MatrixStore Assists Digital Production Workflows in Brazil

A Guest blog post from Lucas in Brazil:

Each time I searched for a solution to archive in a tapeless workflow I became disheartened. There are so many products but only a few genres:

1. Magnetic Tape
2. Optical Disc Storage Medium (DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDs…)
3. HDD

And that’s pretty much it! All products derive from the above technologies, even REVs (that are mini-HDDs) and holographic discs. Maybe in the near future SSDs will come into mass storage, but as you know it’s “compatible” with HDDs interfaces.

Of course, that each one has it’s pros and cons is widely discussed around the world (and internet, or it`s the same thing? ), so I’ll not get into this kind of discussion here. But let’s just remember that usually, when someone wants to go tapeless, they also want two things: 

• that those archived assets be safe, and
• to have the ability to access them very quickly.

While I was searching for a solution, I asked myself many times: “Why doesn’t someone come up with something that can use cheap storage (as used daily around the world) and that can be administered in a simple way that doesn’t require a complex structure to accommodate that? And, at the same time, use common components that we know the behaviour of well (including why they fail) so that it is easy to build a redundancy into all of this?

And that’s where MatrixStore comes in.

I was so happy when I found that product that I started to download it without realising that I didn’t have the hardware to use it! And, as a second disappointment, I realised that since I live in Brazil, where Xserves, Xserve Raids and Vtraks are very expensive, and unjustifiable to be used for an archive. However, to my surprise, searching a bit more I found that MatrixStore are “Hardware Independent” and you can set an archive configuration but with relatively little capital investment. You just have to follow a few rules: It has to be Mac OS X or Linux and all discs have to be mounted as one or two volumes on each system.

In fact, an archive can even be installed on 3 Mac Minis (http://www.matrixstore.net/2008/01/25/mac-mini-matrixstore-cluster/ ), although Object Matrix states that’s “only for tests and demos” and is not supported by them.

After pounding my head, I came to a solution that makes sense here in Brazil:

3 – MacPros 8 core

3 – PCIe RAID cards with 8 SATA connectors

15 – 1TB HDD (4 in each MacPro)

The total costs: U$ 16,000 for 12.5TB of a good redundant Archive! About 1/5th of the cost compared to using Xserve and Xserve RAIDs/Vtraks. Another option, even if you do not trust all your data in one geographic location, is to setup two such clusters and use the replication feature in MatrixStore to make a redundant/backup/near-line archive.

And it’s scalable as well. You can add a HDD to each node (8 max in each node), use RAID 5 or RAID 0 or even RAID 6.

So my system looks like this:

MacPro1: Final Cut Server computer

NIC1 and NIC2 with Link-Aggregation

MacPro2: MatrixStore Node 1

NIC1: External (same network as FCSrv)

NIC2: Internal (as mentioned in “prepare Hardware” manual)

MacPro3: MatrixStore Node 2

NIC1: External

NIC2: Internal

MacPro4: MatrixStore Node 3

NIC1: External

NIC2: Internal

External Network connected using Dell PorwerConnect 2716 and Internal using a GS608 – 8-port Gigabit Netgear Switch.

Our system has 3 stations editing over Gigabit Ethernet in a 4 Link-Aggregated Dell Storage. I have recently acquired Final Cut Server to manage not only our workflow but to digitize and catalog as well our tape library. For our luck, Object Matrix also has an FCSrv Plugin! So it’s just a matter of configuring.

You set all this up and running in less than one day. And with GbE, archiving and restoring to and from MatrixStore archive is a snap (just  two mouse clicks in Final Cut Server). 

Since I only have one computer for the Final Cut Server system and we ingest lots of material, I thought that maybe the three nodes from MatrixStore could be a 3 node for Qmaster as well! And it works great! Just DON`T let one of nodes be the Qmaster Controller because it uses NFS Server and this will mess with MatrixStore communications between nodes.

I’m testing this system exhaustively to see how stable it is, and currently I`m convinced that it could be used for small video production companies.

If this solution appears to you as too much of a “Frankenstein”, you can also use the newly released “The MatrixStore” (http://object-matrix.com/thematrixstore/ ) a pre-configured plug-and-play device designed especially for archiving important assets.

So, these are the solutions that Object Matrix came up, which answered my wishes, and stopped letting the video/IT market disappoint me anymore.

Lucas Saldanha Werneck.

The View From OM

We are delighted that Lucas has chosen MatrixStore to protect his content and we look forward to working with him and his colleagues/clients in the very near future.