Facilis ebook all network storage is not the same facilis technology

22/12/2017

Facilis Ebook-All Network Storage is Not the Same - Facilis Technology

An Introduction to Facilis Founded in 2003, Massachusetts-based Facilis Technology, Inc. designs and builds a ordable, high-cap storage and data management solutions for collaborative media production networks in the lm, telev content creation markets. Production-proven Facilis solutions are fast and intuitive, making it easier fo professionals to collaborate and work e ciently. Flexible, scalable and compatible with industry-stand work ows, Facilis’ shared storage products blend seamlessly into any boutique, mid-size or large facili installed in more than 3,000 locations worldwide.

Preface The computer workstation for non-linear editing of video was a revolutionary technological developme impact on the wider broadcast industry, most notably for this discussion, the post-production craft. Vi provided with career-changing production tools, and nothing would ever be the same. It was only a few adoption of computer-based video editorial that these facilities started looking for a way to centralize consumable resource in the work ow, hard drive storage.

This was the dawn of facility networking, but these networks were too slow to deal with large video da each workstation came its own dedicated disk-based storage system. After working like this for some t https://www.facilis.com/ebook1-nas/

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Facilis Ebook-All Network Storage is Not the Same - Facilis Technology

apparent that each workstation is essentially an island. Connecting these various islands was starting to become necessary for larger projects that were duplicating gigabytes of data across multiple workstations.

Shared storage was born. In it’s infancy, these systems used heavy and cumbersome LVD SCSI, with thick spools of cable and failure-prone multi-pin connectors. Along came Fibre Channel, which was more elegantly attached through thin ber optical cable with a longer reach. Each solution was connected to a central hub, and fanned out to multiple workstations. Software on the workstations would determine who had the ability to write and read to a given partition, and all the data was now on every desktop. Stubbornly, collaborative editorial had arrived.

The evolution continued through various sp Channel, and then to Ethernet as facility net Facilities now had a choice of technologies, b facility owner to nd an un-biased opinion o for their infrastructure. A schism developed Fibre Channel-based systems and NAS (Netw Storage) ethernet-based systems. There wer and discussions would sometimes degenera The simple fact is that when NAS got faster a Channel started to wain in popularity.

The decline of Fibre Channel wasn’t due to a fundamental aw or a suitability problem, it was IT conve networks, including the systems that drive them and the people that assemble and administrate them The content creation market is the primary user of Fibre Channel as a client connectivity, and is by com Due to the laws of supply and demand, big market technology will progress more quickly, and costs w compared to small market technology. The last decade has seen considerable progress in NAS system are now available from many vendors targeting the content creation space.

However, all that glitters is not gold – many NAS systems are true to their initial design as common con business machines, and possess critical aws and system shortcomings in the content creation space. become apparent until after a signi cant investment has been made. This eBook looks at the issues su attached storage systems in an approachable, easy to understand way. It de-bunks the techno babble questions that broadcasters and facilities need to ask before committing to purchase their next gener architecture.

Introduction – all we want is an easy life You want a good storage system that can be seen and used by all the workstations in your facility. The obvious, so all your incoming le-based content lives in one place. Attach your laptop or workstation t and there it is.

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Facilis Ebook-All Network Storage is Not the Same - Facilis Technology

It is not, nor has it ever been, that easy. Before exploring the “gotchas” involved in deploying such a sy down what exactly it is that you want.

Good storage system – Protected, reliable, high performance Can be seen and used – Multi-platform compatible, application interoperable By all the workstations – Scalable, accessible

What makes a good storage system?

All RAID systems should have levels of protection against drive failure, and properly maintain your dat one of the reasons to get o the desktop hard drives you’re currently using. Reliability is an issue that the aspects of your system. A server that has a few hours of downtime a couple of times a year is bett routine failures to access data or play a video stream due to basic incompatibilities or complex manag Chasing daily issues that keep people from being productive is hard on the facility.

High-performance storage is easy when you’re attaching it to a single workstation. When it’s attached to 10 or 20, that performance doesn’t hold up. With network storage (NAS), administrators trying to increase performance often end up just moving the log jam downstream. For example, start by adding more drives. That will distribute the load better, and the data will be read and written with lower latency. At this point you may nd out that your server or “NAS head” is not up to the task.

Let’s assume it’s been con gured well, and it’s chugging right along. Now, the bottleneck has moved to the backbone.

