block-level and file-level access/sharing

[Essence_of_War]

Short: If you're exporting block-level storage to users and then inserting another software layer so that these blocks are used "safely", are you doing it wrong?

Long:

My wife works for a very small video editing company, and they're looking for a local storage server that will let them share footage, but they don't need to collaborate on projects simultaneously. They'd also like to run a digital asset management software. They don't have any IT folks on staff or even working with them, so anything they set-up really needs to be self-contained, come with service contract/configuration etc.

They're looking at this particular device+software combo
http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/evo/tech/
+
http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/sanmp/features/

it seems really weird to me. I don't understand what the point of exporting block-level storage is if you also have to insert a software layer so that no one tramples all over the storage while someone else is using it. It seems like with this system, only one person can have the shared storage mounted for writing at a time, and for the most part, they only write to the volume when they're ingesting footage, buuuutttt they're standard edit platform is Premiere, and Premiere writes XMP files to the same directories as the raw footage while you're editing, so it sounds like actually this wouldn't work at all since it isn't enough to have the shared storage mounted read only?

She's confused, I tried to help and I'm confused too. Am I missing something really obvious or is this actually pretty confusing?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

That's pretty normal in the video editing sphere. Presenting storage at the file level typically results in more overhead than providing it block-level and then managing metadata. For a video editing SAN, typically you want as little overhead as possible.

I'm also not sure if a file based NAS would be as flexible about skipping around within a file for reading bits and pieces, to do previews and stuff. (A traditional NAS would force you to transfer the entire file to the client for the client to figure it out. Unless you were doing other dirty tricks. For a word doc? Nobody cares. For a 200GB video capture? Hoo-boy.)

It's how clustered file systems normally work. Most commonly found in big database clusters or high end HA NAS units. And VMWare or Hyper-V clusters. Anywhere that replication lag will cause issues, or where multiple machines HAVE to get at the same data on the same disks (like for VM failover.). But, like I said, also common for upscale video editing shared storage systems.

 

[Viper GTS]

I work in broadcast (though at a much larger scale than this solution is geared towards), there is a lot of stuff that is odd in broadcast if you aren't used to it.

I'm not familiar with SNS directly but looking through their site it appears to operate similarly to systems I have used before.

Think of their software as an intermediate layer that sits between the true file system (which they are doing a good job of hiding, but may be StorNext) and what is presented to the edit stations.

From here:

http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/evo/faq/

Will EVO allow Fibre Channel to iSCSI bridging?
Yes. Not only is EVO a complete SAN/NAS system, you can also use it to bridge your other Fibre Channel storage, such as an Xserve RAID, so that it can be shared over Ethernet.

They take control of the FC layer disks and then present virtual LUNs out to the clients. They can then control who gets read, read-write, etc access.

It's a way of introducing the benefits of a shared edit environment without the cost of a true clustered file system. A StorNext implementation on Quantum MDCs is easily six figures with no actual storage yet - Just for metadata controller and client licensing. Client licenses run something like $2k apiece for direct connect clients.

I run a Premiere based edit environment with close to 100 users all editing in place on the same content. You can configure Premiere to write its data elsewhere (eg locally) so you aren't polluting your shared environment. SNS explicitly lists Premiere support so I'd imagine they know what they are doing.

Viper GTS

 

[yinan]

StoreNext is crap and we are doing everything we can to get rid of it. Only bad part is we have like 30Pb of storage behind it.