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Lecture Notes on High Availability Storage Solutions
Jul 10, 2024
Lecture on Storage Solutions for High Availability and Reliability
Whonnock 10: The Ultimate High Availability Server
Introduction
Fast and reliable storage is crucial for video production teams.
Main editing server, Whonnock, has served well but a single minute of downtime now costs over $50 in payroll.
Solution: Redundancy.
Drives are redundant, but they all sit in one single server.
New server: Whonnock 10 (high availability).
Hardware Components
Supermicro Grand Twin A+ Server AS-2115GT-HNTR
2U, containing four independent computers.
Independent motherboard, 384GB memory, AMD EPYC Genoa processor (64 cores), dual M.2 slots for boot drives, six PCIe Gen 5 NVMe slots.
200 gigabit ConnectX 6 NICs for network redundancy.
2200-watt power supplies (80 plus titanium).
High Availability Configuration
Redundant NVMe first file system (Weka).
Can sustain two entire server dropouts without interruption.
Moved entire team onto it for real-world test during workday.
Redundant switches for network connectivity.
Limitation: switch failure – ideally need two single port NICs.
Overall system designed to continue operation even if one NIC fails.
Software Configuration
Weka File System
System setup with compute, drive, and front-end cores for task management.
Dynamically assigns cores for different tasks (e.g., parity calculation, inter-cluster communication).
Potential to run additional services like Proxmox and high-availability Plex server.
Boot drives: Sabrent 512GB Gen 3 rocket drives (reliable enough for OS boot).
Storage drives: Kioxia CD6 Gen4 NVMe drives (future plan for 4x 15TB drives per node).
Deployment and Testing
Servers and network setup led to real-world testing to ensure seamless operation.
System handled unplugging of a server without impacting video editing work.
Analysis and AI integration for media asset management
Detects objects, faces, and scenes for searchability.
Key Points
Weka file system optimized for low latency and high throughput.
Nvidia SN3700 switch used for network connectivity.
Achieved 70GB/s read performance and 4 million read IOPS.
AI-driven media asset management from axel.ai provides powerful search capabilities.
Proxy generation to avoid huge latency when dealing with large original clips.
Summary
Whonnock 10 provides major improvements in high availability and redundancy for video editing workloads.
Redundant hardware and software setups minimize downtime.
Future potential for even more advanced configurations and AI-driven features for media management.
Conclusion
Overall significant upgrade from the single machine setup.
Provides a reliable, fast, and redundantly protected server environment for the video team.
Emphasis on real-world testing and practical benefits of high availability systems.
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Full transcript