Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: GDC SX2001 RAID HDD

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Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 02-20-2018, 10:51 AM:

My GDC server was installed in 2011. It's RAID is equipped with Hitachi H3V10003272S drives. I have had no problems yet, but noted that this is an obsolete part number and only refurbished units are available. Are there 3.5" drives currently in production that are direct replacements for this RAID?

Secondly, the OS drive is original. Has anyone here tried cloning that drive to an SSD?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-20-2018, 11:55 AM:

I'm sure that GDC (us-support [at] gdc-tech.com) could give you a list of drive models that are in production today and that you could use without there being a warranty problem.

One potential gotcha, given that your server dates from 2011. I had to replace one that was first installed at about that time recently, when the motherboard failed. The theatre reactivated their long expired warranty, and GDC shipped a new server. It turned out that the failed one still had a pre-DCI software version in it, and there was no direct LAN connection from the media block to the projector: just from the server. The new one had the current, DCI-compliant software in it, and of course the security manager would not work without the media block having a direct connection to the booth LAN. Because the ethernet cable from the server disappeared into a ceiling void, I ended up having to run out to Office Depot to buy a switch and some cables, install them in the rack with the server, and do some reconfiguration of IP addresses in order to get the replacement server to work.

I'm guessing that if you do replace the system drive with a SSD, if your server is still on a pre-DCI software version, you'll have to update it to a DCI-compliant version at that point, and if the media block does not have its own connection to the LAN, you'll hit the same issue.

Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 02-20-2018, 03:18 PM:

Thanks Leo, I did email GDC about the RAID drives. Awaiting a reply.
On my second question, I am indeed running an older version of the GDC operating system. 7.7x I believe. I’m wondering if it would be possible to remove my current OS drive and clone it to a new SSD in order to prevent a failure in the future. The person who installed my equipment is no longer in the business, and it is difficult (and very expensive) to get service techs to come to my remote rural location.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-20-2018, 03:26 PM:

I would strongly suggest just replacing all three drives in the RAID. If they are all from 2011, they are past their life expectancy at this point. And, for best performance, all disks in a RAID5 should have the same geometry and firmware revision.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 02-20-2018, 03:41 PM:

And the drives have to be Enterprise SATA drives.

Can't use regular consumer drives.

Don't think you can use SSD's in these cinema servers.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-25-2018, 04:55 PM:

quote: Steven J. Hart
I’m wondering if it would be possible to remove my current OS drive and clone it to a new SSD in order to prevent a failure in the future.

You could try Clonezilla-ing it and seeing what happens. If the clone doesn't work, you can always put the original drive back in again.

As for replacing the RAID drives, agreed with Scott: your current ones are on borrowed time. If it hasn't been done recently, opening up the case and blowing all the crud out with a Datavac (or similar) would be a good idea, too, not to mention replacing the media block battery.

While any model of enterprise grade drive will likely work (though with the caveat mentioned by Scott - best to use three of the exact same model), if your server is under a GDC warranty, I'm guessing that they'll have a list of approved models, from which you'll have to choose in order to keep that warranty good. If it isn't, any model of NAS or enterprise-grade drive should work. Given your remote location, it may be worth buying four and keeping one as a spare.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 02-26-2018, 02:18 AM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
And the drives have to be Enterprise SATA drives.

Can't use regular consumer drives.

That's nonsense. The first thing you need to make sure is that the drive is compatible with the motherboard.

The second thing you need to make sure is that it's compatible with being used in a RAID, as in, that it isn't running a "green" firmware, which automatically spins down the drive after a certain period of inactivity.

Several reports (like those from Backblaze) have shown that there is not a substantial difference in reliability between the "Enterprise" and "Consumer" SATA hard drives. They're essentially the same drives, the difference is often just the serial number series and often the warranty that comes with it.

For example, the last bunch of "enterprise" disks I bought came with a 3-year warranty, whereas the "consumer" disks are limited to 2 years.

quote: Monte L Fullmer
Don't think you can use SSD's in these cinema servers.

