If you work with a storage system larger than 10TB and let’s say hundred thousands or more files stored on it, saving these data as a backup or mirror can be quite challenging. I know many systems, which solely rely on RAID level 5 as the only security feature, which is somehow frightening if you consider the value of your data.

In this article I will explain how Xsan 2.2.x’s fsevents feature in conjunction with Archiware PresSTORE’s 4.x Synchronize module can help you creating a secure copy of your data during normal business hours without interrupting your real-time I/O operations.

Lately I’ve seen more and more people connecting their Final Cut Server systems to other MAMs, and one of the main questions in these “multiple MAMs” environments is how to exchange metadata in between the different systems.

If you want to copy asset metadata from an external MAM into Final Cut Server, this basically includes the following steps:

1. copy media file into Final Cut Server
2. copy related metadata as an XML file into Final Cut Server

Both steps would work with or without watch folders, you can e.g. copy new assets into FCSvr as part of a Final Cut Pro project file and let Final Cut Server automatically grab any related XML files after analyzing a file. The real challenge lies in creating the proper XML file.

Archiware has released PresSTORE 4, a major update to its suite of backup, archive, and synchronization software. The new software has a long list of features, including:

• An entirely new interface, reorganizing every menu for a much more intuitive experience
• An iPhone app for monitoring your PresSTORE server and receiving alerts (storage full, etc.)
• Desktop Notification Service to bring more information to users and administrators
• Global log searching
• A common schedule for Synchronize, Backup and Archive

In addition, individual modules have also been improved. Synchronize now has a many-to-one mode, a one-click snapshot function, and includes full support for Xsan FS Events. The Backup module includes support for progressive backups (to consolidate multiple incrementals into a new full), tape redundancy, and point-in-time snapshots. Backup2Go can throttle by network or CPU load and perform end-to-end encryption. Finally, Archive now uses an plugin architecture for external preview generators, so data of almost any type can be previewed.

Continue reading for an FAQ about upgrades...

I'm pleased to announce that Archiware has opened a forum on our site for their PresSTORE suite of backup, archive, and synchronization software. While not quite new, PresSTORE is certainly unfamiliar to the majority of Mac storage administrators. Ibrahim Tannir, one of product developers writes:

We welcome any and all input and feedback you are willing to offer on our products and take everything said seriously. So please let us know what your experiences are, what you think we can do better, which features would make you life easier, etc. etc. and we will do our best to improve the product to meet your needs.

It is our policy that everyone is entitled to support, regardless of how big or small his license or his installation is, whether running a demo or running our products for years. So please take advantage of our free support and share your experience and your solutions to encountered problems with the community.

[Disclaimer: Our sponsor, and my employer, Tekserve is a PresSTORE reseller and would love to sell it to you!]

Enlighten your Xsan with DiskFire.

We have been looking for a tool to test and tune the performance of Xsan volumes. We needed something that could generate concurrent IO to analyse the aggregate throughput of large SAN volumes. We also needed the ability to specify a path for the IO, so we could test individual Xsan affinities.

We couldn't find a nice tool to do this - so we decided to create our own!

Download it today - for free at www.factorial.co.nz/tools

DiskFire is specifically designed with Xsan in mind. Test your SAN perfomance by generating multiple concurrent IO streams. You can configure the size, blocksize, and the number of parallel IO threads. DiskFire lets you choose a target path for the IO, so you can test and tune down to individual affinities.

We are an independent IT consultancy focusing on the Apple platform. We offer a range of IT professional services including solution design, workflow optimisation and software development. We specialise in custom Final Cut Server integration, and Xsan / StorNext shared storage solutions.

This is just the first release of DiskFire and we would love the hear your feedback.

Cheers

Thomas Bauer + Tim Benson

Contact us at www.factorial.co.nz/contact

Hi everybody,

I just published my new set of scripts and a comprehensive documentation, which help you integrating Final Cut Server with Archiware PresSTORE. You can find it here:

http://www.andre-aulich.de/en/perm/connecting-final-cut-server-to-archiware-presstore

The PDF explains how to integrate FCSvr with PresSTORE, how to automatically archive assets right after creation or after e.g. 30 days, etc. I would be interested in getting some feedback if these tools work well for you.

Ah, and did I say it's free?

Regards,
André

The XRAID has a pretty GUI interface, but it's not much good for any more than the most basic setups. Thankfully, Active Storage provides a Command Line Interface that's much more powerful.

Unlike most hardware, this one isn't available from SSH or Telnet. Instead, you must download an application from their support web site. I couldn't find a permalink, but here is the current version.

The download unzips directly into the executable. No compiling, no installing. (This implies it's a Mac-only program!) You can leave the program in your Downloads folder, or move it to a more traditional location, such as /usr/local/bin.

Read more below to learn some commands!