he can edit right off that.

He was open to the idea so i started looking for used hardware to realize this.
I found a Supermicro X9DRi-F, it has:

  • 2x 6C Xeon E5-2620 2.0GHz
  • 64 GB ECC DDR3 RAM
  • 10 HDD Slots (8 hotswap, 2 internal)
  • 2x500W PSU (one could later install GPU(s) to make it into a render machine
  • 2x Gib Ethernet
  • A SLI MegaRAID Card with 8x SAS/SATA (SAS is important for my plan)

The seller also sells 6 15K 450GB SAS Drives. He would sell the whole packet to me for 550€

I understand that I would have to flash the RAID Card in order to use it as just a SAS controller and let FreeNAS do a software RAID.

The biggest Problem in my opinion is the capacity of the drives. A RAID 5 with 6 Drives would yield in 2.4 TB of Storage (be it very, very fast)

I now have two Questions:
Is 2 x 1 GiB Ethernet generally enough to edit Video (4k RED, if it had to be proxied to 1080p that would not make the workflow worse but would it work on 4k)?

Is FreeNAS a good solution for this or would I have to do some other setup?

Can FreeNAS handle two different types of drives? Could I put "normal" SATA drives into the System to add more Storage and how would that affect performance?

Thank you very much for taking your time!

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What bitrate is this red footage?
 

You really want 10gbe here, also normally 2x1gbe doesn't give you 2gbe speeds

 

Don't use 15k drives, you can get ssds for that much and they are much faster. Also modern hdds are almost as fast due to the more dense platters.

 

You proably want higherclocked chips are lots of things like cifs are single threaded.

 

 

Also do you need multiple systems to access this footage, if not id get a thunderbolt das here, like this one https://www.lacie.com/products/big/5big-thunderbolt-2/, it will be much faster than a 1gbe solution and cheaper than 10gbe.

 

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Assuming that this is 4k raw uncompressed video we can perform the following calculations:

4k = 3840 x 2160 = 8294400 pixels

24 bits per pixel so: 24 * 8294400 = 199065600 bits per frame of video.

again, assuming this video is 24 frames per second: 24 * 199065600 = 4777574400 bits/second

which is about 4.7 gigabits/second. (that number is going to turn out even higher in the real world)

in other words, you need a network connection of at least 4.7 Gb/s to play the videos at normal speed. 2Gbit ethernet isn't going to be enough.

 

I agree with Electronics Wizardry, You're going to need an additional (10GbE) network interface card to make this work. However, I'd still say the server is a good deal since the rest of the specs are fine, and the NIC can be obtained for little money on ebay.

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22 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What bitrate is this red footage?

You really want 10gbe here, also normally 2x1gbe doesn't give you 2gbe speeds

Don't use 15k drives, you can get ssds for that much and they are much faster. Also modern hdds are almost as fast due to the more dense platters.

You proably want higherclocked chips are lots of things like cifs are single threaded.

He tells me his bitrate currently is 54 MB/s to 70 MB/s (EDIT he does not need 8K)
Unfortunately the Mac Pro doesn't have 10 Gib Ethernet. But thanks for brining my attention to the 2 Gib problem.

For the 15k drives I basically pay 50€ I dont think I can get SSD's for that price. But of course I would prefer those

So you think the chips would not suffice? Would the slightly higher clocked 2.3 GHZ xeon be better? (also 6 cores, and 2 x)

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5 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

Assuming that this is 4k raw uncompressed video we can perform the following calculations:

4k = 3840 x 2160 = 8294400 pixels

24 bits per pixel so: 24 * 8294400 = 199065600 bits per frame of video.

again, assuming this video is 24 frames per second: 24 * 199065600 = 4777574400 bits/second

which is about 4.7 gigabits/second. (that number is going to turn out even higher in the real world)

in other words, you need a network connection of at least 4.7 Gb/s to play the videos at normal speed. 2Gbit ethernet isn't going to be enough.

 

You're going to need an additional network interface card to make this work. However, I'd still say the server is a good deal since the rest of the specs are fine, and the NIC can be obtained for little money on ebay.

I think it's not really that much. RED Website tells me 91 Mb/s for his camera on 60 FPS

Also I dont know if it's possible to connect a network card capable of those speeds to a mac pro. (It does only have Thunderbold 2)

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7 hours ago, ItsJo said:

He tells me his bitrate currently is 54 MB/s to 70 MB/s (EDIT he does not need 8K)
Unfortunately the Mac Pro doesn't have 10 Gib Ethernet. But thanks for brining my attention to the 2 Gib problem.