I've seen it work, but it isn't in any way supported by GDC, so it's probably best to refrain from doing it. Unless you really would need the extra potential speed with content ingestion, I don't even see a good use-case for SSD in those servers.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-26-2018, 07:50 AM:

There can be firmware differences between drives badged as being for consumer and NAS/enterprise. The consumer drives are more likely to have the "green" features you describe, as well as the firmware that will have the drive re-read a sector repeatedly if it gets bad data (fails CRC or whatever) the first time. This is bad news in a RAID, because the flow of data will stop. Drives with RAID-optimized firmware will simply drop out of a RAID if there is a problem reading a given sector, and the RAID controller will then immediately mark it as a bad sector (whether it's actually bad, or because the read error was for another reason) and read the backup copy.

For this reason, I've occasionally pulled a drive from a DCP server that is showing millions of bad sectors, repartitioned and reformatted it on a PC, read the SMART parameters and they were totally healthy, then done a full surface scan and it's come up totally clean - no bad sectors at all.

But from what I can gather, the difference between drives branded as being for consumer or semi-professional NAS use (e.g. WD Red) and drives branded as enterprise (e.g. WD Yellow) is simply the length of the warranty offered. It's the same difference between regular and "super" car batteries. Same battery, different color label on it, longer warranty.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 02-26-2018, 10:33 AM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
There can be firmware differences between drives badged as being for consumer and NAS/enterprise. The consumer drives are more likely to have the "green" features you describe, as well as the firmware that will have the drive re-read a sector repeatedly if it gets bad data (fails CRC or whatever) the first time. This is bad news in a RAID, because the flow of data will stop. Drives with RAID-optimized firmware will simply drop out of a RAID if there is a problem reading a given sector, and the RAID controller will then immediately mark it as a bad sector (whether it's actually bad, or because the read error was for another reason) and read the backup copy.

You should simply check the specs and if they can be operated within a RAID. In many of those "green" hard-drives, the enhanced power features are actually turned off when you use them in a RAID, but you simply do not want to run the risk to run into such a disk.

The number of retries after a CRC error is a combination of both the hard drive and the RAID controller. If the firmware really behaves differently regarding read-retries and reallocations (if the drive knows it's inside a RAID) is something no hard disk manufacturer was able to answer me in the past.

Now, for the use in cinema servers, I'd actually would like to see a shorter interval on those, at least as long as there are still spare disks. Semi-failed disks often cause latency issues (stuttering images) before they eventually fail completely and are finally rejected by the RAID controller.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-26-2018, 10:36 AM:

You can get them from GDC or a place like Newegg or even Amazon. GDC no longer stocks the 1TB drives and they will send you 2TB drives. Always replace ALL THREE! You can put in one drive at a time and let it rebuild so you don't loose content, but if you move to 2GB drives the new drives will likely only show up as 1TB drives. So if you make a new RAID be sure to have your black roll and other necessary clipss you use at hand on another drive or USB so you can load them back on.

Mark

Mark

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-26-2018, 01:58 PM:

A person should probably just replace all those drives as a preventive maintenance measure. I wonder what a sensible interval would be?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-26-2018, 02:45 PM:

Well, as an normal preventative maintenance thing you can swap them every three to five years. But you might get more life from them if go by the accumulated SMART errors that each drive logs. There is a free program called WinDFT on the HGST web site that you can use to thoroughly analyze any Hitachi or HGST hard drive. It almost gives one too much info, but it's the logged SMART Errors that are most important. On 3.5" drive servers you can view these errors directly on the server under RAID in Admin, or use the Win DFT program.

Mark

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 02-26-2018, 04:41 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
A person should probably just replace all those drives as a preventive maintenance measure. I wonder what a sensible interval would be?

Like with many somewhat complex scenarios, there isn't a single right answer. The only correct answer would be: It depends on your usage scenario. Which doesn't say anything. [Wink]

While a hard drive inside a computer may survive for 10 or more years, heavily dependent on actual usage, there are some more reliable statistics out there for disks that are being used intensively, although most of them are based on 24/7 datacenter usage.

Now, in many cases that comes close to the usage in a regular theater. Many keep their servers spinning 24/7 and if you don't do that, the extra stress on the hard drive motor and platters from spinning down and up will most likely compensate for it.

