Network Architecture and SAN

Deadline
1

Hi,



We are running a SAN here so the deadline repository is on a raid that is attached to the clients via Fibre Channel (or on some clients via ethernet with the FC hosts acting as gateways).



The SAN software makes the volume appear like a local drive.



We also have another volume in the SAN where we render to (also appears as a local drive)



I am wondering how deadline renders in this scenario versus in a normal windows share environment.



I think the best performance would be achieved rendering to a REAL local drive (eg. c:), then simply pushing the files back to a central network location afterwards. (whether SAN or windows share)



I think in our setup, deadline is starting all the client renders and the all try to render directly to the SAN volume, which would create intense IO across the FC and Ethernet Network.



What is the optimal setup or best practices for setting this up. (eg how do frantic and others set up their storage network for deadline)



Kind Regards,



…tig

2

Hi Tig,



Deadline shouldn’t behave any differently under this environment as it

would under a normal windows share environment. What software are you

rendering with? In most cases, the output is written directly to the

network location, but Maya for example allows you to write to the local

drive first and then transfer the output to the network location after.

Let us know what software you use, and we can take a look and supporting

this same functionality in the future.



Cheers,

3

We are having the same dilemma here as well. Certain machines have the san under a sharedfile system but others do not.  Mapping drive letters on the other machines would only work if we shared the root of the volume.  We end up either saving path information that is slower ""\\san1\share1\"" or "s:\" which may not exist on all machines. Files are breaking.

If windows let you remap paths from local to unc it would all be good.

I don't have anything to tell the deadline team specifically yet, because this problem spans all software we use.

One solution we are considering is a software that lets you mount the san via the lan. So all machines can have block-level access.

B.