Anyone using iSCSI for session sharing?

[IO Composer]

Studio Network Solutions now has a $499 client for iSCSI. Just wondering if anyone is using this or something comparable to share protools sessions over a network. If so, how's it working?

[tigas]

Depends on what you think is "sharing sessions". You can centralize storage and have it accessible on all workstations, but only one workstation at a time can have write access to each drive. A drive that is being written by a computer can only be accessed as Read-Only by all other computers on the network.

You can mount drives where other people are working as read-only, and import their tracks from their sessions, but you have to create a new session on your own drive to work. Later, when they're finished, the other guy will have to do the same to your session to consolidate both sessions. There's no "multi-user sessions" like someone has told me Nuendo has.

AFAIK, ProTools also does not support XSan (or other Stornext SANs), MetaSAN, and in OSX it does not even support Unity (only as a glorified network drive)

[mikevarela]

Tigas is correct, you cannot run PT sessions off the networked drive, or any other drive that isn't directly connected through bus or FW/USB - however - you can run sessions off certain SAN architectures, but this involves initial setup with certain software by a network admin.

iSCSI is fantastic however, I've been reading about it lately. You can also find it in the Drobo Pro line. It uses Cat6 I think.

Creating a networked share for backup or repository files is at the mercy of the connections of the other computers, and Fibre would be best, however it's not economical for most so getting cat 6 cable routed around in a verified Gigabit network would be much more worth the cost, and speeds of transfer are pretty quick. But just to remind you, this is for transfer and backup, not running sessions directly.

It turns out that the most effective way to run sessions is on the internal bus of drives in your computer, as it always has been. You can boost performance by increasing ram and upgrading your mac, but you can also purchase 10,000 rpm hard drives, say 2 of them and internally raid 0 them. This will give you the best performance you can get, and maximize your track counts. remember to back up the sessions daily though, because raid 0 isn't redundant.

The iSCSI option is nice if it's directly attached for storage, or if in the drobo pro you can connect 4 or so computers directly for quick access between them, but more-over a good solid network is going to be your best bet.

[IO Composer]

Thanks for the input.

Studio Network Solutions SWEARS that you can run protools with high track counts on their SAN hardware using SANmp. I'm not sure I'm willing to dump $15k to test that theory, but they're selling based on this information, so I'm inclined to believe that it does work.

I was really hoping to hear from someone who has dumped the cash and can verify that you can in fact work on PT sessions over an iSCSI network.

[Ale]

Hi

I am also thinking about iscsi since 1,5 years now.

Talked to the german distributors of
http://www.dynamicdrivepool.com/avidptflhd.htm
Many stations here in germany switch or have switched to this company.

They told me that running hughe PT or Avid sessions from that iscsi drives is no problem. Even HD videos . In my case I would be able to connect all my rooms to the same storage and so could easily share sessions between rooms.

They also told me that dynamic drive pool is superior to studio network solution, because of the better managment system and user right system.

But must say my information is 1,5 years old. My solution would have cost me about 20000 dollars thats why I am still dreaming about it!

Maybe it is cheaper now.

Ale

[espron]

I have used a Studio Network Solutions EVO with a combination of fibre and iscsi-clients. This was in a five studio complex, with all rooms sharing storage.

The setup worked great, all five PT rigs could do full rack counts at the same time.

As mentioned earlier, only one PT rig is allowed to mount a disk volume for writing at a time, but all systems can have all volumes mounted as read-only.
SNS has special sharing software that controls all of this.

Depending on your workflow this may or may not be a problem. For us, working in post, it never was a problem. The performance of the EVO was rock-solid and the SNS support really outstanding. It's not cheap though, so I guess it makes most sense in a multi-room setup.

Espen

[IO Composer]

Thanks for the info Espen!!

[mikevarela]

Jamey,

SanMP is one of those occurrences where using a SAN works. Can't comment on iSCSI, but we're running a large SAN (over 72 drives) with over 10 rooms connected via fibre and it works very well. Actually it's really the only solution when you get bigger than say three room, especially with multiple engineers working on the same project.

It's expensive though, and as mentioned before, only 1 with write access at a time. But, we're running large sessions directly from it.

SanMp appears to Pro Tools as a bunch of connected logical volumes. To the user they appear as you set them up, so maybe a 500GB raid share per room and one for system, programs and admin.

Also consider that you'll need some large raid to back the San up every night as well, though this can be slower disks.

[Craig F]

RSPE did a demo of iSCSI a few years ago.

Had 2 or 3 different units as I remember.

[ekuehnl]

I've used the SNS solution extensively. It works great, but collaboration is severely limited by the volume-based locking scheme. You really need volumes dedicated to each user. If you're looking to create a single volume per project you'll have to look elsewhere. File-based locking is one of the areas where Unity excels, but unfortunately it isn't a Mac solution.