CATDV Server?

[Sebastien Bertrand]

Hello Jordan,

There is no rule of thumb for the server needed. Generally speaking, CatDV server is hardware and storage agnostic. Your specific workflow and the usage you will make of CatDV is what will influence your hardware choices.

In the end, your safest bet is to work with an experienced system integrator who can analyse your workflow, and help you choose the proper hardware and the software components you will need. The NX3100 is a storage server, so you also have to make sure you will get proper bandwidth and storage for the work you want to do with CatDV

I would be happy to chat with you about it. I’m based in Toronto, but I work with customers in Calgary as well.

Cheers,

Sebastien

sebastien at ordigraphe.com
1-888-444-2600

Sebastien Bertrand
Ordigraphe Inc.
Toronto, Canada
https://www.ordigraphe.com

[Bryson Jones]

We’ve mostly deployed on Apple hardware for several reasons:

1 – Unix underpinnings. If you have scripting to do and or web integration our coders lean more to the nix side. (This is huge. Literally every shell tool ever written will run.)

2 – Quicktime integration. Since many file formats in video, and edit systems use QT, we find it nice to be able to run those tools on the server. Compressor, and 1,000 other little OSX things that “help” FCP and Avid.

3 – File system issues. This is only an issue if you are on Mac based editing/production systems but most of our clients are.

4 – OSX Server. Simple, and complete unix-based Server OS with no per user or per service fees. And you can’t beat the price. ($38 for OS and server now.)

5 – Price. It’s hard to beat a quad core mini server for $1,000 and if you need stronger, we often upgrade an edit system and use the older Mac Pro for the server base. (Editors like this option for some reason.)

I know some other dealers have their own Windows stuff that they like. I’d love to hear from them on here.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Jordan Bosch]

Thanks Sebastien and Bryson!

We are primarily a Windows based AVID shop with a couple FCP suites. So Apple Hardware might not work best.

Sebastien, I’ll pass your info on to the powers that be. Thanks for the offer.

Jordan

[Bryson Jones]

Thank you Sebastien, good to hear from the Win side and I agree with all you said about the system.

Also I forgot to mention that in most of our larger shops we have several machines running processes. So the “server” is more of a “system” of boxes.

CatDV Server, the app, is just a db so it can be anything. We’re currently designing some really accelerated hardware optimized for the db functions alone. The Worker Nodes that automate things and run scripts can run on Windows and Mac hardware and can do path translations between the file systems so in a mixed environment, the “Server” can be OSX, Windows or Linux, but the Worker Nodes might be on a different OS or even mixed between Mac and PC. Add to this your transcoding needs and things get interesting. So a single box to 4 or more boxes can make up what we discuss here as a “CatDV Server System.”

The bottom line is that planning a workflow, as was mentioned, requires knowledge of the system that is outside the normal IT or Video skill set. Get a reseller you can trust and follow their lead.

The good news? It’ll run on literally anything, it’s just a matter of how well.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com