640Gb RAMdisk as videoCache

[roberto0610]

Hello, my name is Roberto. From Wenatchee WA-US. Here at the world wide capital of the apples. Hi. everyone. I'm approaching on building 2x FreeNAS one for my 1)LoTe [Long-Term] data and one for my 2)VERCa [Video-Editing-Rendering-Cache].
I been buying old used or refurbished gear from eBay and other local vendors to accomplish this task.

• I have a 40Gb Network Manage Switch from Dell. with 4x ports QSFTP,
• I have 1 Custom made server as LoTE with with 8x 2TB 72k RPMS as RAID60 total of 11TB (I'll run FreeNAS on it) basic setup. Intel CPU, 8GB ram and 8x Port SLI with 256Mb. All SATA. This Custom made NAS also has a 10GB SFTP 2x Port NIC directly connected to Switch.
• I have 1 Dell Power Edge R910 as VERCawith 4x Intel Xenon 8 Core each with 748GB on RAM, One 600GB SAS as system disk and 2x Kingston Hyperx 960GB SSD as RAID0to only write data to RAID0 in case of power failure. This Dell-R910 also has a 40GB QSFTP 2x Port NIC directly connected to Switch.
• I have 2 Workstation connected to the same switch using 10GB each directly connected to network switch. This computers are CPU AMD Ryzen, using Premiere and After Effects as editing station and will use the the VERCa server to store its temporary files, caches and renders.
• I need some help on setting up RAMDisk on the VERCa server with 640GB on the RAM it has. I has a Battery back that last about 55 Min. More than enough time to save RAMDisk to RAID0 disk.
• Then when all my edition is done. I'll move my final files to my LongTerm spinning drives.

Will any one here at the forum point me into the right direction.

1. Most difficult for me now I thinks its the creation of the RAMDisk and probable the Scrip to save data to RAMDisk to SSD on RAID0. then
2. Another scrip to create, mount and load the same data to the RAMDisk.
3. Please see my diagram on G-Drive. Took me long time to make it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uJdpJcnsjk0JpGZ9-wQGYwjxc1JraVMX/view?usp=sharing
   

I'll apreciate help on accomplish this task. I bet a lot of video production houses will find this setup interesting.

 

[Chris Moore]

RAID60 total of 11TB (I'll run FreeNAS on it)

No such thing in FreeNAS. Please review these documents to understand how ZFS works and the naming for storage types:

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

I need some help on setting up RAMDisk on the VERCa server with 640GB on the RAM it has. I has a Battery back that last about 55 Min. More than enough time to save RAMDisk to RAID0 disk.

I really don't understand the reason for this. This could have been done much more economically with a significantly less expensive server. No need of having four processors and all that RAM. You could have made an array of SSD and then no need to manually create a RAMdisk and create a script to copy the RAMdisk to physical storage. Too complicated and why do you think you need a RAMdisk? I don't think this is a good idea and it is not a supported configuration for FreeNAS.
Still, here is a forum post where the creation of a RAMdisk is discussed and perhaps it will assist you in your plan:

Testing the benefits of SLOG using a RAM disk!
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...s-of-slog-using-a-ram-disk.56561/#post-396630

I think it is a bad plan.

 

[roberto0610]

I really don't understand the reason for this. Too complicated and why do you think you need a RAMdisk? I don't think this is a good idea and it is not a supported configuration for FreeNAS.

I think it is a bad plan.

I already got this refurbished server. ECC DDR3 Ram was really cheap and I'm planing to use RAMdisk to minimize the ware down of the SSD drives. And even then RAM will have way faster response whith reading, viewing, editing and rendering high resolution videos.

My wife has a wedding video production that produces about 350GB per week in a 3 to 6 4K camera setup. It means I need to read all 3-6 videos files when editing and cutting footage in a multiCam mode. Per video it is a 50Mbps/sec.

I'm already reading your recommendations.

Has anybody try to approach this scenario yet?

I also need to mention that this server is or could be mounted on top of a ESXi from VMware. To allocate not just the FreeNAS but also a Windows 10 Enterprise N that will hold 75% of the CPU power and the 2nd 40GbE. Using a pass trough.

• This Windows headless will be us as a watchfolder for the Adobe CC suite and trigger the rendering processed. All of this away from the editing workstations.

 

[Chris Moore]

If you are using all those CPUs for rendering, then I can see using such a server. I am still not sure if the RAM disk is going to be a good option for you. It might have been better to use high endurance SSDs. @Stux might know more about the use of a RAM disk after the testing he did. Perhaps he will have some input.

 

[Stux]

I think there is some concern that the RAM disk driver has some significant bottlenecks, which means it’s not necessarily much faster than a high performance nvme.

Consider just using a p4800x instead.

 

[roberto0610]

I think there is some concern that the RAM disk driver has some significant bottlenecks, which means it’s not necessarily much faster than a high performance nvme.

Consider just using a p4800x instead.

What about the ware of the ssd units. RAM may not be way faster but will perform faster For way longer time. Do you want to run some testing on this rig? I'm new t freeNAS and I have good confident in it. I just don't know how long will it take me to transition from what I have.

• I already have the sever and the ram
• I don't have the p4800x

 

[Chris Moore]

It might be interesting to see the results of the testing. The system with the RAM Disk is going to be a virtual machine in ESXi?
I have never tried, or even though about it before, but could ESXi provide the RAM Disk to FreeNAS ?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Ender117]

I think there is some concern that the RAM disk driver has some significant bottlenecks, which means it’s not necessarily much faster than a high performance nvme.

Consider just using a p4800x instead.

AFAIK it's that mdconfig in freebsd (and thus freenas) have problem with NUMA latency. In single CPU system it's still significantly faster than SSDs.