NFS sharing fcpx projects

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Neil –
there is only one thing that is very clear. Almost NO ONE wants to use or implement an Apple XSAN system – period. So there are countless people out there (all the companies that you see advertise here on Creative Cow) that have alternate ways to get FCP-X to work in a shared storage environment. SO – why are people so unwilling to implement XSAN ? Simple – it costs too much money.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
maxavid@cfl.rr.com

[Neil Smith]

I agree, Bob .. we’re testing NFS and SMB shares over 10GbaseT as we speak … unfortunately both Apple and Microsoft have taken it upon themselves to make multi-vendor integration between Win 7 and OSX as difficult as possible … NFS runs super well under OSX but SMB2 sucks … SMB is great under Win 7 but have you tried setting up a msft NFS share recently? … sheer bloody madness.

The FCP X 10.1.1 Xsan constraint issue is another story .. and while, I understand why Cupertino might want to take such an approach for technical reasons, it sure as hell makes our life difficult.

Really liking ZFS as a shared storage file system … if I recall correctly from our conversation at NAB (amazing that was already two months ago) you also favor ZFS and NFS wherever possible (I may have got that wrong, so don’t quote me) … maybe, next time you’re in LA, you should come over to The Lot and we’ll share notes … we’re building an Open IT PoC (Proof of Concept) demo that leverages ZFS/BSD and 10GbaseT plus Thunderbolt networking … in this day and age, you’d think it’d be easy to connect a Mac to a PC and share some video files in a safe and reliable way without spending an arm and a leg … you’d think.

As well as getting away from Xsan there is another company who also is positioning their proprietary file system as the integration glue for multi platform shared storage in the M&E space (has a lot in common with Xsan – cough, cough) … very robust approach for sure, but again cost is an issue with a FC topology.

At the Creative Storage Conference in Culver City on June 24th we’ll be demoing our Open IT ZFS based approach … if you’re going to attend the Conference be sure to stop by our Booth # 7:

https://www.creativestorage.org/2014Agenda.htm

I’ll also be giving a 10 minute overview in the opening panel in the morning session … plus, they’ll be plenty of heavy-iron vendors will also be present if folks have money to burn 😉

Hope to see you soon, matey … keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Neil

Neil Smith
CEO
LumaForge LLC
high performance workflow
323-850-3550
http://www.lumaforge.com

[Steve Modica]

I miss Xsan. When a customer would call you with a $60,000 quote in their hand, and you could give them something comparable for $25,000, that was a very pleasant conversation 🙂

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Scott Goddard]

Is anyone successfully using NSF and Adobe Premiere?

Scott Goddard

Neo Verite Limited
https://neoverite.com

[Neil Smith]

Steve,

I heard an interesting theory a couple of weeks which I don’t know whether to believe or not – appreciate your thoughts on the matter:

1) there’s some kind of SEC rule (don’t quote me on this – needs verifying by someone who knows for sure) that publicly traded companies like Apple Inc. have to go through a four year process if they want to drop support on a product.

2) part of that process is that they have to stop selling the product for four years

3) technically, Apple no longer sell Xsan as a separate product … its included for “free” in OSX.

4) they stopped charging for Xsan a couple of years ago.

5) my conspiracy theory friend then postulated that in two years time Apple will drop Xsan from the OS as well.

6) a year after that they can also formally drop support for the product.

Have you heard of such a process and what do you think of the ‘theory’?

Of course, it would be helpful if Cupertino would give us some clear roadmap of Xsan developments but they won’t of course … but be aware that though Apple don’t ever comment on public forums they do monitor the relevant ones all the time and your comments will be duly noted in the ‘big black book’ … I’m already in the book of naughty boys 🙁

The question kinda goes to the nub of how serious Apple is about the Pro market … think of what they did to ‘Shake’ and FCP 7 … if they’re going to stick with HFS+ (now an antiquated file system) and drop Xsan (essentially CVFS from MountainGate and now owned by Quantum) what are their intentions with shared storage and Thunderbolt networking?

Neil

Neil Smith
CEO
LumaForge LLC
Advanced Digital Workflow
323-850-3550
http://www.lumaforge.com

[Steve Modica]

I couldn’t find anything online talking about SEC requirements for dropping a product.
I’m sure there are contractual obligations that some companies have for things like this (perhaps apple has support contracts with large customers that need to be met), but other than that, I doubt this is true.

I think Apple is doing the same thing I do when I have a product that I don’t “want” to support. Make it free. 🙂

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Lucas Werneck]

John, did you still have NFS issues?
I’ve made a previous test with NFS and didn’t had a problem.
What issues normally appeared?
Regards,

[Philip Wels]

Hey all.

So, if you connect to a server over SMB with DAVE (by Thursby Software) installed, you can save FCPX projects to network shares just fine, without any issue. It seems to me there should be *some* way of tricking FCPX into thinking it’s connected to the right kind of sever… we just let our DAVE support contract lapse, so we’re looking at other options, but it seems like DAVE just might be the easiest.

[Simon Blackledge]

Interesting – So what are Thursby Software doing differently ?

[Elvin Jasarevic]

DDP is ethernet based SAN and FCPX works like charm. No need to pay any license. Dave is good for Avid sharing, but you get that for free with DDP anyway..

We have clients like Mono29 with 40FCPX users and total 300 clients connected to same system.
Check the FB link

elvin@ddp.jp
https://www.ddpsan.asia

https://www.facebook.com/elvin.jasarevic.9/media_set?set=a.718155618219864.1073741833.100000762968628&type=3&pnref=story