Most reliable statistics also come from parties that run big datacenters, like Backblaze, who regularly publish vendor-independent statistics about hard drive reliability.

There is a distinctive higher failure rate for hard drives in the first one and a half year of roughly 5% across the board. Drives that survive the first 18 months usually last at least 3 years, because between 18 and 36 months, the failure rate is only roughly 1% a year. After about three and a half year, the failure rate starts to dramatically increase to roughly 11% per year.

So, I think as a rule of thumb for intensive usage applications, which qualifies for most theaters who run 365 days a year, you should consider replacing hard drives prematurely after roughly three years.

Please keep in mind that SMART errors only tell part of the story. Although SMART errors are a good indication of the physical health of the magnetic platters, there are other factors that aren't that easily monitored, like the spindle motor and the voice coil actuator, which are also moving parts which get less reliable by age.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-26-2018, 04:59 PM:

Personally, I wouldn't replace the drives on a set schedule. No one does this in data centers, and there is no reason to do it in cinemas (the RAID is there so that you will survive a single drive failure). But when one of a set that was purchased at the same time fails and all are past their life expectancy, I would, indeed, swap out all of them.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 02-26-2018, 05:24 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
Personally, I wouldn't replace the drives on a set schedule. No one does this in data centers, and there is no reason to do it in cinemas (the RAID is there so that you will survive a single drive failure). But when one of a set that was purchased at the same time fails and all are past their life expectancy, I would, indeed, swap out all of them.

In many datacenters, much of the equipment gets thrown out after about 4 or so years, because it's become under-performing.

Still, I've seen enterprise environments that prematurely started to replace their disks in large storage arrays after about 4 years and not all at the same time but gradual.

There's an important note for SSDs which not everybody is getting. While the MTBF of "rotating rust has a large standard diviation, many SSDs have a rather small standard deviation. Meaning, SSDs are far more prone to fail at the same time, especially when operating in a RAID. Once the number of writes on an SSD reaches a critical level, it's prone to total failure. Also, many SSD failures aren't soft or gradual failures like with hard-disks, but immediate hard failures, where the entire SSD becomes inaccessible.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-27-2018, 09:13 AM:

SSD's really don't apply to any cinema servers except the USL. It's the only one using them so far. And the factor that cuts back the life on SSD's is the write mode, not the read mode. Cinema servers spend the majority of their time reading back from the raid.

Mark

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-27-2018, 10:28 AM:

And those three 1TB SSDs must add a lot to the sticker price of the USL IMS. I only service one site (a Bel-Air Circuit residence) that has one.

Added to which, I can't see any advantage to using one in a DCP server, either for the operating system or the content storage RAID. The USL that I service doesn't ingest any faster through USB3 than a Dolby/Doremi or GDC IMS. The operating system and applications (on other servers) are a closed software architecture package, that are designed to work reliably from a traditional HDD. Is the extra cost of a SSD really worth it to have the operating system load 15 seconds quicker when you reboot your server three or four times a year?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-27-2018, 11:22 AM:

SSDs would give faster ingest times. Not that this would matter for most theatres. The DCP format is well specified, so as long as the maximum data rate can be satisified with mechanical drives, there is no benefit to moving to SSDs (or faster mechanical drives).

The real advantage of solid-state storage is fast seek times. This is a huge advantage for something like a database server, but a D-cinema server doesn't really do this, since ingest is basically a long, continuous write operation, and playback is a long, continuous read operation.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-27-2018, 12:38 PM:

The only advantage to SSD's would be nearly instantaneous content selection. Also, less power usage over a big 14 screen theater too.

Mark

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-27-2018, 01:55 PM:

Would the power saving over the service life of the drives offset the higher cost of buying them in the first place? At the moment at least, the cost of larger SSDs is so much more than their HDD equivalents that I'd be surprised if it would (even with California electricity prices!).

It's like when I still had the '99 Civic, friends and relatives were urging me to replace it on the grounds that a 20-teens new one would save me $1-2k a year on gas. That it would have done, but the '99 was, by that time, costing us almost nothing in depreciation (with 200k miles on the clock, it had already depreciated to a book value of near zero), compared to around $3k a year on a brand new one.