Building a bigger “backbone” from the server to your network switch may include going from a 1Gb to uplink. Assuming the NAS head is compatible and data is owing properly through the 40Gb connectio bottleneck - the switch. Or maybe it’s the protocol, the bu ers, the frame size, version of TCP-IP, netwo you start considering the process of getting data to the desktop and how you could make that faster, t endless. Many a NAS system has been “repurposed” to backup duty soon after being built because the ine ciencies just couldn’t be tweaked away.

This is your rst chance to reconsider a generic NAS and nd a turn-key network that eliminates all the you back the hours that you’d be spending. Performance is systemic, the right answer is a turn-key an environment. But since you’ve gotten this far, let’s continue.

Serving the clients Let’s again assume that you have overcome the rst few bottlenecks and have the system performing great benchmark results on a few client workstations. Now, let’s get into the work ow. Rarely are all sy same or even similar in construction. Various workstation types, operating system (OS) avors and rev https://www.facilis.com/ebook1-nas/

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Facilis Ebook-All Network Storage is Not the Same - Facilis Technology

necessary to pull o the jobs that come through the door. Your graphic artists like their 10.10 OS Mac color grading system is an HP Z840 on Windows 10. The archive server is CentOS Linux, and the new iM 10.12. Don’t forget about the Avid department on Windows 7.

That’s not cross-platform, that’s multi-platform, and multi-revision. H problem – client-side support of your network le system. Your NAS Probably not a Mac, maybe Windows, or likely Linux. Don’t know Lin learn it because it’s the best way to build an e ective NAS based on Let’s talk about these protocols. NFS (network le system) is commo Windows and Linux organizations. Apple has some support, but ma using a separate application to access NFS on OSX. Many reports of mount/browse, and a lot of time spent to make things work properl forums. Windows has support for NFS but ACLs and POSIX must be for the user account to get anywhere.

AFP (Apple File Protocol) is slowly being phased out, and SMB (Serve gaining more support from Apple in the latest versions. This is good downright broken a few times in prior versions. You should pay atte artists that likes their 10.10 Macs, you may be forced into an awkwa about upgrading (or downgrading). Linux has support with Samba, but once again be aware of the spe Kernel version and distribution.

If you decide to build the network that will be everything to everyone, and share multiple protocols to workstations, good luck with that. Authentication, ownership, and permissions range from “a little di e variable” across these protocols. This may eventually put a hard stop on your work ow and leave you instead of creating content. Of course, a career systems administrator (sysadmin) will read this and ha everything, or dismiss these concerns summarily based on their experience assembling heterogeneou person, and he or she will be responsible for your company’s ability to generate revenue. They’ll want and once embedded they will have substantial power to make that demand, when you consider the al We haven’t even started talking about application compatibility, which is a piece of magic that some of trained sysadmins battle with daily. Application compatibility cannot be measured by benchmarks. It is upload/download speeds. The content creation application was likely designed generations ago to wo hard drive, and the artists you hire to work in your facility will want the application to work as designed target, or the source of the les the application uses must behave more like a local hard drive than a n lies the magic.

What the heck is TCP and why should I care?

In the le system protocols listed previously, TCP is the method by which data is transmitted across an TCP was developed in the 70s to provide a reliable data stream. The design was focused on reliability, wiring can be very unreliable, and data integrity was important. So, TCP provides a way to send data p tried repeatedly in the case of a network failure, to continue the stream without loss once the network Networking speed 30 years ago was abysmal, you’d be lucky to get a 10Mb/sec corporate link, or abou https://www.facilis.com/ebook1-nas/

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Facilis Ebook-All Network Storage is Not the Same - Facilis Technology

the standard 1Gb/sec link we all enjoy on our laptops. So, performance was not a priority.

Presently, we enjoy relatively screaming-fast network link speeds, but still TCP is the dominant method for transmitting data to your desktop.

This is because backward compatibility is critically important. The world network is already built, and can’t be overhauled even if it means a quantum leap forward. So, any advancements in TCP suite of rules for IP networks will be very slight and incremental. Therefore, a TCP network drive will never behave like a local hard drive. The technology is available, but you must go outside TCP say that every application will refuse to work on a network drive, some have been adapted well, others they can. You’ll rarely get to the optimal application functionality using a network drive as compared to highly optimized non-TCP network storage. Optimized, non-TCP network storage can act like a local ha performance and in appearance to the client operating system.

Just to touch on application interoperability, or the ability to work with all the features of the applicatio cases, even if a TCP network drive is compatible, it won’t be interoperable. Apple’s Final Cut Pro X (FCP hold project metadata and les that have been imported into the project. FCPX can’t save libraries to common network le systems. So, you can work in FCPX on a local hard drive, and have some of your network drive, but that’s neither e cient, nor interoperable. Avid Media Composer requires that stora drive, or Avid storage. Network storage is not allowed in collaborative (shared) environments. Optimiz storage can hold FCPX libraries and emulate Avid storage for full interoperability.

