“With as many as a thousand hours of footage for a six episode run, we knew we needed more storage”
TVBEurope 39 The Workflow
“What we needed was a fast, safe, easy to manage nearline solution for added capacity and an enhanced workflow. We opted for Space from GB Labs”
Alex Hay, Firecracker Films
Synchronizing software installed on the MetaSan MDC metadata controller; a 48TB Space EX, used for high performance Ethernet editing via Gigabit Ethernet; 10Gb Ethernet connectivity to a
Alex Hay: “Now we aren’t reliant on a single system; our exposure to data loss and downtime is a lot lower”
Ethernet connections have given its graphics department access to the SAN over the years, the idea of editing from the SAN using the Ethernet connections has always disappointed in terms of performance. As the company expanded and bought more machines, the need to share assets and edit even more rushes has become a problem as the MetaSan requires Mac Pros with exactly the same version of Mac OS on each, plus fibre channel cards and expensive licenses. MetaLan offers an Ethernet alternative, but also requires licences and doesn’t deliver reliable editing performance.
Into Space “What we needed was a fast, safe, easy to manage nearline solution for added capacity and an enhanced workflow. We opted for Space from GB Labs,” explains Hay. As a 16-drive, high-
performance network-attached storage device, Space is effectively plug and play. It sits on existing fast Ethernet networks and has the advantage of web-based management, accessible locally or remotely. It is capable of handling the demands of multiple concurrent editors and safe enough for nearline archiving. It means Firecracker can
extend its shared storage to any machine in the facility and provide plenty of performance for editing through standard Gigabit Ethernet without licensing, which helps in busy periods when even more machines will be used. Space is also OS-independent, so it will work with mixed system networks of Linux, Windows and Macs. Firecracker’s Space system includes: a 48TB Space, which is used to replicate the MetaSan volumes using GB Labs
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