Unless the price of SSD storage comes down a lot, they're never going to make sense for large-scale storage applications, unless very rapid random access is absolutely essential, as Scott notes. Smaller ones for OS drives make a lot more sense, because the speed benefit is actually useful.

For DCP server storage, I suppose they could give you an ingest speed advantage if the ingestion is through a super-fast fiber network, but from physical media you're going to be constrained by the limits of USB3 anyways.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-27-2018, 02:22 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
the RAID is there so that you will survive a single drive failure)

This is true, but in my case, we've had 2 (or possibly 3, my memory is faded) instances of the playback suddenly doing a weird "stuttering" like it's starting and stopping very rapidly/erratically, and this for some reason does not show up in the logs. It starts with one or two glitches during a playback, and gets worse daily. The only solution that's fixed it is replacing all the drives. I have never gotten a good explanation of what's happening.

The last time it happened we thought it was the drive box, but replacing that didn't cure the problem. The drives themselves were the issue. We've been digital for 8 years as of June and I don't think we've ever had a set of drives longer than 3 years.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 02-27-2018, 05:37 PM:

DCP playback is not a long continuous read operation - the server has to read at least two fully separate streams of data, typically more like 5-6, at least that is what the RAID has to support worst case, with subs, on reel changes. And that is for 'simple' CPLs only.

I don't know why USL chose SSDs, but maybe, as they have no closed engineering links with projector manufacturers, they evaluated discs and SSDs, and found the energy/heat budget easier to manage for an integrated server. Maybe they also thought that potential buyers would instantly jump onto the assumed higher reliability factor of SSDs vs. spinning discs. Keep in mind, that the USL IMS allows to render MDA from local storage, so it needs a higher bandwidth as well. Plus, at the time the USL was designed, HFR seemed to have a happy future. So, you had to design at least 500MBit/s for the video part alone, then add audio, subtitle, and MDA audio demands both in bandwidth and seek times.

- Carsten

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-28-2018, 09:00 AM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
Would the power saving over the service life of the drives offset the higher cost of buying them in the first place?

It's not just the drives that consume low power, but the IMB type server (USL) that uses the SSD's only consumes ~50 watts of power vs. 250 to 350 watts for the average full size cinema server. Multiply that times 12, 14 or 16 screens and you have significant power savings over the life of the plex.

The only real advantage of the SDD's IMHO is their read speed.

Mark

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 02-28-2018, 12:52 PM:

What a datacenter does is not relevant to a cinema. A datacenter that loses a RAID with a live mission critical database may be in serious trouble: they can restore from backup and they should have a live shadow database with auto switchover on failure... but it's going to be tense. With a D-cinema server, total RAID failure means you lose a show or three. This is bad, but not a crisis.
Preemptive replacement of drives installed in the rollout is a good idea, they are getting very old - well past where they would still be in any critical storage system. I've been recommending it for a while... but cinema owners are not renowned for spending money on things like that with no immediate visible payoff.
The servers themselves are getting "long in the tooth". Dolby has stopped some support for Doremi DCP2000 models because the Supermicro X7SBE motherboard is discontinued... and they can't find a replacement that will work with the Dolphin board media block. Once NOS ones are NLA through ebay or amazon... ?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-28-2018, 09:03 PM:

Actually theaters can be like a data center depending on what gear you install. The latest thing is to store content for several screens on one central server. So in a ten or twelve plex there will be a number of these central servers each with the possibility of taking down multiple screens if a drive fails.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 03-01-2018, 01:54 AM:

Indeed, if you're running an x-plex (where x is a significant number and the average number of seats per auditorium is also a significant number [Smile]

) and you decided to centralize everything to this single room, then this becomes very much a datacenter like operation.

I guess the only reliable way to serve e.g. 14 screens simultaneously from the same storage, would involve a lot of SSDs in at least a RAID10-like setup. Even then, a single snafu on the network or storage side will bring down all those screens at once.

quote: Carsten Kurz
DCP playback is not a long continuous read operation - the server has to read at least two fully separate streams of data, typically more like 5-6, at least that is what the RAID has to support worst case, with subs, on reel changes. And that is for 'simple' CPLs only.

