Any XSAN 1.3 success stories?

billthefcpguy · JBOD Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 2

Is anyone using XSAN 1.3 in a heavy duty post production workflow? Are you happy? Does it work? I keep hearing that 1.3 causes stability issues and people are staying with 1.2.

Thanks in advance,
Bill

MattG · Xsan Master Joined: 15 Apr 2005 Posts: 456

I'm glad you posted on Xsanity, so that you can get the straight scoop.

Xsan 1.3 does have a number of issues, specifically with writing compressed data streams to the SAN. I have seen these issues come up most frequently with workflows in DV25, DV50 and DV100, where writes to the SAN will cause the writing client to kernel panic. If the files are captured locally and then copied to the SAN, there are no issues. Also, renders to the SAN usually cause playback issues (see the grey box issue posted elsewhere on this site). Downgrades to 1.2 resolve the issues.

Others that have told you that all is well are probably a) not using the SAN to do direct writes (they captures files locally and then copy them to the SAN, as is the case with Bunam-Murray), b) not using a volume with LUNs larger than 2TB (ie. they upgraded to 1.3 after having created their volume in a previous version) or c) are using mainly uncompressed workflows.

There is a slightly related issue with OS 10.4.6 and ECC RAM. Since all Xserves have ECC RAM from the factory, users may experience issues with their servers running 10.4.6.

So, my clients are staying put at 1.2 for the time being.

billthefcpguy · JBOD Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 2

Thanks, Matt. Your reply gets right to the root of the issues we're seeing.

Cheers,
Bill

OrinHD · JBOD Joined: 12 Jun 2006 Posts: 2

I run an HD heavy post shop with a few edit bays connected to 11.2TB of RAID via XSAN 1.3. Our systems were messed up until recently when an excellent engineer came in and redesigned our SAN. We had lengthy discussions about the upgrade but in the end decided that status quo with 1.2 was getting us nowhere. We took the plunge and have never looked back. As a matter of fact, since we've upgraded we have had a few minor problems with our edit bays while the SAN has remained rock solid. I reccomend the upgrade.

Rupert Watson · Knows DNS is the answer Joined: 25 Jun 2005 Posts: 33

OrinHD · JBOD Joined: 12 Jun 2006 Posts: 2

I work mostly in the DVCProHD codec with some work in uncompressed. We simply have far too much media to work with across our projects to work only in uncompressed. We do try to reconnect a timeline with uncompressed when we output master tapes.

JBlood · partially protected Joined: 13 Dec 2005 Posts: 5

We upgraded everything to 10.4.6 and Xsan 1.3 about a week and a half ago during our expansion and we have yet to experience any problems. We have 10 HD edit bays hitting the volume over fibre, and another 20 compression machines that only see the volume via AFP.
The first thing we saw was the kernel panic thing, but after downgrading Quicktime back to 7.0.1 from 7.1.1 (which was inadvertantly added to the upgrade package), that problem went away.