For the 15k drives I basically pay 50€ I dont think I can get SSD's for that price. But of course I would prefer those

So you think the chips would not suffice? Would the slightly higher clocked 2.3 GHZ xeon be better?

You can add 10gbe to the mac pro with thunderbolt if you want.

 

Those 15k drives are a horrible value aswell, get a standard 2tb or 4tb 3.5 hdd here, you can't even use the faster speeds, a single hdd will be limited by the network.

 

 

Why not just get a thunderbolt das? seems like a much better solution. Editing red footage off 1gbe will be a very bad experience.

 

Cpu clock speed matters with faster networks, almost any cpu can fill gig network, but you want more that.

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You could scrape by on the gigabit connection, but it might cause problems when doing stuff like playing videos at a higher speed or scrubbing through a timeline quickly. 

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4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can add 10gbe to the mac pro with thunderbolt if you want.

 

Those 15k drives are a horrible value aswell, get a standard 2tb or 4tb 3.5 hdd here, you can't even use the faster speeds, a single hdd will be limited by the network.

 

 

Why not just get a thunderbolt das? seems like a much better solution. Editing red footage off 1gbe will be a very bad experience.

 

Cpu clock speed matters with faster networks, almost any cpu can fill gig network, but you want more that.

The cheapest 10 gig thunderbold 2 adapter i found costs around 400 USD, thats way too much. If 10 gig is required this will not work.

I do not see where I can get 2.4 TB of very fast storage for basicly 50€ No normal HDD will limit my network even with 1 Gib.

Where can I find out what kind of CPU I need?

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1 minute ago, akio123008 said:

You could scrape by on the gigabit connection, but it might cause problems when doing stuff like playing videos at a higher speed or scrubbing through a timeline quickly. 

Alright. I will take a look on faster networking :)

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7 hours ago, ItsJo said:

The cheapest 10 gig thunderbold 2 adapter i found costs around 400 USD, thats way too much. If 10 gig is required this will not work.

I do not see where I can get 2.4 TB of very fast storage for basicly 50€ No normal HDD will limit my network even with 1 Gib.

Where can I find out what kind of CPU I need?

go with the thunderbolt das, you need more than the speed of gigabit here, and you either need to spend for 10gbe, or get a multibay thunderbolt das. the thunderbolt das is the cheaper solution here and should fit all your needs.

 

With a 1gbe nas, there is no need for fast drives. Your limited by the speed of the network anyways. A new 8tb wd red is a 5400rpm drive and can read at write at about 180mB/s, gigabit is about 120mB/s peak.

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6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

go with the thunderbolt das, you need more than the speed of gigabit here, and you either need to spend for 10gbe, or get a multibay thunderbolt das. the thunderbolt das is the cheaper solution here and should fit all your needs.

 

With a 1gbe nas, there is no need for fast drives. Your limited by the speed of the network anyways. A new 8tb wd red is a 5400rpm drive and can read at write at about 180mB/s, gigabit is about 120mB/s peak.

Alright, your judgement sounds sensible. I will look further but thank you very much!

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I'd go with the DAS too, it's probably the best value for money option. 

 

The only cost effective networking based solution that I could think of is by using link aggregation, eg combining the ethernet ports on the server and the mac. This might be possible if the mac, the server and possibly the switch support 802.3ad or 802.1AX. Theoretically this would allow for 2GbE, altough in the real world it could be lower.

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7 hours ago, ItsJo said:

Alright, your judgement sounds sensible. I will look further but thank you very much!

Pricing on those thunderbolt das boxes isn't great, so if you want a good product you have to pay a good amount, esp as thunderbolt 2 is now eol.

 

This is a good option if you have the money. https://www.lacie.com/products/big/5big-thunderbolt-2/

 

Otherwise If you want cheap, id get a usb3 das, like this one. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HFR2-SU3S2-PRORAID-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B003YFHEAC

 

It will be slower, but its cheap, faster than 1gbe and will work.

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If he's an indie film maker I'm going to assume he only really works/edits as a one man team. In which case I wouldn't get a nas. I would get a DAS.

 

If a NAS is needed, Qnap do one that I have used on a feature film before that had 2x10GB rj45 and 2xThunderbolt2 as well as a couple usb3 and 1gb ethernet. I can't remember the exact model as it was a couple of years ago now. It was about $2500 for the NAS and then the disks were extra. 

 

It had 8 x 8tb disks and in a raid array it had a throughput of around 700mbps. 

 

 

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On 8/10/2018 at 5:44 AM, ItsJo said:

The seller also sells 6 15K 450GB SAS Drives.

Avoid 15K RPM disks, they fail a lot. Just go with used server SSDs since those a far less likely to fail than used SAS disks, though buying new HDDs would be best.

 

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