That's where many indeed go wrong. While most media files use interleaved formats, where all or most assets are interleaved in one continuous stream, DCP does not. As such, a DCP is far more intensive to play than e.g. am MJPEG compressed AVI file.

Still, since the separate assets themselves are mostly sequential, an intelligent RAID controller combined with some semi-intelligent firmware on the disks can pre-fetch a lot of the data, reducing the amount of seeks needed.

quote: Mike Blakesley
The last time it happened we thought it was the drive box, but replacing that didn't cure the problem. The drives themselves were the issue. We've been digital for 8 years as of June and I don't think we've ever had a set of drives longer than 3 years.

I mentioned it before. It's a pity we're using "industry standard" RAID solutions for cinema playback servers. It's obviously a cost-saving measure, but those RAID solutions are built for data-integrity, mostly targeted at office applications.

So, instead of ejecting a lagging drive as erroneous, the RAID tries to recover the problem. This behavior is fine in a normal office environment, where e.g. somebody needs to wait a few seconds longer before he can open his Word document, but creates a problem in a real-time playback situation, where the data is now past-due.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-01-2018, 11:32 AM:

Well, not in the case with GDC's system. There is one central server for every two or three screens (I can't remember the actual number though). So the most that could go down is that number of screens. Cinedigm used a Raid 10 on their larger TMS, although I don't really consider TMS data to be mission critical because much of it is also at the local servers.

Mark

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 03-01-2018, 05:54 PM:

What I've seen are some trials with centralized NFS storage in combination with some Christie Solaria ICMP that connect to this storage using NFS and a 1G/10G switched backbone.

The problem is that the ICMP's software isn't smart enough to allow one central library, which you can share among other screens, you still need to ingest the content locally.

Also, Q-Sys is slowly creeping in and you'll see an increasing amount of centralization in audio processing and switching, where a bunch of Q-Sys cores will essentially handle the whole audio of a 14-plex in a few rack units.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-01-2018, 06:21 PM:

You mean a Christie IMB-S2/S3, as that is more or less the only IMS that currently supports/requires regular playout from NAS. Don't think that makes sense, as a suitable dedicated NAS for an S2/S3 is not an expensive device. Maybe it saves some administration time, but, given the risk...

- Carsten

Posted by Leslie Hartmier (Member # 7053) on 03-01-2018, 07:13 PM:

The only two drives that GDC has qualified are:

HGST 2TB HUS726020ALE610
HGST 1TB HUA722010CLA330

However, I use WD Gold (Datacenter) drives, as the HGSTs are hard to source in Canada except via online (and honestly, the price for datacenter drives for me are about the same as the NAS/RAID drives anyway, with a better MTBF, MTTF and URE rate).

As for SSD RAIDs, though old SSDs had firmware that did not permit use in RAIDs, all SSDs that I know of now do permit their use. Benefits include no spin-up/spin-down, faster reads/writes, etc, but there is one thing to note if you choose to use SSDs - SSD lifespans are rated in writes, and if one starts to go sideways on you, the others are neck and neck in doing so as well.

Most SSD RAIDs created are not done in a straight-forward way -
1) totally different brands from each other are used to create it so that the lifespan will more likely vary instead of all drives failing at about the same time,
2) each drive will be put in the RAID at significantly different times so that if one drive fails, there is a lower chance of more than one failing at the same time, or
3) all drives are simply replaced simultaneously at regular intervals approximating the lifespan of the drives based on expected number of writes.

Avoiding RAID rebuilding is best as rebuilding is a lot of writes, which reduces lifespan of SSDs.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-01-2018, 10:41 PM:

GDC Central Server solutions

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 03-02-2018, 02:12 AM:

quote: Carsten Kurz
You mean a Christie IMB-S2/S3, as that is more or less the only IMS that currently supports/requires regular playout from NAS. Don't think that makes sense, as a suitable dedicated NAS for an S2/S3 is not an expensive device. Maybe it saves some administration time, but, given the risk...

Yes, those are currently the only ones that support something like "storage over IP". Right now, it doesn't make sense, since you're not really saving anything in terms of administration overhead, because you can't really mount a central pool as every IMS will be keeping their own library of ingested content.

