WILL THUNDERBOLT SPEEDS CARRY OVER A NETWORK? Picture!

[tarimko]

Unless you're editing 4k video a single Gigabit link is enough speed to edit on the laptop from the Pegasus array on the iMac. I've seen multiple (5+) HD streams working without lag off of a single Gigabit link from arrays before. One stream should be fine, even with a small array like the Pegasus.

 

[musique]

To what are you planning to back up the Pegasus device? RAID is terrific, but it's not a back-up.

Maybe you'd benefit from putting an independent RAID NAS on the network for regular back-ups from the Pegasus.

 

[tarimko]

Unless you're editing 4k video a single Gigabit link is enough speed to edit on the laptop from the Pegasus array on the iMac. I've seen multiple (5+) HD streams working without lag off of a single Gigabit link from arrays before. One stream should be fine, even with a small array like the Pegasus.

I can't believe I wrote this - I totally missed that you said you were planning on editing 2k/4k video. Yeah, GigE isn't gonna handle that too well. You'll either need to do it on one machine, swap the Pegasus from machine to machine, or find some sort of 10GigE adapter for the machines - either that or set up a Fibre Channel SAN. Once you get into the range of 4k video you can saturate a single GigE connection real quick. You maybe, just maybe, could get away with editing one stream at a time depending on bitrate - you'll find a GigE connection can realistically deliver 60-80 megabytes per second once you account for file sharing overhead. (Raw speed of GigE is of course 1000 megabits/s - 125 megabytes/s - but you have overhead to contend with, plus CPU time used on the sending and receiving machines.)

 

[Consultant]

Cheapest method: Use OS X Lion multi-user remote login.
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20111031205901260

Keep it simple and get another Thunderbolt Drive for the second iMac, so you could edit at full speed. Place any shared (common) content on the network and copy it to your local drive when needed, and you should be fine.

Or wait a couple years, and you may see something close to what you are looking for according to your drawings. in the meantime, save your money and keep it simple but functional.

Nope. More TB accessories are expected next year.

 

[jackrv]

What you are describing that you want is basically an XSAN solution.

http://www.apple.com/xsan/whatisxsan.html

Most basically, a storage array and a metadata controller are connected to a fibre channel switch. The end users connect to the switch through fibre channel with HBAs.

As of now, only Mac Pros and existing Xserves have PCI slots for HBAs. You can connect iMacs or laptops via Ethernet, but you are limited to GigE. I can't see TB carrying this data alone, but I definitely can see TB to Fiber Channel adapters at some point. If you need the bandwidth, you're going to have to pay for a proper solution. Thunderbolt is really just an external PCIe bus that can also carry displayport. I have no doubt that existing adapters that are currently PCIe will come out for TB (eSata, GigE, FB HBA), but TB itself is just a bus, not a universal transport.

 

[jtara]

I agree with previous posts that you are making this WAY too complicated.

How much storage do you need to edit a single project? Would it be practical to install a large flash drive on each editing machine? Use the flash drive during editing, archive to the storage box. Gig-E should be fine, unless the editors are extraordinarily productive.

 

[paulrbeers]

My question, is do you really NEED 10gb connection between your computers? What are you trying to get out of your setup? A 1gb connection is theoretically capable of 125MB/s but really you are probably looking at 100MB/s at the actual top speed. That's still a ton of data. Your best bet, is to hook all three computers up via 1gb ethernet (since that is the max networking option they both have) and network share the R6 connected to the iMac to the MBP. If that isn't fast enough, then get each one it's own R4 or R6. However, the problem with this, is that you would have copies of everything stored on two different RAID arrays which can be a lot to juggle and figure out.

Are you sure you realllyyy need more than a 1gb connection?

A question for all, how "good" is the switch in the Time Capsule? Most of the consumer grade routers/switches that I've used do not allow me to really hit max throughput and instead I have to go Prosumer/Business grade switches to really get maximum speed (I have an extreme, but only use it as a DHCP and wifi access point connected to an expensive switch).

 

[rwwest7]

Gigabit is more than double USB 2.0 speeds, can you edit videos from an external USB drive.....yes. I think you're just trying to keep up with the Jones.

 

[Chaos123x]

Why don't you just edit with ProRes. I have the same setup almost.

Pegasus hooked up to macbook pro then to cat5 to a airport to another macbook pro. We can edit at the same time with no stops or dropped frames in full 1080P no problem.

Is it worth buying better cables? Cat6 or Cat7 whats the difference in the cables?

 

[rwwest7]

Why don't you just edit with ProRes. I have the same setup almost.

Pegasus hooked up to macbook pro then to cat5 to a airport to another macbook pro. We can edit at the same time with no stops or dropped frames in full 1080P no problem.

Is it worth buying better cables? Cat6 or Cat7 whats the difference in the cables?

No visible difference, Macs only go to gigabit.

 

[Chaos123x]

No visible difference, Macs only go to gigabit.

The cables i'm using now is just whatever I had laying around, not sure what they are. I'm going to setup Firewire 800 network also to test the different speeds with the blackmagic app.

Also going to plug in two Macbook Pros into a Promise Pegasus and see what happens.

 

[chrfr]

Also going to plug in two Macbook Pros into a Promise Pegasus and see what happens.

Data corruption is what's going to happen. The filesystem is not intended to be accessed by two machines simultaneously. Make sure you have good backups.