Facilis
- Terrablock
Sample uses of the Facilis family of storage products are listed
below. Each has advantages over traditional methods, especially
for the demands of multiple clients running 1:1 and HD video.
Advantages of TERRABLOCK as shared storage
Shared storage solutions have been offered to the post-production
industry for years. With the advent of fiber channel these systems
became numerous, but with high pricetags. With IDE and ATA, prices
came down, but performance and qualification for bandwidth-heavy
applications was lost. Now with robust SATA server architectures
and the qualification by the post-production professionals at Facilis
Technology, true fiber channel performance is realized through TERRABLOCK.
We offer:
Qualified configurations of up to 24 clients at high-bandwidth,
or 7-8 clients at dual stream uncompressed 601 with no client
licenses to buy.
Simple configuration and site preparation, with no client software
to install on any attached system, no conflicts or version complexities.
Up to 48TB of high-performance storage for a fraction of the
price of SCSI or fiber channel drives.
Selective mirroring of virtual volumes for full protection of
data, with the ability to recover a failed drive with minimal
downtime or bandwidth loss.
ReadOnly volumes for media sharing, with a single writer allowed
access to any given volume at a time. Every client can be writing
to the drive set, but each to seperate virtual volumes. You can
create and delete volumes any time, without affecting the remainder
of the volumes.
Client Management tool based on user login allows volume access
to follow a user from room to room, or different users to login
on the same system. Using the central server for administration
avoids downtime.
Advantages of TERRABLOCK as centralized storage
Sharing media isn't a part of everyone's workflow, but local
storage can be difficult to work with, cause down time and is
expensive to upgrade. Even if a shared solution is too much for
your facility today, consider the benefits of centralized storage.
With TERRABLOCK:
Efficient use of storage assets between clients. No wasted space
lost on a single client while other rooms are left without needed
space.
A single location for maintainence, media management and administration
on a centralized volume.
Allocation of storage between rooms requires only software administration,
and can be done while the systems are running.
Projects can migrate between rooms without risk of incompatibility
or hardware failure from "sneaker net". No more firewire
drives!
Storage can be added well past the limitations of SCSI chains.
Terabytes of space can be allocated to a single system, or to
the group.
Advantages of TERRABLOCK as local storage
Data storage for high-bandwidth non-linear systems has traditionally
been with local, attached SCSI or fiber channel drives. The advantage
is speed and a dedicated connection. The disadvantages include
noise, volume sizing for bandwidth, the reliability risks of unmirrored
volumes, dedicated connectivity to a single system, and cost/GB
of SCSI and fiber drives. With TERRABLOCK:
Drives are centralized away from the system, and the clients.
This adds to drive life by minimizing dust, heat, and vibration.
Volumes are pre-optimized for maximum performance without striping.
The smallest volume has the full bandwidth of the system
Each system recognizes the centralized storage as local basic
volumes, but the volumes can be selectively mirrored for protection.
Cost of a full 12TB system including software and connectivity
for 6 clients is thousands less than conventional server-assisted
SAN systems.
A second system can be attached at any time, to share or switch
the storage to another room. The storage isn't dedicated to a
single room.
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