SAN for HD video system?

[n604]

I'm building a complex server/storage system for someone.
He wants to do High Definition capture, editing, processing, playback, streaming, broadcasting... etc.

HD needs a lot of space: DVCPro HD is 100Mb/s
we need very fast access to a lot of drives.
the machines have very fast processors and video cards and tons of memory.

what's the best solution for storage?
have a seperate hard drive rack dedicated to each machine?
or have a main storage unit with which all the workstation machines communicate?

we're using 500gb seagate sata II drives. like 30 of them.
our dilema is: should the drives be inside or outside teh workstation machines?
should we go fiber? or just sata? 1gig ethernet is too slow.

budget is around 20k
how would you guys set this up?

any help is apreciated.

 

[n604]

correction on space required:

(I'm quoting this from another forum)

10 bit 4:2:2 @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps (cinema frame rate) = 109.43 MB per/sec, or 394 GB per/hr.

10 bit 4:4:4 @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps (cinema frame rate) = 164.145 MB/sec, or 591 GB/hr.

12 bit 4:4:4 @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps (cinema frame rate) = 196.974 MB/sec, or 709.2 GB/hr

...so your 2 hour movie takes up 1.42 TB of space.

And at about 200 MB/sec, that requires one colossal drive system...and a lot of them.

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

you should go fiber ( at least 2 Gbit ) or ethernet 10 Gbit
At that point you will not be running into limits of your cable.
On storage point of view,I would do some proof of concepts with different vendors and see if you can obtain 200 mb /sec. Will be difficult though with that small budget.In san , 20 k is nothing ...Best would be a centralised storage, 4 Gbit fiberchannel, with FCAL disks at 15krpm.Otherwise your disks will become the bottleneck.You can use disks of 72 Gb or 144 Gb for optimal performance ( more spindels = better performance )

rgds,

R.

 

[xmsre]

When it comes to content delivery, look at

http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3152.pdf

For editing and processing, you'll probably toward something like GX.

http://www.netapp.com/library/tr/3468.pdf.

If you look at the animation studios like Dreamworks, you'll see that they're running GX on Fibre. If you go with something like the FAS6030 or 6070, you can get 4G fibre channel.

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

don't forget the budget is only 20 K,so I don't think a fas 6000 will fit the profile,and for an ontap GX,you only have nfs and cifs for now, and need to have the nodes setup in clustered pairs,so then the 20 k will surely not allow it

 

[JG5]

Yeah - NetApp has the unique ability to price themselves right out of the solar system. Take a look at the 3Par E200. But as mentioned before, try to do some proof of concepts. They have 500 gig FATA drives which are cheaper than the FC drives.