Avoiding Professional Obsolescence

[aaron]

With the end of the Xserve some of us are considering a few small repairs to the way we operate. Please use this thread to brainstorm new ideas. Perhaps the best (or easiest!) will turn into permanent features on Xsanity.

Here are some ideas to kick this off.

In its infancy, Xsanity helped define the standard Xsan install that we know so well: two Xserves, QLogic, Xserve RAID, Open Directory, DNS, Clients. What will the Mac SAN of the future look like? Would a wiki help us define this?

Is the standard MDC of the future a Linux box? I remember an O'Reilly book called "Mac for Unix Geeks." Is it time for a "Unix for Mac Geeks?" Where do you get training for this?

Please comment and add your own ideas.
_________________
Aaron Freimark
http://www.tekserve.com/vcard/af.vcf

[clearframe]

I suspect Apple will suggest that workstations be MDCs in any future versions of Xsan. Doing that lowers the cost of entry for Xsan which is part of what Apple is all about with their professional products.
Future versions of Xsan may automatically take steps to 'harden' a workstation for MDC use but until that day comes I think it would be helpful to identify what needs to be done in that direction. Applying MCX to prevent network interface changes for instance.
As far as the network services go, I think recommending two mini servers to be configured in tandem should be standard. LDAP and DNS can be replicated across them.

[abstractrude]

the more i thought about this last night i realized that this actually increases your professional pull in this environment. final cut pro will be updated and you will need xsan. you will need stornext controllers and yada yada.

then again maybe not. avid unity supports final cut now. edit share will always be second rate ethernet crap.

[jlungaro]

Who knows!! Active Storage might save the day with maybe a new server line-up as they have done with XRAID and innerpool.

reading the following quote from Alex gross man newsletter gives me faith

"Active Storage has some exciting things in the works that will shape the broadcast, post-production and creative professional market for years to come"

[ogminlo]

Unfortunately, the video codec world is a proprietary one, otherwise I'd turn to Linux like I can for StorNext MDCs. I may just need to focus entirely on storage in general and StorNext in particular. Even if that means frequently serving the media industry with storage, it isn't the shift to asset management I've found so satisfying with FCSvr the past two years.

[TuberMagPico]

During IBC there was a hummingbird, at the time I thought Why?

Does anyone see a place for this new Promise VT S3000 product?

[lowbudgetfun]

[proton]

If even FCP would had to go, I'm thinking about Edius solution. Recent versions have very interesting features, like native mxf editing, direct video server connection, etc.

[ACSA]

[akalup]

With Mac OS X Lion coming next year, this makes me wonder about future upgrades to the Xsan software. I wonder if Apple is going to officially turn it over to a third party like it did with the Xserve RAID. I agree that StorNext may be the future.
We are still on XSAN 1.4 with Xserve RAIDS and were finally planning a costly full upgrade for next year. Now, this makes everything very uncertain.

[handygeek]

[handygeek]

[handygeek]

Has anyone tried SANmp? They have a free trial for an unlimited number of stations. Might give it a try in our sandbox here.

[proton]

[handygeek]

BTW, thanks for starting this thread, Aaron. I'm still reeling a bit from last week and it caused a few interesting discussions here at work that I'm sure will turn into meetings soon.