Is this RAID pipeline fast enough for 5K?

[Ryan De Franco]

Any advice you can offer on our $9,000 purchase would be much appreciated...

Basic question: is 200 mb/s fast enough for editing 4K and 5K natively at 1/2 res?

We're looking to replace our CalDigit HDOne (8 drives, PCI-e connection) with an HDPro2. The big difference is this would allow three edit bays to read/write to the RAID using a CalDigit PCI-e switch. According to CalDigit, three machines accessing the RAID would divide the 600 mbps throughput evenly into 200 mbps per machine.

Currently we use ProRes exports in Final Cut 7. But if our editors were to begin working with the R3D files natively, could 200 mbps sustain Raw files?

[Shaun Cammack]

In my experience, it is enough. I think the data rate on a full R3D is around 40-50 MB / sec. This is just off the top of my head, though. I'd imagine it would change when dealing with HDRx.

And I assume you mean, 200 MBps, not mbps.

[Eric Cameron]

I assume you mean 200 MBps as well. Yes, as a raw figure that's plenty for single stream R3D playback. Epic footage is substantially heavier than Red One footage though; 5K 2:1 at 5:1 compression is somewhere around 85-90MBps I think. Keep in mind though that there are a lot more factors to sharing storage than just the disk bandwidth.

[Ryan De Franco]

Thanks guys--and yes, MBps.

Eric--what other factors should we be taking into consideration? I am a camera operator pretending to be a digital tech here...

Here's how I imagine the new workflow.... editors receive a Glyph drive from set. Footage is backed up to the CalDigit RAID for online editorial and color grade. Some sort of synchronized back-up program backs up the project files + new assets to the RAID overnight.

At the end of the job, the footage exists on both the Glyph and the RAID. The RAID drives are periodically replaced as they fill up. Once full, they are backed up to LTO, which we then store off-site. Any recommendations / concerns?

Thanks all.

[Christopher Barrett]

I got a recommendation for the iStorage Pro 6g Expander Tower (http://www.istoragepro.com/prod.php?id=it8sae6g) right here on RU. I love it. I think it was like 4k with 8 - 2TB drives. I set it up in RAID 6 + 1 Hot Swap and am getting 600mb/s over SAS via an ATTO R680.

Good Stuff!

[Eric Cameron]

Factors like your connection between computers, network setup, whether the computer hosting the raid is a dedicated storage server or is doing other things at the same time. Factors like controller latency when handling multiple simultaneous requests. I don't know anything about the controller in the caldigit box, not saying its bad, just don't know if it's good. I personally like the ATTO cards with iStorage SAS external enclosures. Fast, reliable, and relatively cheap (could do an 18TB RAID6 for probably under $6,000 depending on various factors). Very expandable too. I've run almost 300TB of RAID 6 on one system with these. I'm not a professional hardware engineer, and it's impossible to give perfectly tailored advice over the internet, but if you're going to spend nine grand on a RAID, look into multiple solutions to find the one that fits your needs. Maybe the Caldigit is what you need. They seem like easy, fairly turnkey systems, and sometimes that's just what is needed.

[Jack Cooper]

Our Houston folks are investigating upgrading their SCSI drives. Currently on HP workstation, with external rack configuration.

If you haven't made the purchase yet? Check out http://rorke.com/

We have the old Rorke drive bays (2TB total - we don't do features on that box), but it was handling single layer Red1 footage at 1/4 res when we first started playing with it - which I thought was pretty impressive. The CalDigit guy really didn't sound too knowledgeable on Red systems when our folks talked with them.

Rorke has a couple of "plug and play" scenarios already tuned to the Red workflow. Additionally, they have an LTO configuration that seemed pretty impressive. We haven't run the LTO economics yet so nothing to report in terms of $/GB of back up or any other metrics.