Video Production Storage & Render Server Help

TerranVissare · October 21, 2017

Hey Guys!

Long time reader, first time poster. Looking for some server help.

I work at a video production company that’s rapidly growing. Think LMG ~2014/5. We actually went to school with some of the editors there.

We are trying to upgrade our storage systems as we move into a larger facility. We currently run a supermicro FREENAS server with 12 3.5 hard drives of 4 TB each. After raid we have about 40 TB of space.

Currently it is not wired into any sort of network infrastructure. With the exception being a single laptop with 1G ethernet directly from the server. We use this to load our SSDs we edit off off. It’s slow. We are wondering what the best way to upgrade this to a multi edit situation would be.

Would the best bet be 10G ethernet out of the server directly to the workstations? Would our server be fast enough? It has 12 cores I believe. There would be times when the sever needs to be accessed by multiple people at the same time would that be okay?

We would also also like a computer that can render tasks remotely. I have played around with using a Ryzen 1700x we have already, and running VMs with Adobe Media encoder and Lightroom open for exports. This would be linked to the server for the files.

Is is there a way to have the server do this. I couldn’t find a way in freenas. Do I need unraid like 7 gamers one cpu?

Finally, we are also setting up a off site backup. This right now is just a Windows i3 with a varriety of drives in JBOD. The plan is to have it remote in to the server and compare what’s new and copy it over the Internet. Not sure about how yet. Any advice there is welcome.

I have also seen the LTT videos they have done on there storage system. Though I’m not super clear on the total config. We would rather not spend the money on a storanator 45 drive though that would probably be ideal as they make it look easy.

We bought our server for $700 no drives off eBay for reference.

Any advice is welcome!

Thanks from Vancouver Canada!

Windows7ge · October 21, 2017

I can provide advice pertaining to upgrading from 1Gbit networking to 10Gbit. Also FreeNAS 11 has a VM program built in called BeeHive (spelt differently, pronounced the same). Though I cannot validate if it will do what you're asking.

As for the other things I'm probably not the right person but I can try if nobody else steps up.

leadeater · October 21, 2017

25 minutes ago, TerranVissare said:

We bought our server for $700 no drives off eBay for reference.

Cheapest way to do it even if it's only for the rackmount chassis and PSU, new these are stupidly priced.

25 minutes ago, TerranVissare said:

Would the best bet be 10G ethernet out of the server directly to the workstations? Would our server be fast enough? It has 12 cores I believe. There would be times when the sever needs to be accessed by multiple people at the same time would that be okay?

Spindle count (number of HDDs) will matter much more than CPU. Serving files generally doesn't take a lot of CPU power but multiple people reading files off a server tends to make all I/O act like random rather than sequential even though individually each computer may be doing a sequential operation, this is where HDDs struggle so more is better.

25 minutes ago, TerranVissare said:

Would the best bet be 10G ethernet out of the server directly to the workstations?

Only if you actually need it, calculate the bitrate of the format you are using and if it's below 1Gbps (100MB/s) then no you'll be putting money in to something that isn't required. 10Gbps from the server to a switch then 1Gbps to each workstation works well.

25 minutes ago, TerranVissare said:

Is is there a way to have the server do this. I couldn’t find a way in freenas. Do I need unraid like 7 gamers one cpu?

Not using FreeNAS no. UnRAID is an option but it also isn't the only option, it does score highly for ease of use though.

Long term I'd be looking to transition to a vendor solution from someone like Promax or SNS but that does ultimately come down funds etc.

http://promax.com

http://www.studionetworksolutions.com

ProMax actually has some really good infromation on their website that you can use to calculate resource requirements and number of HDDs to support your workflow, plus some really handy video presentations they recorded.

http://promax.com/articles/4k-myth-can-edit-4k-without-breaking-budget/

http://promax.com/products/platform-online/ (performance tab)

http://promax.com/education/

leadeater · October 21, 2017

One workstation that does have 10Gb to the server isn't a bad idea either if all of them don't require it for normal usage, that way you can use it to upload/download files quickly.