[Tim V d hoff]

Hi all,

I wanted to add to this conversation as we’re also in the process of migrating from BRU PE to some other LTO solution. We run a couple edit stations on a shared storage system (QNAP TVS-871T) .

I have tried Canister on several occasions and liked the no hassle easy interface, but it’s lacking options at this time. I’ve been in touch with the company and they seem to have some plans to connect the software to Hedge and other tools that might form a nice integrated package including catalogs and previews etc. But so far it’s unclear when that will happen.

YoYotta would be a good option for us. I was a bit overwhelmed by the software when using a demo, but it seems like one of the few tried and tested solutions out there. Just have to go through the learning curve and adapt to the software.

We’re presently running a trial of Archiware P5 Desktop. Not only do they have a very nice 50% trade in offer for existing BRU customers (which will get you a fully working backup and archiving solution for about $600) but it also comes as an app which installs directly on your NAS. This frees up your workstation and you can manage your backups directly from the same web interface as your NAS. I did have to buy and install a separate SAS interface card ($250) in my QNAP system to hook up the tape drive.

It’s clear though that this software has been designed for large companies with intricate backup schemes and not so much with the more straightforward video business needs in mind. It does however generate catalogs with still/video previews (supposedly, haven’t figured out how to get it to work yet).

If this direct-from-NAS archiving works well, we’ll go with them. If not, we’re probably going to get a copy of YoYotta. If you have any questions or things you’d like me to test with this set-up, let me know!

[Tim V d hoff]

Hi Tim,

Can you tell me when you will release this update to all of your customers?
I’m experiencing the same issue with the tape import tool (which I rarely use, but now have to because Bru didn’t register the last two backups in the catalog).

Thank you.

[Tim V d hoff]

Okay, so I guess this is the end of the road for Bru PE after 6 years…

After sending emails to support staff at Tolis Group, I get exactly 0 helpful feedback.
‘You have to renew your extended support contract’ is the only thing they say, even though my question is about a clear performance issue with their software on a setup that consists entirely of products they recommended.

At $279 for a year of ‘support’, I feel like I’m paying for a debugger Tolis Group should have hired themselves a long time ago.

This software and entire business model of pricy software, pricy support and pricy paid upgrades belongs in the nineties and has no place anywhere today, except maybe for enterprise users, still used to this business practice.

Thanks for the ride BRU. I’ll be getting me some YoYottaID/Canister/whoever else cares about happy customers.

[Tim V d hoff]

I’ve tried other software, specifically YoYotta and Canister (Beta software from the people at Hedge) and to my surprise they actually have no problem at all!

Backup speed:

Restore speed:

Both are based around LTFS. Maybe this has something to do with it.

Seems to indicate a software issue with Bru PE and this (not to uncommon) setup….

Tim Jones, care to chime in?

Thanks,
Tim

[Tim V d hoff]

Tim Jones? Anyone?

[Tim V d hoff]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your message and sorry for the late reply!

I’ve not changed any parameters other than the ones I stated and I’m running SMB3.
Timemachine is not running and I had no idea that Spotlight could index NAS drives.
So, either it always interfered or it never did. Regardless, I disabled it.

Just to get some more insight on the matter, I’ve ran a test doing a backup and restore run with the same 40GB of video data (bunch of small MP4 plus three 10GB+ MXF files) on both my ‘regular’ SMB3 share, a manual connection using the CIFS:// protocol and my old and trusted NFS share that I used to work with prior to changing the setup.

You notice that the SMB share wins the AJA test, with the CIFS connection dragging miles behind. No good for video editing. (The write speed of the NFS share used to be much higher previously. Don’t know what happened there.)

Next, all three perform backup tasks at roughly the same 120MB/s speed. SMB and NFS do so continuously (gap is between two big files), but CIFS fluctuates quite a bit.

Lastly, the restore job: all are much slower than the backup speed and NFS performs best, though none have a consistent output. SMB and CIFS are identical.

I know the restore can be much faster, because the tape drive runs at high speed continuously when restoring to my local drive.

What can this be?