[Tim Jones]

Again, this is not a technology issue, but rather a support-after-the-sale issue. With HP and TOLIS solutions, you will get proper support for the solution on OS X, Linux, and (coming next month) Windows. IBM nor Quantum (nor any other vendor) properly support the OS X platform because they simply don’t seem to understand it. And this is not just me saying this, but rather what our customers report when they contact those vendors for support on OS X.

If you haven’t done it yet, compare your IBM price with our ArGest solution of the same type (and ours comes with both the LTFS and BRU PE software included).

https://ww2.productionbackup.com/hardware/

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

[Tim Jones]

Also, keep in mind that you can always backup the BRU PE environment from the “Tools” panel. In the Miscellaneous group.

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

[Tim Jones]

Hi Todd,

Copy your files from “/Library/Application Support/BRU PE” to the new drive.

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

[Tim Jones]

@Joakim, I think that you’ve misunderstood something in the discussion. No one is saying “tar” is not standard, just that you can’t read a tar tape under OS X without external software that can talk to the tape device. The versions of tar that Apple ships in OS X (both BSDtar and GNUtar variants are included) have no knowledge of how to talk to a tape device since Apple physically removed the sequential access device layer from the Darwin kernel when they started OS X.

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

[Tim Jones]

[Tom Goldberg] “A number of 3rd party manufacturers, Bru included, provide LTFS solutions with their products to permit interchange, but have done little to improve on that baseline functionality. Other 3rd party manufacturers including Cache-A and SDNA know were files are on tape and do pre-build restore lists for efficient recovery of any list of files. Our solution goes further to include metadata and checksums in a searchable table of contents that makes LTFS both practical and extends the functionality.”

Hmmm, I totally missed this and once again, FUD and unsupported claims are the de rigueure for these LTFS threads.

Okay, again BRU is a product name, TOLIS Group is the manufacturer.

BRU PE provides a graphical UI for managing LTFS volumes (even though we have little faith in them) that simplifies formatting, filesystem checking, mounting, generational roll-back, and repair. As Tom mentioned, this in itself doesn’t really bring anything new to the table for LTFS, but he’s incorrect in stating that we “provide little to improve on that baseline functionality.” We do take it a step further in that we allow you to catalog your LTFS volumes so that they are always fully searchable – whether they are online, in the next room, or in the vault at Iron Mountain – within BRU PE’s Restore panel by volume, folder, file, date, or even a wildcard. And, since the process is the same for searching LTFS catalogs as searching native BRU tape catalogs, you only have to learn the workflow once. As to knowing where the files are on the tape, the LTFS layer already knows that because of the XML indexes on the Index partition of the tapes. No third party wrappers are required to gain that functionality.

Additionally, when you start modifying the baseline functionality, aren’t you, in turn, modifying LTFS such that it’s no longer simply LTFS? While other solutions may add all of these perceived bells and whistles, they are of no value if you’re not using that product in all instances. LTFS’ claim to fame was that it was self contained, self documenting and required no third party solutions to use. That claim falls flat when you start adding third party wrappers to make it do the things that it should do “out of the box.”

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

[Tim Jones]

Tom said: When I claim that tar can be read on a Mac, while not supported by OSX, there are several ways to do so, including, I believe a solution from you.

You are correct in that our TOLIS Tape Tools suite (available separately or included in BRU PE) will read tar tapes created on other platforms and make that data available for restore by the OS X tar versions. The point for my statement is that it’s not as simple or as straightforward as your statement implied.

Tom said: Is it not correct to state that BRU is a proprietary format?

And I really love it when others toss around the “P” word like an epithet. BRU is proprietary, but as such is under the control of a single organization for maintenance and support. This is an important thing to consider since the current LTFS splintering debacle is a perfect example of how too many cooks can spoil the soup. In the so-called “open source” worlds of tar and LTFS, who does the customer call if they have issues with the mechanism? With LTFS, you’re basically told that the source code is available, handle it. But how many post facilities or production organizations have low-level C/C++ programmers on staff that understand both the platform kernel’s interface to tape and the low level working of tape drives to actually handle such a response? With BRU, they have one number to call.