Does size really matter?

You don’t know how big your company will get, and you don’t know what project may walk through th would you like to prepare to take on the bigger jobs and scale-up the workgroup - when the job is abo client count is about to double? You could just throw money at the problem and over-engineer from th slippery slope, especially if the big job takes a while to come around.

Start with a logical investment, but be sure tha you chose has the capability to handle your be pattern. Successful scaling of capacity and clien the architecture.

Your encoding and backup automation is set to Ensure that when you add capacity, that capac immediately on current jobs without adding a capacity should always increase bandwidth, an the ability to utilize old and new drives in the s increase speed. Avoid systems that limit your client count, or have you buying additional seat licenses to manage more user connections. After the big job is over, extra licenses and hardware will only serv https://www.facilis.com/ebook1-nas/

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Facilis Ebook-All Network Storage is Not the Same - Facilis Technology

reminder of your higher lease payment. Look for systems that have multiple methods of connectivity. may su ce for the o ine work you do today, but that big job looms somewhere in the future. Some s connection speed up to 32Gb/sec, good for over 3000MB/sec of data transfer speed to the desktop. C storage network that can accommodate more speed than you think you’ll even need.

It's all about accessibility Accessibility, as shown before, can be a challenge based on the workstation OS and revision you chose force everyone onto the same OS revision for compatibility. This usually means that they’re using som to provide the connection, so they’re not completely agnostic. If the shared storage system relies upon OS that determines whether the system works reliably. Try to nd a system that has compatibility with revisions, because this ensures that a change in the OS is unlikely to cause a problem, and you won’t h upgrades across the facility to simply update your server software.

Access to the system can also be unreliable if additional components are required to manage user acc permissions. Many NAS systems require directory services (Active Directory, LDAP) which must be con separate server, for the NAS to provide access. This is another level of management that you may cho own purposes, but should not be forced to deploy just to provide access. The resiliency of the network important when considering reliable access to the storage. If there is only one possible path to the sto requires multiple active paths to function, it only takes a wiggle of a wire to disconnect your clients. Lo have connectivity failover, to provide another path to the storage in case of an issue with the primary, only require a single connection to the storage to lower complexity.

In conclusion… the really important stu When you decide on a turn-key shared storage network, demand that the architecture is supportable and get evidence of that with systems in the eld today (if the vendor has no systems that are over 5 y problem). Planned obsolescence, and quickly-moving product architecture will leave you left out, and f Don’t let the hardware fool you, all network storage is not the same. The important aspects of your req broken down and analyzed, and I hope we agree on the result.

Performance is systemic, and bottlenecks will migrate downstream Talk to someone that quali es and guarantees the performance of the entire system Building a functional network on dated protocols is challenging Find a system that uses an optimized, non-TCP sharing method.

Managing a network is tough, and if you farm out the work, be prepared to pay.

Buying a turn-key system provides you a direct line to the experts on your system Over-engineering is costly, but the ability to grow and adapt is critical Look for a product that satis es your growth pattern, and buy the size you need now.

Facilis’ multi-platform shared le system and complementary work ow solutions power thousands of content creation work ows in facilities worldwide – allowing professionals to store, share, edit and arc https://www.facilis.com/ebook1-nas/

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Facilis Ebook-All Network Storage is Not the Same - Facilis Technology

of media at an accelerated pace.

The Facilis Shared File System is included with every TerraBlock system and easily accommodates the platform network environments and enables collaboration among diverse image formats and applicat Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro/Creative Cloud, FCP/FCPX, DaVinci Resolve and others. From 4K HD craft editorial, TerraBlock Network shared storage provides the performance and collaboration too done.

Supported by a strong internal team comprising industry veterans with extensive backgrounds in prod broadcast facility engineering and creative video editing, Facilis continually innovates its solutions to e integration with the latest creative applications and technology, as well as support for cutting-edge con The company’s world-class technical support and meticulous in-house integration of each turnkey solu Facilis a loyal customer base and esteemed reputation in the industry. Its consultative selling process solutions will t seamlessly into facility environments of all shapes and sizes and provide unmatched s uninterrupted production.

Facilis Technology (USA) 108 Forest Avenue, Hudson, MA 01749 T.: +1.978.562.7022 F.: +1.978.562.9022 E-Mail: info@facilis.com Facilis Technology is represented by several distinguished resellers across the US, EMEA and APAC wh assist you with on-site setup, installation and ongoing support.

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