The idea obviously is to create a playout system where everything is as centralized as possible, reducing the amount of "unnecessary" overhead. Content will be ingested centrally or simply be uploaded to the central NAS and the screens themselves operate essentially without storage.

For a big business, it then becomes a "simple" risk analysis. How big is the chance the whole stuff comes tumbling down and the potential damages of this v.s. the potential reductions in CAPEX and OPEX.

quote: Leslie Hartmier
However, I use WD Gold (Datacenter) drives, as the HGSTs are hard to source in Canada except via online (and honestly, the price for datacenter drives for me are about the same as the NAS/RAID drives anyway, with a better MTBF, MTTF and URE rate).

If you read the independent hardware reports you will see that those better MTRBF/MTTF/URE rates for "gold", "enterprise" drives are just marketing.

quote: Leslie Hartmier
1) totally different brands from each other are used to create it so that the lifespan will more likely vary instead of all drives failing at about the same time,
2) each drive will be put in the RAID at significantly different times so that if one drive fails, there is a lower chance of more than one failing at the same time, or
3) all drives are simply replaced simultaneously at regular intervals approximating the lifespan of the drives based on expected number of writes.

Having had the experience of planning SSDs for high workload "datacenter operations", I can tell you that option 1 and 2 are mostly no option at all.

Most enterprises buy their storage from some integrated storage vendor. Dell, HPE, NetApp, EMC, you name it. They only provide support on their solution with their "own" restickered, tested and approved drives. Mostly, you end up with drives from the same vendors.

I don't know how option 2 would even work, both practically and technically. Usually, there is a need for a certain amount of storage and you need to fill that amount including some reasonable overhead for growth almost immediately. So, you design a storage system that fits the purpose of the customer. Meaning, you buy a bunch of disks, right at that moment. Those disks will all have the same age.

Now, most advanced storage systems allow you to expand an existing RAID array. So, you could buy new disks later on and add them to the array. But since this new disk(s) represent a topology change, this mostly comes at a high cost: The entire RAID needs to be rebuilt and rewritten. While this usually can happen on-line, it incurs a lot of performance penalties for the pool and also eats a lot of write cycles.

So, the only sensible thing to do is option 3. When you're running on SSDs, you need to actively monitor the amount of writes to your SSDs and start replacing them very early on, so you don't run into the trap of running out of write-cycles.

The good thing is that many modern storage solutions are now able to actively monitor this and with some good planning, you can avoid disaster from striking on such an array.

quote: Leslie Hartmier
Avoiding RAID rebuilding is best as rebuilding is a lot of writes, which reduces lifespan of SSDs.

So, how do you avoid RAID rebuilding? This is not something you can plan for... Drives will fail and even if you replace them before they fail, you will still need to rebuild the RAID.

Also, rebuilding am SSD RAID from a single failed disk doesn't incur a high cost to the remaining drives, since they don't need to do a lot of writing, they only need to read the data.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-02-2018, 04:21 AM:

GDC has a low-cost media block (the one with the Raspberry Pi on it) that only has a small buffer instead of a local raid. I think that one is meant to source it's playout media from a common central RAID in a 'play-while-read' operation. Full network based ingests would probably be too slow, since every other festure would first need to be transferred completely to a full-size DCP buffer. A small to medium sized buffer would allow for real-time 'streaming' from a central raid without a risc of dropouts, at least as long as that central RAID doesn't go completely belly up.

http://www.gdc-tech.com/english/products_sr1000.php

All interesting technology, but personally, I would never have my operations depend on it. That's for large chains to save a few bucks...

- Carsten

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 03-02-2018, 09:26 AM:

From the SR-1000 literature Carsten linked to:

quote:
Compatibility with series 1 and 2 projectors
The SR-1000 IMB seamlessly integrates with series 1 and 2 projectors including Barco, Christie and NEC to ensure highly reliable and secure content delivery.

