Posts Tagged ‘Xsan’

Final Cut Pro X

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Version 10.0.1 of Final Cut Pro X is now out. This update returns the ability to use Final Cut Pro X projects and Events on Xsan. This is a must for multi-user environments. Users can now each others media and projects, and edit them from any system on the SAN, as with previous versions of Final Cut.

Additionally, some other new features including custom starting timecode, the new Tribute theme, GPU-accelerated exports, One-step transitions, media stems export and of course, XML support. XML support is very important as it introduces the ability to integrate Final Cut Pro X with asset management systems or APIs from other applications. The ability to interact with other tools helps to plan and implement an automated workflow, reducing the labor for reoccurring tasks common in media environments.


Apple also now provides a free 30 day trial to Final Cut Pro X. If your organization is considering migrating from Final Cut Studio into Final Cut Pro X, or if you have a Final Cut Server based asset management solution that you would like to migrate to something newer and supported, then please feel free to contact your 318 Professional Services Manager, or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one.

Video on Using Xsan in OS X Lion

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

The All New Promise x30

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

Yesterday, we mentioned Thunderbolt adapters for Xsan. But NAB 011 isn’t over and we have more announcements to bring up. Promise has announced their all new x30 series. With a spiffy new chassis design, these things now sport 8Gbps controllers, up to 48TB of space and up to 8 in a stack (that’s 7 expansion per chassis).

Oh, and we’d be remiss not to mention the redesigned management screen, a massive improvement over the command and control pane of glass we had before! A web-based management tool, by the way, that works on iPad! And management is easier now that you don’t have to restart the units every time you need to make a software update.

For more information on the new Promise x30, see:

http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?region=en-US&m=1053&sub_m=sub_m_8&rsn1=40&rsn3=48

To discuss how 318 can assist your organization in leveraging these new tools from Promise, from integrating a fleet of MacBook Pros with Xsan to bolting on additional storage for the always-full Xsan, contact your 318 Professional Services Manager, or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one!

Thunderbolt Adapters for Xsan

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

As usual, there’s plenty to talk about after NAB. One of 2011′s favorites for us so far is the ability to attach a MacBook Pro to an Xsan using one of the newly introduced Thunderbolt -> Fibre Channel adapters.

The above adapter, from Promise, allows for 4Gbps and is “Fully Qualified” for Xsan. This allows the mobile user to be a first class citizen in a fibre channel SAN environment, not having to go through slow NAS heads to access large files, but instead connecting directly to Xsan or other fibre channel solutions!

For more, see http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?region=en-US&m=1054⊂_m=sub_m_8&rsn1=40&rsn3=49

Xsan 2.2.1

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Xsan 2.2.1 has been released. Updates include:

  1. Improved filesystem reliability
  2. Improved cvfsck (the Xsan filesystem repair tool)
  3. Resolves QuickTime reporting “invalid public movie atom found” on playback
  4. Eliminates “An unknown disk has been inserted” message when mounting Xsan volumes (occurs in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard only)

Video: Creating a Device on Final Cut Server

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Final Cut Server on the Cheap

Monday, July 13th, 2009

At 318 we see a number of Final Cut Server installations. And for most of those jobs you should use an Xsan, have editors edit-in-place and develop custom automations. But Final Cut Server doesn’t have to be super complicated; nor does it have to be super expensive to integrate. At the end of the day it’s all about what a customer is expecting to get out of the product – and that’s how the product is developed and priced: to scale with the customers needs.

One of the most marketable and best features of Final Cut Server is that it is a way to catalog assets. These assets can be stored anywhere you want, provided that they are reliably accessible by the server. Given a username and password, users of Final Cut Server can then access the assets whether or not they can actually get to them using server shares or flat file systems. This allows Final Cut Server to bring logic to an otherwise chaotic form of storing data.

Once catalogued you can then tag assets with metadata. This means that when you go to find assets in the future you can do so quickly and easily. You can preview, annotate and then download those assets, no matter where they are stored – even on a Drobo or some large Firewire media sets. And if you decide to edit-in-place in the future, the fact that assets are stored in a logical space (called a Device) means that if you see the value, that you have an easy upgrade into more online media, such as an Xsan volume – but you don’t have to do it all at once to start seeing value.

And value is the key aspect of Final Cut Server. You can spend as much or as little as you need in order to get value out of the product. Sometimes the smallest features are what organizations will derive the most value out of. Not always, but sometimes… And when you see the value of the smaller features you can then make a decision based on your organizations goals and workflows what else will be of value. If you’d like to discuss a Final Cut Server implementation, whether it’s the basic initial installation, complicated workflow integration or custom scripting, contact 318 for more information. We’re here to help, whether or not the implementation is on the cheap.

Vmeter & Vguard for Xsan

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Vmeter is another great product that you can bolt onto your Xsan from Vicom Systems. Vmeter allows you to get
Vmeter SQL Statistics statistics of bandwidth allocation for Xsan clients. But Vmeter doesn’t stop there. It also allows you to meter, or limit, the amount of bandwidth that is allocated to client machines, maximizing bandwidth for some users and tiering your performance allocation.

Vguard, also by Vicom Systems, is based on the technology included in Vmirror, the LUN mirroring solution, but goes a step further. Vguard allows you to setup another Xsan and use that SAN as a backup. We’re not going to go so far as to call it a snapshot, but it’s everything but.

Overall, Vicom integrates well with Xsan and fills some of the holes that the product itself has. For more information on Vmeter, Vguard or Vmirror, contact your 318 account manager today.

Xsan and Final Cut Server Monitors

Friday, May 1st, 2009

The Xsan and Final Cut Server monitors have been announced at Xsanity and are now available for download. These will monitor processor and memory utilization of the Xsan and Final Cut Server processes respectively. SSH tunneling will hopefully be added soon so that you can run them remotely but that’s closer to a 1.x release rather than the .x release that is available.

New article on Xsan Scripting by 318

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

318 has published another article on Xsanity, for scripting various notifications and monitors for Xsan and packaged up into a nice package installer. You can find it here
http://www.xsanity.com/index.php?topic=tips.

License.dat and StorNext

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

We recently did a post on Xsanity about integrating StorNext clients with Xsan. It is very important that when you’re doing this type of integration that you remember that all metadata controllers need to have that license.dat file. If they don’t then not all of your clients will failover properly. When you’re finished with the integration, we recommend backing up the entire /Library/FileSystems/Xsan/config directory and running a cvgather. This final step will also make sure that if you need to restore a metadata controller that you won’t have to have a new license.dat file generated (amongst others).

Article on Xsanity – Linux + Xsan

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

After a long silence on Xsanity, 318 has published the first of a number of articles for the site. The article focuses on how to install and configure StorNext clients running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to connect to an Xsan. It is available here.