G-Speed

By Todd Sali

Having used 2 Gb Fibre Channel RAID arrays for some time, I've come to appreciate their simplicity and speed, not to mention the possibilities they open up to work in a shared storage area network (SAN) environment. What could be better than that? Well, we always want more speed, don't we?

Enter 4 Gb Fibre Channel arrays, which are now starting to emerge in volume from a number of drive vendors and with higher speeds (and prices) than 2 Gb systems. The new G-Tech G-Speed Fibre Channel RAID brings us that speed but still keeps the prices closer to 2 Gb levels, while at the same time offering features that other drives don't. G-Tech also makes an Ultra320 SCSI version, but I took a 1.5 TB Fibre Channel G-Speed for a spin to see how it handles in the real world.

Got gigabit?

G-Tech has become renowned for the performance and stylish design of its popular G-RAID FireWire 800 drive arrays. Following the company's focus on FireWire devices, G-Tech's release of a 4 Gb Fibre Channel array may seem like a big technological leap. But consider that G-Tech was launched by one of the original founders of Medéa (now Avid), which does make high-performance Fibre Channel arrays. Given that pedigree, it makes more sense.

The Mac- and Windows XP-compatible G-Speed has six hot-swappable 7200 rpm Serial ATA (SATA) II drives, a redundant power supply (a $400 option), a Web graphical user interface (GUI) via Ethernet, and the oh-so-important dual 4 Gb Fibre Channel ports. It comes with one Fibre cable and the small form-factor pluggable module (SFP) needed to plug an optical cable into the drive. I connected the G-Speed to a Mac Pro with two dual-core 3 GHz Intel processors via an Atto Celerity FC-42ES Fibre Channel card (which has two 4 Gb ports, each with its own SFP). To play luscious moving pictures in HD and 2K, I used an AJA Kona 3 with its K3-Box. I also tested with Atto's Celerity FC-44ES, which has quad 4 Gb ports that allowed me to plug a SAN into the available ports (two cables for redundancy) at the same time.

In addition, I used a second Kona system as my HD player, with one Kona feeding HD and the other eating HD. Here's where we get to the fun part. In my fantasy, if the drive has a problem, it should come to me and politely inform me it has stubbed its toe-or scream if it has broken an arm, or, say, lost a hard drive. And that is one of my favorite features of this box. G-Tech provides a GUI for the G-Speed that will send you a message when there is an issue with the drive (more on that later). And, like all Fibre Channel drives, the G-Speed has the simplicity of FireWire but with top performance. The interface is much simpler than SCSI connectivity (though that is also an option). Considered more robust than SATA, Fibre Channel also can achieve higher data rates.

Although a G-Speed can operate in RAID level 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, and JBOD (short for "just a bunch of disks") configurations, most film and video work will be done in RAID-0, which adds one more drive to the array to deliver more speed, or RAID-3 and RAID-5, which offer redundancy in case of drive failure. Powered redundancy is also offered as an option and is one that I welcome when thinking of putting this drive in a shared SAN environment. Working as a kind of Fibre hub, the two Fibre ports allow two machines to connect to the same G-Speed, each choosing its own partition. Though this is not shared storage, it is useful to share the physical drive when needed.

GUI is good

As handsome as this drive is, I still prefer to leave it in a cabinet and access all I need from the monitor in front of me while I edit. With a G-Speed, by typing a few digits into a Web browser, you can access myriad drive functions and information through the RAID Configuration and Management Tools (they're also accessible through a built-in LCD panel). The GUI monitors things like power supply voltage, fan rpm, and the temperature of the RAID controller and hard drives. And if the G-Speed starts to go down the wrong road (e.g., overheats), it will send you an e-mail.

It is through this GUI that you not only monitor the drive, but also configure it to best suit your needs. You can, for example, stripe all six drives as RAID-3 and then partition that in two parts, for two machines to access the drive. Alternatively, you could split off one drive for audio (or if working in a SAN environment, for metadata) and stripe the other five drives for data.

I did a number of tests to gauge performance, but the tests that really matter are what format you can capture, what format you can play back, and how smooth the system feels while doing it. The most important thing to me was that I could capture long clips of all flavors of HD, including 10-bit uncompressed 1080i, without a hiccup. When I played the clips back, I could fly around the timeline like it was butter-or DV.

Since the G-Speed was singing along in 10-bit, 1080i HD so smoothly, I thought I'd try to play some 2K film-resolution movies. I up-res'd HD to 2K by dropping HD clips into a 2K Final Cut Pro timeline and exporting it as a standalone file. After importing it back into Final Cut Pro, I was very pleased to see that it played. After 5 to 10 seconds it dropped frames-but when I turned off the wireframe view and changed video out to view single frames instead of all frames, the G-Speed was able to play back 2 to 3 minutes of 2K until a frame was dropped. This is probably an ample duration for an effects artist's playback needs.

Chain reaction

I have one small issue and a small question mark. The noteworthy issue is the hub design for the Fibre ports. The trade-off for being able to connect two editing machines to one G-Speed is that daisy chaining-which is what permits one drive to attach to another-is no longer permitted. For most people this will not be an issue; if planned well, you can make the G-Speed the last drive in a chain if daisy chaining is necessary. Yet there are a few instances when this might be a problem, which is why this is a small issue. Given the option, I think I'd prefer sharing the drive above daisy chaining.

And my question mark? We know that a drive of this caliber must be well supported, and the support part of the equation should be fully implemented by the time you read this. According to G-Tech, by January 2007, "our tech support will have immediate escalation available for G-Speed customers to be connected with a specialist who intimately knows the product and the most common installation issues." I'll address G-Tech's support implementation in the online update of this review (which will also discuss the 16-drive G-Speed XL-a 3U rackmountable unit that has a storage capacity to 12 TB-that the company was scheduled to begin shipping in January).

Don't forget that the G-Speed is not sold directly to the public but only through a select dealer channel. The support that some professionals might need or expect-like 24-hour availability and a regular tech staff that knows the inner workings of the drive, the GUI, and hopefully SAN integration-will come from these dealers. Promax is one such dealer that will both sell the G-Speed and support it. Most people buying a 4 Gb RAID are buying more than just the drive-and a good system integrator can be a big help.

Todd Sali is the founder of thesandbox, a solar-powered postproduciton facility in Venice, CA. When not editing, he is out in the wide world shooting HD time-lapse that can be seen on sandboxla.com.