Help.. best way to share FC projects between 4 computers

Hi There,
We are a small video production company and we use four computers to edit, one Mac Pro, two iMacs and a Macbook Pro.
The problem we have is that we often need to move the projects from one computer to another, so different members of the team can pick up on a project on a different computer... we need a solution to be able to share the projects so that they are all held on a central storage device, and then we can edit them all off there.
The problem is that we work in uncompressed 1080p format, so file sizes are high.
We dont currently have any kind of network set up, and have to upload it onto a hard drive then download it to the next computer, which all takes hours to do!
What are the different options that we have with regards to networks, speed, and central storage devices?
I have read a lot on the apple website about Xsan, Xserve and Final Cut Server, but don't really understand how it all works and realistically howe much approx. it will cost to implement something like this in our company?
any help or advice is greatly appreciated about how you share projects and store data centrally.
Thanks
Tom

Your question is very loaded! You really need professional integration support to properly arrive at an answer, but I'll attempt to cover the highlights.
I'll skip the part where we might consider not adopting Xsan and Final Cut Server. For collaborative workflows like yours it is an excellent, if relatively expensive option. I'll also skip the part where I explore your use of uncompressed 1080p in a world with ProRes 422 HQ; I'm sure you have your reasons (though I'm puzzled as to how you can edit that format on an iMac or MacBook and not drop frames constantly).
First, with Xsan, Mac Pros are your only choice for workstations. Xsan requires a fibrechannel connection to the client and that is only possible on a Mac Pro tower with a fibrechannel card installed. Yes, many have had some success "resharing" their Xsan over AFP or SMB or NFS, but for uncompressed 1080 that is essentially impossible. Each member computer needs a £491 fibrechannel card.
Xsan requires a dedicated computer to act as the "boss" of the SAN called a metadata controller. Many Xsan deployment shave two of them for redundancy (for the sake of thrift we'll only look at one for you). An Xserve or Mac Pro will work, so for the sake of argument we'll repurpose your existing Mac Pro for MDC duty.
So you will be replacing your four edit stations with £3,000+ Mac Pros (depending on how many goodies you put in them). You'll also need some monitors for them since they are not built-in as with your existing Macs. Let's call that another £3,000 to be safe. We'll avoid the AJA or Decklink cards, HD broadcast monitors, and other accessories since they are not really part of the SAN-scape.
You will also need a copy of Xsan software for each member computer, including the metadata controller(s) at £816 each.
You will also need a second gigabit switch for Xsan's filesystem metadata, you should be able to get one for around £100. This switch must not be shared with other network traffic!
Of course there is the RAID storage. Apple sells Promise RAIDs, and a 32TB chassis will store about 50 hours of your footage. Off the top of my head I'm not sure how many streams of that it will be able to support. Figure on needing at least two of these I reckon. £15,000 for the first one and £13,000 for the expansion chassis.
Lastly, you need a fibrechannel switch. The popular Qlogic 5600 with 8 ports active will cost £2,200.
And since you posted here, clearly you want Final Cut Server. Again, an Xserve or Mac Pro will do, and a properly spec'd one will cost about £7,000 for the hardware and another £816 for the Final Cut Server software itself.
You're already over £60,000 and you still need expert help setting it up, you'll want UPS batteries to keep the SAN stable, and we haven't touched on backing it all up.
You could easily spend £100,000 before you are done. It might be an intimidating figure, but that's the ante for this game.

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