Did a search, and not much comes up. I'm currently stumbling my way through a new FreeNAS build and hoping to eventually arrive at a point where I can use a "big" server to handle video files for editing on Avid Media Composer. We currently have a 64TB (raw) SAN system based on iSCSI connections for this, but it hasn't been supported for the past 2 years and shows some problems. It cost a rather large amount at the time of purchase and certainly didn't pay off in terms of years of duty. As budgets decrease, it's becoming apparent that we may never be able to get the Avid branded storage that we know will work ($80,000.00usd or more).
Dealing with the iSCSI connections is a bit of a pain, and uses a proprietary client to mount each user's partition. This is in a college and we can have up to about 200 users each with about 200GB of storage each user. What I want to do is eventually build a FreeNAS server with at least 64TB (raw) to handle all files that the student may need. I can aggregate 10GB connections or 40GB connections as needed (yes I did read up on how FreeNAS aggregates connections). Each client is currently on a 1GB connection with no real plans to change. But we can have up to 27 video editing users right now (commonly around 20 in use at a time), but I want to expand the capability to the same number of video workflows, with multitrack audio workflows (48k wave files). Everything is file based, there are no live (real time) captures taking place, but glitches in playback are frustrating and need to be avoided.
Wave workflows are pretty small, and our software caches all files locally while it works (as soon as the project is opened) so not a real big concern. The video workflows are of course bigger with large files streaming to the client. We are currently using video files (and workflow) with 35mbps each stream (each video clip/render) which currently gives us more than 5 layers at a time on each client (tested to 16 clients) and our normal assignments don't need more than 2 video tracks, so we are normally well within a 1GB each connection and a single 10GB connection to the server. We are a Windows facility and SMB would be the easiest way to mount the shares.
So enough background, the big question come up around, will this work? What tuning should I be doing (or what is available to editing workflows)? I've read a little about VFS Media_Harmony but that seems to be more if multiple users are working on the same project, which we don't currently do. Are there other VFS or tuning options I need to research?
My test machine is a Super Micro X10 based mainboard, 32GB or RAM, dual 6 core Xeon e5-2306v4, onboard Intel SATA controllers in jbod, eight HGST 1TB drives in RAIDZ, and dual 1GB connections to the network. I also put in some 256GB SATA SSD drives for SLOG and L2ARC, but reading up on this I may decide to remove them as my system may not benefit from them.
Thoughts for my production version would be groups of eight drives in RAIDZ, with a stripe to bring the groups together, probably totaling 32 drives (4 groups). A bunch of RAM, probably NVME based SLOG and L2ARC if needed, and 10GB or 40GB connections to the switch with aggregation for failover (even if not graceful). I am going to use a SuperMicro mainboard because I've had really good service from this brand for the last 14 years, X10 or X11 with Intel Xeon processors is a fair bet. Hoping for hardware costs around $20,000.00usd or lower.
Dealing with the iSCSI connections is a bit of a pain, and uses a proprietary client to mount each user's partition. This is in a college and we can have up to about 200 users each with about 200GB of storage each user. What I want to do is eventually build a FreeNAS server with at least 64TB (raw) to handle all files that the student may need. I can aggregate 10GB connections or 40GB connections as needed (yes I did read up on how FreeNAS aggregates connections). Each client is currently on a 1GB connection with no real plans to change. But we can have up to 27 video editing users right now (commonly around 20 in use at a time), but I want to expand the capability to the same number of video workflows, with multitrack audio workflows (48k wave files). Everything is file based, there are no live (real time) captures taking place, but glitches in playback are frustrating and need to be avoided.
Wave workflows are pretty small, and our software caches all files locally while it works (as soon as the project is opened) so not a real big concern. The video workflows are of course bigger with large files streaming to the client. We are currently using video files (and workflow) with 35mbps each stream (each video clip/render) which currently gives us more than 5 layers at a time on each client (tested to 16 clients) and our normal assignments don't need more than 2 video tracks, so we are normally well within a 1GB each connection and a single 10GB connection to the server. We are a Windows facility and SMB would be the easiest way to mount the shares.
So enough background, the big question come up around, will this work? What tuning should I be doing (or what is available to editing workflows)? I've read a little about VFS Media_Harmony but that seems to be more if multiple users are working on the same project, which we don't currently do. Are there other VFS or tuning options I need to research?
My test machine is a Super Micro X10 based mainboard, 32GB or RAM, dual 6 core Xeon e5-2306v4, onboard Intel SATA controllers in jbod, eight HGST 1TB drives in RAIDZ, and dual 1GB connections to the network. I also put in some 256GB SATA SSD drives for SLOG and L2ARC, but reading up on this I may decide to remove them as my system may not benefit from them.
Thoughts for my production version would be groups of eight drives in RAIDZ, with a stripe to bring the groups together, probably totaling 32 drives (4 groups). A bunch of RAM, probably NVME based SLOG and L2ARC if needed, and 10GB or 40GB connections to the switch with aggregation for failover (even if not graceful). I am going to use a SuperMicro mainboard because I've had really good service from this brand for the last 14 years, X10 or X11 with Intel Xeon processors is a fair bet. Hoping for hardware costs around $20,000.00usd or lower.