It’s also a non-issue since anyone can download a demo copy of ANY BRU product and restore a BRU tape on any platform for absolutely free. And, it’s a simple, single operation installation that is far easier and less prone to the problems reported by various LTFS users who face the consternation of determining which drivers they require from which vendor for their platform and which additional components they must install to make things work. With BRU, it doesn’t matter which vendors’ tape drive (or even which tape technology) the user has, BRU simply installs and works with that technology with no confusion. Heck, even AFTER the 30 day demo expires, users can still restore data with the demo copy of a BRU product.

Finally, we take our responsibility to our customer base very seriously. For our larger clients, we offer code escrow to cover their needs should our offices in Scottsdale, Bristol, Tokai, and Melbourne be stricken from the face of the Earth. It’s also in our corporate by-laws that in the event that the TOLIS Group board and principals decide to stop doing this and move to a more peaceful existence of bull fighting or demolition derby driving, we will open source the BRU code.

Proprietary isn’t a bad thing when the responsible vendor has taken the steps to insure that the technology is both ubiquitous and available with the customers’ concerns fully understood.

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

[Tim Jones]

It should be noted that Cache-A written tapes in tar and LTFS are both open formats and our tapes can be read on any Mac, PC or Linux system supporting those formats – I believe that today, that is not normally true of Bru or Archiware tapes.

Sorry Tom,

I’ll have to call FUD on that statement.

Also, it’s BRU, not Bru please – BRU a trademarked acronym.

BRU has long been truly cross platform – OS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, A/IX, and 21 others – for more than 27 years (of course, only 12 for OS X). Plus, BRU automatically handles proper permission, blocksize and big versus little endian issues when moving data between platforms. Plus, we’ve been 64 bit internally since 1990 enabling support for large data sets on platforms where support existed (for example up to 16 Exabytes on Cray’s Unicos, SGI’s IRIX, and IBM’s z-series and p-series families).

Also, Cache-A’s tar tapes can’t be read on OS X as OS X doesn’t support tapes with either the GNUtar or BSDtar tools included.

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

[Tim Jones]

A complete LTO-6 BRU solution is $4,799.

As to the spanning issue – remember, that even if you don’t span and lose a tape, you’ve lost all of the data on that tape. You’re right, you’ve lost the clip that spanned the tapes, but you would have lost that in the case that you lose a manually split tape as well. With BRU, all archival operations are atomic – each archive is self contained and has no dependence on another archive. In the same consideration, each BRU tape is atomic in that you don’t need tapes 1 – 3 if you only need to restore a file from tape 4 of a set.

The key here is to examine how you manage your media. Take care of your tapes and your tapes will take care of you. If you properly track and control access to your tapes, you won’t lose them and spanning won’t be a concern. However, if you’re constantly just throwing the tapes into a shoebox with no order, all you’re doing is setting up a disaster in the making.

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

[Tim Jones]

The answer about Quantum is unknown. Their team at NAB was mentioning OS X, but when questioned about the level of support, no one could answer the question (even for their new M&E products).

If you’re looking to buy, check out our offerings of the HP technologies (https://ww2.productionbackup.com/hardware-bundles). Our kits include everything that you need – from software to cables to media – and a single point of contact for the sales cycle through to full support and warranty help – no more vendor finger pointing :).

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

[Tim Jones]

It’s not a preference in my case, it’s that the performance of the OpenCL settings are faster than the settings with the CUDA drivers.

With AE, I believe that you’re going to have use the Cuda GPU drivers for the 3D work since without the Cuda “GeForce GT 650M” entry in the raytaracer_supported_cards.txt file, you will not get the GPU option in Previews. Also, pay very close attention to the Memory and Multiprocessing settings – with 16MB or RAM and the i7 processor, I use 5GB RAM reserved for other apps. Set CPUs reserved for other apps to 0, set RAM allocation per background CPU to 1.5GB. This will use 6 cores for your rendering.

I’ve found this to be an acceptable configuration.

HTH,

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