Um. Someone please explain to me how it's possible to use an IMB in a S1 projector.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-02-2018, 09:59 AM:

The enterprise storage is a e sata device so it is basically a external storage for a single IMS so a central server for multiple IMS it is really a industrial strength version of the PSD we have installed several of the enterpise + storage systems and am very happy with them
Cinemecanica i believe does offer a central single server /storage system

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-02-2018, 11:10 AM:

quote: Ken Lackner
Um. Someone please explain to me how it's possible to use an IMB in a S1 projector.

It was designed from the ground up to be able to work in both series projectors. IN a S-1 it will likely replace the input module just like it does in S-2.

Mark

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-02-2018, 11:32 AM:

But the physical form factor of cards are different, aren't they?

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-02-2018, 11:45 AM:

There was another company claiming series 1 compatibility - I guess the idea is to use a simpel external enclosure with powersupply and HDSDI.

- Carsten

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-02-2018, 01:15 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
But the physical form factor of cards are different, aren't they?

Seems to me they are, but if the edge connectors happen to be different levels then they could include both series 1 & Series 2 connectors on the IMB, or perhaps you have to order it specifically for a certain series projector. I haven't seen one of these IMB's yet.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-02-2018, 02:02 PM:

They provide a "sleeve" a separate chassis that holds the imb

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 03-02-2018, 03:18 PM:

The sleeve thing makes sense as far as the how, but why? It's not really an IMB anymore. Why not just buy an SX-2001 standalone server?

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-02-2018, 03:43 PM:

Because the standalone servers are/will be outphased, and so these IMBs will allow to integrate series 1 projectors with new servers/infrastructure.

Dolby CAT862 is gone, Doremi Dolphin board is gone, and I guess the GDC follows suit.

- Carsten

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-02-2018, 05:38 PM:

Ken. The idea is, if you have a series 1 projector that needs a server (old one crapped out, you are standardizing on GDC...etc.) you can by the 1000 and future proof your investment since if you replace that series 1 projector with a series 2, you can pull the 1000 out of the external chassis and put it into the series 2 projector.

While GDC still offers the SX2001A (HDSDI outputs), there will come a time when the won't be able to (or wont be able to support it long enough) so when that day comes, they have a solution already.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 03-03-2018, 03:16 AM:

quote: Carsten Kurz
GDC has a low-cost media block (the one with the Raspberry Pi on it) that only has a small buffer instead of a local raid. I think that one is meant to source it's playout media from a common central RAID in a 'play-while-read' operation. Full network based ingests would probably be too slow, since every other festure would first need to be transferred completely to a full-size DCP buffer. A small to medium sized buffer would allow for real-time 'streaming' from a central raid without a risc of dropouts, at least as long as that central RAID doesn't go completely belly up.

Cinemeccanica (the re-emerged digital cinema company) does have a server for sale that claims to integrate Barco Alchemy, Dolby IMS2000/3000, Sony and their own IMB (which doesn't seem to be for sale, at least not yet). They claim you can play-out directly from the storage server.

I've yet to see such an installation myself. There is little information available on how it works. I guess they integrate with the APIs of those vendors to make this possible and it probably only works if you play content strictly via the Cinemeccanica TMS.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-03-2018, 12:25 PM:

At showest for sewveral years they had their own IMB there along with their laser retrofit

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-03-2018, 10:37 PM:

quote: Gordon McLeod
At showest for sewveral years they had their own IMB there along with their laser retrofit

They are only there for their European customers that attend the show. They are no licensed to sell DLP in the States.

Mark

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-04-2018, 11:14 AM:

they are more than willing to sell there laser over here but there dlp is still basically a serries one

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-04-2018, 11:59 AM:

No interest in laser from my customers. Still too expensive and the replacement parts cost via Italy would be killer. At least 1.5 X more expensive plus shipping and customs. NOt sure how they could still be building Series 1 stuff unless they bought a ton of boards from TI. TI stopped making that stuff long ago.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-04-2018, 12:34 PM:

As far as I know, they use a standard series 2 2k/4k Barco as the base for their Lux laser installations. Alan Gouger from FL has/had one of those.

But as far as I know, they can retrofit it to almost any DLP platform, they also adopt it to existing machines, which makes it more attractive I guess.

http://www.cinemeccanica.eu

- Carsten