Anyone using FreeNAS for network project storage?

[lucienpalmer]

Anyone here using a FreeNAS server for Pro Tools project sharing over a LAN?I'm looking for a shared solution to use with 2-3 PT systems and an Atmos RMU via 10Gb NIC.

I searched the forums, but any posts regarding FreeNAS are a bit too old to be relevant.

[Artis]

I use FreeNAS as backup, archiving, sound library and sharing server, but not as play out device. As far as I know, only Pro Tools play out supported NAS is Avid's own NEXIS server. But I have read in this forum that others have had success in some degree playing out from other NAS. I have NEXIS in other studio and it works great as play out server.

[lucienpalmer]

Thanks, I took the plunge and built a 20-core, 128 GB RAM, 64 TB storage server. So far so good.

As for PT playback, any server should work pretty well. Most sessions load into RAM. The big question is writing. I didn’t have any problems with a 5.1 session writing a dozen 5.1 and 2.0 stems.

So far, the only problem is getting the Dolby hardware RMU to write to the FreeNAS server. But that seems to be a permissions issue. So I just need to do more research on how to setup the shares. Currently, I created only Unix share for both the MacOS machines and the windows 10 RMU.

[Brandonx1]

[QUOTE=lucienpalmer;2541175 20-core, 128 GB RAM, 64 TB storage server. \.[/QUOTE]

Overkill? Why do you need so much firepower for this? Also, are you playing video out from this server as well?

[lucienpalmer]

Possibly overkill, but that was intensional. ZFS is constantly checking blocks as it writes. And I'm using ZFS3, which uses a 3 disk parity. Plus data compression. And all three of those things require a lot of processing, so I needed all those cores. And crunching those numbers takes time, so if I'm trying to write a dozen 5.1 stems, and the disk write can't keep up, it starts to fill RAM and hold it until it's ready to write the data. So the more RAM, the better. I'm using enterprise SAS3 12Gb/s drives, so they are doing pretty good, but can't touch the speed of SSDs. But I needed the space. 64TB after the 3 disk parity leaves about 40TB usable.

I still need to set up with the Dolby RMU and test master writing. Haven't had time.

[Frank Kruse]

Interesting, and you connecting with what kind of interface? 10Gb? Fibre? With iSCSI or just AFP?

[Wellnitz]

Hi Lucien,

we are working with 14 PT HDX Systems on different NAS server.

https://elements.tv
thats our server for soaps and dokusoaps
10 GB

https://www.harmonicinc.com
for sports : german Bundesliga or formula one
1 GB

On the elements server are our Pro Tools sessions and Videos.
On the Media Grid server are only sports videos that we stream.

They both are working well, but we are not heavy on tracks. About 20-30 tracks per system most of the time.

regards

Jochen

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by Wellnitz

Hi Lucien,

we are working with 14 PT HDX Systems on different NAS server.

Thanks, Jochen. Do you know what OS their servers are running? Just curious. Several media servers (like OWC) run on FreeNAS.

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

Interesting, and you connecting with what kind of interface? 10Gb? Fibre? With iSCSI or just AFP?

Hi Frank. Sorry for the delay; lots of deadlines lately. I have been too busy to spend much time on this server project. At the moment, I'm only using it for duplicate backup, and it's using a 1Gb NIC. The internal drives are 12GB/s SAS enterprise drives. I have them in a RAID-Z3 (basically RAID 7), so it's set up for data protection, not for speed.

Ultimately, I'll install a 10Gb NIC in it. With a dedicated 10GB switch. So far, I've only added a 10Gb NIC to the Dolby RMU.

The big hold-up is my main system. It's a MacPro 5,1 with two PCIe expansion chassis' that are both completely full. No room to add another NIC. So I'll probably keep using the FreeNAS server for backup only for now and wait until I replace the main system with the new MacPro 7,1 before use it to directly read/write sessions.

If I do any more tests over 1GbE, I'll post it here. That first test I did worked great. Session, video playback, and recording stems.