Tim Jones
Forum Replies Created
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[Tim Jones] “Nvidia GTX650 w/2MB DDR5 RAM”
Of course, I meant 2GB of DDR5 RAM..
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Ned – please, please, please get your data off of that FW drive and onto something connected via Thunderbolt. It doesn’t matter how fast FCP and your new iMac are if the disk is so limiting. Also, even if you can’t get to a faster drive for now, make sure that you’re not transcoding TO that drive while reading FROM it.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Ned, I tried one of these iMacs (we have a couple) and it is fine for what you describe. It’s not a speed demon by any stretch, but it’s as fast or faster than a couple of our 4-core Mac Pro 3,1 systems. Scrubbing of small clips is responsive and the audio stays synched, but exporting larger segments takes a bit longer than my fully-loaded Retina Mac Book Pro 15″ to the same Thunderbolt 4 drive array. Motion is a bit of a pig because it really does depend on the graphics card for proper OpenCL offload, but it gets by for simple tasks. Compressor was about as good as on any of our other systems.
As an aside, don’t even try Premiere Pro / After Effects on this model – very frustrating compared to FCP X / Motion.
Granted, it’s not going to last forever as a fast machine, but as i5-based systems go, it’s pretty well designed and usable. If you use a Thunderbolt-based external RAID for storage, you’ll see pretty good drive speed.
The only thing that I’d change is to boost the RAM to 16 GB. It’s easy to do in the new iMacs, so you don’t need to buy it preconfigured from Apple with 16GB, just buy the Corsair or PNY 8GB kit. There are 4 slots in the iMac and they are easy to get to, so you just need to add 2 more 4GB sticks for a total of 16GB. I would buy them from Other World Computing rather than Best Buy unless you can find explicitly labeled 8GB 1600 SODIMMs a the Best Buy – their stock of SODIMMs is alway iffy around here.
HTH,
TimTim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Interesting thought about search and single file recall. I’d hope that any modern backup / archival solution would allow you to search your tapes offline and provide the necessary logic to restore a single file or folder. The way you said that makes me wonder – what tools were you using before that didn’t provide this functionality?
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Hi Paul,
The first thing to consider is that your MBP must have Thunderbolt, or the following means nothing 🙂
We recommend either the ATTO ThunderLink and ThunderStream units, or the combination of the Sonnet Echo Express and ATTO ExpressSAS H680 or R680 HBAs to provide the Thunderbolt to SAS connectivity you will need. There are other boxes out there, but we’ve had the best luck with these units. The Sonnet solutions add a bit of flexibility as the ATTO units are dedicated and you can’t add a second HBA such as a Red Rocket or a QIO reader card.
As for software, once you have the SAS support available, you can use the LTFS layer that others are mentioning or software solutions such as our BRU Server or BRU Producer’s Edition. You can download a 30 day full demo from our web site. I can’t speak to other vendors’ solutions and Thunderbolt support, so hopefully some of them are on the COW and will chime in.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
I agree with Pat about LTO-5 being a true bargain for long term storage. If you really aren’t facing jobs that require 10’s of TB of data in a single operation, the approximately US$900 price difference will purchase a lot of LTO-5 media (US$36.50 QTY 1 from us).
However, something that many base the longevity planning statements on – when LTO-7 ships, your LTO-5 devices and tapes do not become obsolete. Here we are, 12 years later, and you can still buy a brand new LTO-2 drive from HP. Why is this important? It means that as long as a capacity point (such as 1.5TB) works for you, you don’t really need to rush out and update to the latest and greatest. We still have some customers actively using LTO-3 drives on a daily basis because each night’s performance (including video capture) fits in 400GB.
On the manufacturing side of things, we expect a current device generation to have a minimum of a 15 year availability cycle. Therefore, it’s a safe bet that you’ll still be able to buy a new LTO-5 drive in 2026.
And, if you use a technology that supports full media migration (such as our BRU solutions), you can readily move your archived data to new technology (say LTO-5 to LTO-7) while retaining full recoverability – even if the technology is of a completely different type (those “gigaquad” chips from Star Trek).
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
LTFS has no cataloging support at all. If you’re cataloging LTFS tapes, you’re using a third party solution or you’ve spent the cycles developing your own solution.
There’s a reason that LTFS is free – it doesn’t really do anything but copy bytes to tape. Everything else is left up to the user as an exercise in either budgetary largess (pay for other proprietary support infrastructures) or developmental prowess (write your own database and access management apps).
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Keep in mind that Overland do not support the Mac platform directly. Right now, HP, Tandberg Data, and our bundles are the only places that you will see proper Mac support if you need help.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
LTO-6 is ONLY available in SAS or Fibre Channel
The Only SAS HBAs that work properly with tape on the Mac platform are ATTO ExpressSAS HBAs
The ATTO ExpressSAS HBAs are only available as PCIe cards, so only Intel Mac Pro or the very last G5 Power Macs will work.$3K won’t even get you a bare drive from a manufacturer.
To get a full blown, standalone LTO-6 solution, expect to spend a minimum of around $4,800. LTO-5 is around $3,990.
As for currently available non-server tape solutions for CatDV Desktop, nothing’s there “yet” … watch this space.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters! -
Actually, we’re all sort of “making it up as we go along” in this space. While other IT environments have long-argued and documented processes, most of those processes don’t really apply to our space.
Your “rough” outline is a very valid one and it will support your workflow. However, I’d add a 4th super-layer involving tape – When you ingest or create, also create tape backups of your working data. This provides a “roll-back layer” and an “oops, that’s really ugly” recovery layer.
Tim
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Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.productionbackup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!