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This Knowledgebase entry will be an ongoing document to guide the configuration of Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances to best operate with Apple Final Cut Pro X video editing software.

In this Document

Purpose

Scope

Details

Overview

General Recommendations for the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance for use by Final Cut Pro X

Recommendations for NFS Shares for use by Final Cut Pro X

Applies to:

Purpose

This Knowledgebase entry will be an active document to guide the configuration of Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances to best operate with Apple Final Cut Pro X video editing software.

Scope

 Audience:  Administrators of Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances and users and administrators of Apple Final Cut Pro X software.

Details

Overview

Apple Final Cut Pro X is a professional video editing package that runs on the Apple Mac OS X operating system.  As an editor manipulates the media being used to create a video, large amounts of sequential streaming I/O can be generated to the storage.  The Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance is an ideal platform for serving the media for Final Cut Pro X, but a few key decisions can help the performance of the media manipulation. 

Network attached storage methods are recommended for Mac OS X/Final Cut Pro X use of the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance.  NFS or SMB are the two best options for access to the media storage, with NFS being the preferred method for the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance.

General Recommendations for the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance for use by Final Cut Pro X

• Final Cut Pro X can create a very bandwidth-intensive storage profile while users are creating videos.  Even seemingly benign activities like moving the timeline slider on a project can generate I/O to the media or cache repository.  Individual storage locations can be selected for Media, Cache and Backups for each individual project.  Separating each of these categories by project onto their own individual NFS shares will minimize contention.  Apple provides a white paper describing the Media Management paradigm for Final Cut Pro X at : https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Media_Management.pdf
• The faster the network links between the Final Cut Pro X workstations and the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance, the better.  100Mbs links are not recommended.  Gigabit ethernet from the workstation to the switch works well, with only a few Final Cut Pro X activities needing more than the 130MB/sec gross bandwidth of a 1Gbs link.  If more than 130MB/sec is needed between a specific workstation and the storage, either multiple 1Gbs links or 10Gbs links may be needed.   Refer to https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18560?locale=en_US for information on aggregating network links on Mac OS X.
• 10Gbs links between the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance and the switch are recommended.  If 10Gbs links are not available, then using Link Aggregation (LACP) to bundle multiple 1Gbs links between the storage and the switch is recommended.  For an in-depth look at the networking considerations on the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance, reference "Networking Best Practices with the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance"  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-unified-storage/documentation/networking-bestprac-zfssa-2215767.pdf
•  Large MTU sizes (Jumbo frames) are recommended if supported by the NICs, servers and switch.    For an in-depth look at the networking considerations on the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance, reference "Networking Best Practices with the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance"  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-unified-storage/documentation/networking-bestprac-zfssa-2215767.pdf
• Pool configuration will impact performance.  The ZFS Storage Appliance can be built in a maximum performance configuration with Terabytes of DRAM ARC cache, eight disk trays of 10K RPM performance drives, RAID10 mirroring, and large capacity read and write flash logs, or, it can be built to lean more toward archival use, with just a few trays of 7K RPM drives in a RAID-Z configuration, and minimal ARC DRAM and flash cache.  There is no single configuration that will satisfy every user.  For an environment being used primarily for video editing, which can be generally characterized as a large streaming archive workload, the following is generally recommended:
• Pools should be "Double Parity Raid (RAIDZ2)", with a Log Profile of "Mirrored Log". 
• Capacity drives (7K RPM) work well for this large block, sequential workload.  
• Read flash (L2ARC) is of limited use in this environment.  L2ARC is primarily a benefit in small block, random read workloads, like databases.
• Write flash (Logzillas) can help write throughput, but only if the sizes of files being simultaneously written does not exceed the size of the write cache.  

Recommendations for NFS Shares for use by Final Cut Pro X

• Thin provisioning is controlled by the Reservation value for a share; a reservation value of zero designates a thin-provisioned share.  The amount of free space reflected for a thin-provisioned NFS share will be the amount of free space left in the storage pool where the share lives.  NFS shares used for Final Cut Pro X can be thin-provisioned if they are not also going to be accessed using SMB.  If there is going to be SMB access to the shares, then thin-provisioning is not recommended, and a reservation should be given to each share.    
• The recommended Properties of NFS shares used by Final Cut Pro X are as follows:
• Data compression : Off      -  Media files do not compress well.
• Cache device usage : Do not use cache devices   - Unless the same media file is to be read repeatedly and will fit into the L2ARC, use of L2ARC is not recommended for media files.  The L2ARC is intended for random read workloads. 
• Synchronous write bias :  It depends.    In general, the Synchronous write bias setting of "Throughput" is recommended for Final Cut Pro X shares.  However, the Synchronous write bias setting of "Latency" may show a slight improvement in performance, only if:
• The storage pool where the media shares reside is dedicated to media files
• The storage pool is not shared with applications requiring very low latency
• There are "Logzilla" write log disks in the pool
• The amount of data being streamed does not routinely overflow the write logs. 
• Database record size - 1M is recommended for NFS shares.
• NFS V3 or V4 are the recommended protocols for accessing the shares on the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance.  All Oracle testing was done using NFSV3, but there are no restrictions on using NFSV4.  In our testing, SMB was significantly slower than NFS.  To ensure good performance on the NFS shares, use the following mount parameters: 

• rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576    (Maximum read and write size - NOTE: this is a limit and does not dictate what the application will write.  The apparent effective limit of these options in Mac OS X today is 65536, but future NFS client updates may make 1048576 relevant. As of 4/15, specifying 1048576 results in rsize and wsize of 65536, as verified with the "nfsstat -m" command.  )
• intr (allow Cntl-C interrupts)
• async (asynchronous writes)
• readahead=64
• timeo=180
• rdirplus

• These NFS mount parameters can be specified on the Mac OS Terminal command line (sudo mount -t nfs.....) and can also be set as defaults in the file /etc/nfs.conf .  Use the "nfsstat -m" command to verify the NFS settings on each share.
• Use the "NFS Exceptions" section of the Share definition (Edit the share->Protocols->NFS Exceptions) to control access to the individual shares.  Access can be limited to specific NFS clients by IP address,  DNS domain, or  network domain.
• Use the DTrace Analytics on your Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance to measure I/O throughput on your Final Cut Pro X shares.  Suggested statistics to monitor include "Network->Device Bytes->Broken down by device",  "NFSV3 bytes->Broken down by file name", and "NFSV3 operations->Broken down by share".

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