Reasonably priced SAN systems, budget of 2-4k, possible?

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deathwinger

Active member
I'm looking at a reasonably priced SAN and backup system solution and so far all I am getting is stuff like Evo system priced as high as 19,000 US. Yikes!

Can anyone offer any solutions or alternatives to this system for HD and HDV editing?
 
I would say I need 4-6TB worth of dataspace.

The sustained transfer speed has to be fast enough to handle the editing of HD and HDV

I want it fault tolerant to the point that if there is a single hard drive failure I don't lose all my information on that SAN system

I would ideally like multiple systems to access it via a server so that no ONE editing computer needs to be on in order for the other editing systems to be able to use the resources on the drive.


I have been looking at the DroboPro and it appears to be in my price range (the special with 8x1TB drives). How would this be for editing HD and HDV in the Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 on multiple systems (say one for motion graphics, one for sound and music and one for first and final edit)?
 
Are you sure you want a SAN and not merely some type of NAS? If you can get away with something not called "SAN" you can save a lot of money... that is, if you don't need the features of a SAN (e.g., storage that seems to the computer to be on a local drive rather than on a network), then there are much more affordable solutions. One major problem with a SAN is that, since it seems to be a local drive, you have to jump through many hoops to prevent users from corrupting each other's data - and those hoops tend to take the form of very expensive software. A NAS operates at a higher level, and thus avoids the corruption issues (though access control is still needed to avoid other user-contention issues... like users deleting each other's files, versioning issues, etc).

A fairly cheap NAS (such as the Drobos or the Netgear ReadyNAS line, which I've had some luck with) may do what you need. If you really need the features of a SAN, you can build your own with something like FreeNAS - but unless you're OK with the limitation of one workstation accessing each virtual "drive" at a time, you'll need expensive client-side software. But if you can live with the limitation, then a combination of FreeNAS and something like globalsan's free client software can be a cheap path...

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage for the distinction between NAS and SAN...)
 
I essentially want a system where all information and content is centralized and everyone can access and edit the content of the data, not necessarily at the same time but to eliminate the downtime of having to transfer files from one computer to the other in order for content to be used.

Furthermore, I'd like the system to also be able to backup completed projects so that if a client comes a year later and wants revisions, we have the project there ready and waiting to change it up.
 
Right... so you need to investigate whether your software will let you do this using networked storage, or if you really need a SAN.

For example, a lot of audio-editing software (e.g., ProTools, Digital Performer) won't work with typical network storage (it took a while to find this out for DP... most operations DO work, but a few discovered later made its use in this manner impossible). Final Cut Pro seems able to do almost everything with networked data, but sometimes seems to have trouble writing very large files to networked storage. ProTools makes it easy: it says "this drive is not suitable"... with the other software, it's trial and error.

So, what software do you want to use to share the data? Ask the software providers if it will work with networked data (though they will often not know the answer, or give you the wrong answer), and seek out on the web or in RL others who've built systems that do (or have failed to do!) what you want to do...

...and, as advice, frankly, on the cheaper side of things.... transfers may not be such a bad idea. They protect the original data, etc. So working with a central non-SAN fileserver. and transferring projects to/from that as necessary, may be viable. Also consider just moving HDs with projects around to the different computers... 'cause a serious SAN system that does all you want will likely be in the $20,000 range.

But heck, if you can, try FreeNAS iSCSI and see if it'll work for you!
 
Thanks for all your advice. I am using the Adobe CS4 for all my needs. I will consider your alternatives but I would really much prefer the centralized system as I feel this keeps work in sync.

The SAN may not be necessary for now, but a shared and fast storage solution is something that would be required. I'll update this thread based on my findings.
 
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