[Tim Jones]

Hi Neil,

Sorry, this one slipped through the cracks – The Cow’s forum layout can get things lost pretty quickly.

File size can affect the throughput because of more disk accesses. However, the average DPX or MXF frame file should be large enough to no affect the throughput (unlink 1 million mail files…).

What buffer size are you using in BRU PE? For media files, we recommend either 1MB or 2MB.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

We uncovered the issue – it was related to an OS X update deleting some of our system files. Simply reinstalling BRU PE fixes the problem.

This is a new move by Apple to “clear” unauthorized applications from what they consider sensitive areas (/bin, /etc). We’ve never had issues with this before, but Apple’s new restrictions are playing havoc with any tool provider that places contents into the holy locations (/bin, /sbin, /etc, /var).

Our next update removes the dependency on these locations.

To answer the “why do you put things there” question – BRU is quite often used for backing up far more than just media clips. Because of this, some of the BRU components are stored in locations on the system root drive to insure that recovery can be performed. We do it this way on over 24 Unix-based platforms and it has allowed systems that were otherwise fully corrupted to be recovered. Imagine if you needed to recover your Applications folder, but all of your Backup tool’s components are lost in the corrupted Applications folder.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

EDIT – BRU PE will not solve your original query about LTFS with automation – I was originally responding to Neil’s comment about BRU PE and automation. There are tools out there – such as HP’s StoreOpen tool for libraries – that will allow you to use LTFS with that 1×8.

However, keep in mind that LTFS volumes created using automation drivers and LTFS tapes created using standalone drive can be incompatible.

I’ll refer you to this post for specifics:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/330/1383

Yes – BRU PE supports autoloader/libraries up to 2 drives and 50 slots. For larger installations (unlimited tape / unlimited slots), BRU Server is the solution.

Of course, BRU also uses raw tapes, so no pre-formatting is required. Need another tape, just unwrap one and go for it.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Ugh – that’s one of the biggest foibles of LTFS – if something happens during the actual tape write, you can end up with a tape that can’t be recovered – meaning that all of the data on the tape is now lost.

With BRU-based applications, you can power off the tape drive during the write operation and everything that was written to the tape(s) up too that point can be fully recovered. No further recovery steps required.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

And that’s a perfect example of what make’s BRU’s Anytime Verify different from any other tools out there. Because BRU records the 32bit CRC values with every 2K of data in the archive stream (far more dependable that a file-based checksum), you are able to fully verify and audit a BRU tape at any time and even on a completely different operating system.

So, even if the source disk IS erased before you run BRU’s verify, you can still perform the verify and audit of the tape’s contents. It’s always been this way with BRU – since 1985,

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

We have a few PC-based customers using WinCatalog with good results. Give them a look at https://www.wincatalog.com.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Congrats Bryson. Well done.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

Budget will be the most important consideration to achieve your goal. There are solutions out there from single seats to entire campus access and each is priced as you could imagine.

The solutions also vary on your storage type needs – are you looking at disks, tapes, optical media, cloud? There are pluses and minuses for each type and some solutions combine media types to combine the best features of the different media types while reducing the potential weaknesses.

For example, our BRU solutions combined with DAX Broadcast Archive and CatDV allow you to utilize a combination of disk and tape (LTO or other) for a combination of access speed (disk) and long term viability (tape) while keeping your users in the relatively ubiquitous management interface of CatDV’s desktop applications. All operations including ingest, cataloging, tagging, transcoding, archiving and restoring are performed within the CatDV desktop interface – your users don’t need to learn anything about disk or tape storage and management. Prices range from $6,201US for a single LTO-6 drive in a single user configuration to basically the sky’s the limit for petabytes of disk and tape storage and support for 25 or more users’ simultaneous access.

The key to our solution is that it is all managed from within the CatDV environment. As I mentioned, your users don’t need to become IT-savvy regarding disk and tape storage. They simply archive, purge (if desired), and retrieve right from within CatDV.

I’m sure that other solutions will be presented here as well.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

[John Buckman] “Do you think it would make more sense then to keep the scratch disk writing to the eSATA via USB3.0 drives and store footage (media) on a say, 480GB SSD external via thunderbolt 2?”

This is the path that I would recommend, but if you went with the 1TB SSD on Thunderbolt that I originally described, that Samsung 840 EVO drive is quite fast enough to handle both your cache/renders and your original media.

Also, as Alexander said – be sure that you have a backup in place whatever mechanism that you decide on.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Tim Jones]

The Fusion drive is great for OS caching of commonly used data, but it offers nearly 0% improvement for editing. An SSD option will always be faster.

To make use of what you currently have, you could use any of a number of USB-3 to eSATA adapters (we have a couple of the VanTech units). While you would be pushing the limits for editing more than 2K off of a single USB-3 attached drive, it would be fine otherwise for your web-destined output.

If you’re limited in budget and can’t go for the high-capacity SSD in the Mac, I would recommend either standard system drive and then add an SSD via Thunderbolt. We use a lot of the Samsung EVO 840 1TB drives with the Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter (around $550 US). Assign both your project storage and cache to the SSD.

Samsung EVO 840 1TB
Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter

We use these with rMBPs and new Mac Pro cylinders with great success.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!