This discussion is locked
Kelvin Burton
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: FCS and Xserve disk performance requirements

We have a new Xserve with FCS 1.5. We need to add more storage and I am trying to find information on how important the disk performance is to FCS. I can find quite a lot of info on FC Pro and it's disk needs, but I can find nothing on how FCS uses it's storage and how critical the speed of the disk is to how FCS performs.

Can someone point me to something that addresses this?

Xserve, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 12, 2011 3:00 PM

Close
Kelvin Burton

Q: FCS and Xserve disk performance requirements

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by John F. Whitehead,

    John F. Whitehead John F. Whitehead Jan 14, 2011 7:23 AM in response to Kelvin Burton
    Level 2 (380 points)
    Jan 14, 2011 7:23 AM in response to Kelvin Burton
    It depends on your usage needs.

    Final Cut Server's database needs a very high speed disk, if you have any number of users or assets. It's usually the internal startup disk so making that an SSD or SAS drive will help you most.

    The disk speed for proxies and master content is usually less of a concern because you're delivering the content over a network, which is a bigger bottleneck than the disks. But if you have more than like one user, and are working with files bigger than DV25/XDCAM @ 25mb, you'll want a RAID, preferably on a storage area network (like Xsan) rather than shared over Ethernet.

  • by Kelvin Burton,

    Kelvin Burton Kelvin Burton Jan 14, 2011 7:43 AM in response to John F. Whitehead
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 14, 2011 7:43 AM in response to John F. Whitehead
    Thanks John, that is exactly what I was looking for. Our 2011 budget got slashed so we are not able to purchase the SAN expansion we needed for video so I am trying to figure out how to re-purpose so existing storage to tide us over. This will help me come up with a plan that hopefully won't strangle the throughtput of FCS!