Integrate Maxx Digital (Final Share) system into our core network.

T

The Cobra

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Jun 19, 2003
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Hi Folks,

I recently started a new job. After years of being an IT director for a school district in the SF Bay Area, I decided to change jobs when a friend's company were looking for a new IT director (Of a studio in the Seattle Area) I packed my shit, moved north and now working. So here is my dilemma: We need a new core network, because the current one we have is thrown together.

We currently have 3 Brocade/Foundry Layer 2 switches. The network is flat. We host nothing here except 2 file servers. So there are no special NAT's or websites, or exchange, or anything else. Our network needs speed...

A few months before I started, they installed MAXX DIGITAL / FINALSHARE system for our video editors. This system is basically a SAN with a 10GBE backplane. It allows users to edit in realtime with no network lag. The problem is it is a bandaid on a gushing wound.

I have setup SAN's before with a very high throughput for video editors and such where speed is key. The issue with this setup is that there are 10 machines hooked into this finalshare system, but each of these machines are also plugged into our corporate network. Traffic is bleeding from one network to another. I placed a sniffer onto that portion of the network where it is bridged, again...lots of noise.

I called up the MAXX Digital people asking to place a switch inbetween both networks so that I can cut the chatter and allow Internet traffic to pass to that SAN network and nothing else (Other then the finalshare traffic) All I would like to do is VLAN both networks once I get the new core network going on a few months, but this solution is a stopgap measure until that time.

I was told to not touch this system, and that it was designed for that reason...well, there may be speed there, but it is hindering my network on the other end.

I am by no means a Cisco Engineer with all the greatest and latest certs. I do know my way around a network though.

Any advice?

Thx...
 
How are the two networks currently "bridged"? Do the workstations have dual NICs?
 
If its two NICs just have them on seperate subnets and the computer should route accordingly. If its one NIC I'd use a layer 3 switch to do the routing. (A switch will be faster than a router for this)
 
10 machines are bridged across 2 networks. The big problem is that when they transfer these large files over the corporate network (Via Wireless) it just bogs it down. Because they don't want to copy over wired connection because of the rendering.
 
Grentz said:
How are the two networks currently "bridged"? Do the workstations have dual NICs?
Click to expand...

All of the workstations have a wired connection with the MAXX Digital with a static IP. They also have wireless as well that is connected to our corporate network.

The server on the maxx digital network is 192.168.2.x while our corporate network is 192.168.20.x So the server (OS X) and clients (OS X) are both bridged.
 
What bogs down? The computer, the network, the final scene network, what?
 
The final share runs fine. The problem is that whomever set this network up before, decided to bridge every machine that is hooked into this final share network. The other issue is that the server that the final share sits on, also is bridged to both networks. So I have detected traffic coming off both connections going into the server. So while the server is sharing the real time video, it is also having files copied to its raid array over the wireless network. We are talking about files 3-4gb in size.
 
So this is the same server not two seperate ones?

I would completely seperate the networks entirely. Get a different server or NAS for the non video files.
 
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