Can NAS be used for stuff like video encoding?

Hey dudes.

I'm a gamer and a part time video encoding/rendering guy.

As a result of that, plus my giant porn / movie / video collection I have conflicting needs:

I'm building a mostly new high priced rig when the extreme intel 8-core CPUs / X99 hit soon primarily for gaming, but how do I handle my stupid storage needs?

I currently have 17Tb of storage in my system (see sig). Its about 12 TB full so far, and getting fuller, and it's messy as hell. I don't mind, because this case is window less and hidden under my desk:

(the 2 x SSDs you cant see are actually custom mounted in foam rubber behind the mobo try) Pic is slightly outdated (have diff PSU now, changed fans to all yellow scheme, cleaned up a bit of wiring) but you get the idea, its sloppy inside.


In the new system, I'd like to build it around the In Win Tou (if I can find one) or a similar, clean high-end custom modded case.


The In Win will "only" cleanly take 5 HDs. 2 x SSD and 3 x HDD. So I'm thinking 2 x 1TB SSDs in Raid 0 for boot/high priority games and 3 x 1TB V-Raptors for games (or could run 3 x Seagate 6TB 7200's in Raid 0 and see how snappy games are in that config)

That will mean off loading all my music/smut/movies/and raw video to something external.

My question. Can an NAS box work well with something like Sony Vegas Pro? I'm guessing thats not their intention, but can they be used to host your iTunes collection and render HD video? What will its connection be to the system? Plug it into my router via RJ 45 or plug into the mobo via e-Sata? Or something totally different?

Thx gents.

The nas wont work all that well. My guess is you have a 1Gbps LAN, and that's just not enough for video editing. If you have something faster than the 1gig, then you might get away with it. If you are doing 720P or less, 1gig might work, but it will probably be choppy.

If all you are doing is rendering, say, taking someone else's edits and then doing the final render for them, then that might work out fine. I think it also depends on the number of drives you are planning to use.

Thx dude.

Im guessing the next mobo will be an Asus Rampage XXX extreme (whatever they name it).... which will have 1GBps LAN ports. So ok, that is not enough for video editing?

So what do I do? How do I create a multi drive external 12 TB setup that can plug into my system for this purpose? 12 TB e-sata box?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111177

What should I be looking at? Too many people have dumped on my rig for having 17TB drive space! So Im trying to build a clean rig this time, but still need the space on the outside...

Thx !

Qty 6: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO3KR96/?tag=extension-kb-20
Qty 2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215001&cm_re=3x5.25-_-16-215-001-_-Product

Buy a case with 6 x 5.25" drive bays if you don't have one.

If you did raid10, you can do 18TB, expandable to 30TB
If you do raid 5, you can do 24TB expandable to 54TB

Btw: I have 4 of those external external enclosures for my fileserver. ROCK SOLID with FreeBSD, but SLOW due to PMP

If you don't mind ghetto, get a couple of:
"Enclosures": http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111045
1 or two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124070
and a bunch of sata cables and run them outside your case.

Robstar said:

Btw: I have 4 of those external external enclosures for my fileserver. ROCK SOLID with FreeBSD, but SLOW due to PMP.

Click to expand...

Ok. i don't know what those terms even mean yet

Im ok with 5 x 4TB enclosure. Or 4 x 4TB. As long as its smooth enough for video encoding, via, what the eSata interface?

The only reason to do NAS would be if you want multiple machines to be able to connect to it.

Yes, it would be the ESATA interface or USB 3.0, depending on the enclosure.

CopyRunStart said:

The only reason to do NAS would be if you want multiple machines to be able to connect to it.

Yes, it would be the ESATA interface or USB 3.0, depending on the enclosure.

Click to expand...

Agreed, based on what you are looking for perhaps the OP just wants the disks local to the video editing software?

I have a NAS in my house to share my TV collection out to my kids and it works great for this task. I also have another computer with a raidz5 (raid5) pool directly attached that i dont share as i had a few 1TB drives kicking around and so i have a directly attached pool with like 4TB avail.

It might be worth considering a RAID card with an external connection to a DAS, giving you the performance of internal connection whilst having the storage drives in a second chassis a short distance away from your uber gaming rig.

You could go for something like this, http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/new-drobo-mini-networked-hard-drive-now-comes-with-ssds-ruggedized-flash-array/?ncid=rss

Thx for the info so far.

Yeah, the external unit does NOT need to be network accessible. Like another poster commented, the external disks just need to "show up" on my gaming box when I fire up Sony Vegas Pro.

So from what I gather, "NAS" isn't needed but rather just an external RAID enclosure? The reason I initially asked is because I thought SATA 3 wouldn't be fast enough for HD video rendering and thought eSata was going bye bye in the X99 mobos. Guess either would be ok?

If you're doing editing then I'd go with SATA 2 or 3 for internal connectors and USB 3 or Thunderbolt for external connectors. That should be plenty of bandwidth for your projected use case.

A fast disk or raid offers sequential transfer rates of several hundred MB/s.
If you use a NAS, you must use 10 GbE Ethernet or similar to keep this performance or a direct attached storage is faster.

Main reason to use a NAS despite the higher cost is IO performance to handle concurrent read/writes, data security and versioning with snapshots for example with the help of a massive RAM based disk caching and snapshots in ZFS.

Ahh......

As a non Mac guy, I had totally forgot about the existence of thunderbolt. Seems all new mobos are coming with that built in, so that seems a viable option.

I'm now thinking something like this unit, in Raid 0, using the TB connection:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G1GC3418

Sadly it comes with 5400 RPM drives inside and scored fairly low (posts 2MB sequential reads at 248MB/s and writes at 249.1MB/s) scores in reviews. Wonder if it would be "smooth" enough for HD editing / encoding? Seems the drives in that unit are easily changeable. I could put it 2 x of my 4x TB 7200 RPM Hitachis. Or I guess on that note, there must be empty thunderbolt enclosures for sale at a much cheaper price?

edit:
found this for 820 USD.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-IV

8tb external would be enough for my video editing needs. Thx [h]

Are you working with uncompressed HD? If so, this is what your disks need to be able to sustain for smooth playback for 1 stream,

1080i and 1080p HDTV uncompressed

8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 95 MB per/sec, or 334 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 127 MB per/sec, or 445 GB per/hr.
8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 99 MB per/sec, or 348 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps = 132 MB per/sec, or 463 GB per/hr.
8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 119 MB per/sec, or 417 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps = 158 MB per/sec, or 556 GB per/hr.

1080i and 1080p HDTV RGB (4:4:4) uncompressed
10 bit @ 1280 x 720p @ 60fps = 211 MB per/sec, or 742 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 190 MB per/sec, or 667 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 50i = 198 MB per/sec, or 695 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 60i = 237 MB per/sec, or 834 GB per/hr.

If it's compressed HD, the data rate is much lower, in the 5-20MB/sec range I believe.

Concentric said:

It might be worth considering a RAID card with an external connection to a DAS, giving you the performance of internal connection whilst having the storage drives in a second chassis a short distance away from your uber gaming rig.

Click to expand...

This is exactly what I was thinking, and would have the best performance for the cost.

skypine,

Can you give us an idea of how much you have to spend on this? We can suggest things but if you then come back and say that it's out of your budget then that's a bit of a waste of everyone's time.