I have a 54TB Unity Media Engine . I've got 16 clients connected over 4G fiber.

I'm thinking of moving to Unity ISIS with double the clients.

Unity Media Engine connectivity is 4G fiber channel.  Isis is ethernet.

Even though Isis is 10GigE (which sounds faster than 4 gig fiber channel), are my editors going to notice a slow-down? 

They edit with multiple layers, multiple effects and run the Unity hard.  It works great. 

If I switch to Isis, are they going to be slowed down?  Does 10GigE support the same quantity of DNxHD145 streams as 4 gig fiber channel?

Anyone got any feedback?

No slow down. Faster actually. Each storage "Blade" is actually a mini server making for better redundancy and faster access times. Up to 32TB per crate of Hot swappable storage blades. You'll never regret the move up to ISIS.

 I should mention that this is working with the 10gigE connection you mentioned. The 1 Gig connection may be a little slower than Unity is but nothing that I've noticed yet. If you are pushing DNX220 through it, you may noticed a slower response than you would from the 4 gig fiber with Unity. With 10gigE though, the thing flies.

Well, that's good news I must say.  Will the Isis support up to 30 10GigE clients and up to 20 GigE clients simultaneously?

I'm going to have a number of off-line editors using Nitris DX at 145 hitting the Isis hard and pushing off their rendering and subtiting to an MC Soft station right next to them in the bay.  Both I believe would need to be on 10Gige although I guess the assistant could be on GigE.

Then I'll have a number of editors (probably 3) on-lining on the Symphony Nitris DX, also on a 10GigE connection.  These guys also have an MC Soft to push rendering off to.

Then I'll have a number of people on MC Soft stations laying in foreign graphics and subtitles.  I don't see th need to have them on a 10GigE connection.  I'm sure they'll do fine with just plain old GigE.

At the same time, I'll be using the Mojo for ingest and so they will need to be on 10GigE unless you think that GigE is fast enough.  I doubt it, especially when I need to get the material on-line in a hurry.

Thanks for getting back to me so fast btw. Appreciated.

Jon

You get 600MB of bandwidth per ISIS Chassis so, to add more bandwidth, you just add chassis. The more storage you have the greater bandwidth.

Check with your sales rep. They can give you a breakdown of exaclty how many client you can run at whatever res you choose.

Colby:

Well, that's good news I must say.  Will the Isis support up to 30 10GigE clients and up to 20 GigE clients simultaneously?

I'm going to have a number of off-line editors using Nitris DX at 145 hitting the Isis hard and pushing off their rendering and subtiting to an MC Soft station right next to them in the bay.  Both I believe would need to be on 10Gige although I guess the assistant could be on GigE.

Then I'll have a number of editors (probably 3) on-lining on the Symphony Nitris DX, also on a 10GigE connection.  These guys also have an MC Soft to push rendering off to.

Then I'll have a number of people on MC Soft stations laying in foreign graphics and subtitles.  I don't see th need to have them on a 10GigE connection.  I'm sure they'll do fine with just plain old GigE.

At the same time, I'll be using the Mojo for ingest and so they will need to be on 10GigE unless you think that GigE is fast enough.  I doubt it, especially when I need to get the material on-line in a hurry.

I don't see that you "get it".   Your CPU'S will only handle a certain amount of DNX 145 streams- having nothing to do with the storage. I have 8 Nitris DX clients, 3 Mojo DX clients and 3 ProTools systems on ISIS,  and ALL at 1 Gig connection.   I typically have people "hitting the system hard" with lots of effects-  to the point where they run over what an 8600 CPU can handle (red bars in the timeline).   The ISIS never has a bandwidth issue at 1 gig speeds.

ALL your offline clients can be at 1gig with no worries-  with enough engines,  the throughput to Gig E switching will be adequate.

Here's the funny thing-  your "online" clients will actually need less bandwidth.  Online editors always render-  despite not  needing too..  it's simply the nature of those folks.  You could connect these systems as 10Gig - however I would only do so if you plan on doing any UNCOMPRESSED HD.   Ya see,  DnXHD has lower bandwidth requirements then 1:1 standard definition does, especially at 145 mb.

For Ingest,  you don't need extra speed-  you can only write one stream of video.  The mojo DX systems will be fine for ingest, and they'll auto-sense SD or HD.

As far as an actual configuration-  Each engine has 2 10 Gig connections   These can either feed 2 systems at 10 Gig,  PC ONLY.  or feed to a 1 GIG switch, to feed a batch of 1gig clients.   A complete, fully loaded ISIS system will have 22 10 gig connections.   If you feed all of those to 10 gig clients, you will have no 1 gig clients easily connected at a distance over 100 meters from your ISIS.   Each of those 22 10 gig connection switches on the ISIS engines will also have 8 ethernet 1 gig connectors available-  however, directly connected copper ethernet clients TO the engine have a maximum cable distance of 100 meters.   If you exceed that distance, your connection will fall apart rapidly.   

Also,  you will have certain things connected directly to the engines-  like the 4 connections for the Primary and Secondary system indexers (yes you WILL have a secondary, it's fatal not to) And, based on some of your other posts, possibly an Interplay system-  so that will pull away some physical client connections.

I would strongly recommend that you sit down with someone from Avid's PSG group, or baring that, an ISIS ACSR for consultations as to what you want to do.   You prolly also have a workflow that needs to keep delivering material throughout any transition-  this needs serious study and planning.

good luck.

JDS