February 26 th , 2020            Click here to download the PDF file

Movie Editor Meng-Ju Shieh Shares His Experience of Using A12T3-Share

Movie editor Meng-Ju Shieh, winner of the 2019 Taipei Film Festival Best Editing Award and nominee of the 2019 Golden Horse Best Editing Award, shares his experience of using Thunderbolt 3 shareable storage --A12T3-Share. Watch his interview video on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNpKDdRcsOs.

Case Study of Thunderbolt 3 Shareable Storage in RGBworks Studios

RGBworks Studios (hereinafter referred to as RGBworks) is a professional film and post-production company composed of senior directors and senior film and television producers in Hong Kong. It has several professional post-production suites, including color theaters for cinema movie gamut, color rooms specially designed for DOBLY VISION and HDR, and multiple color studios for post-production of TV series, Internet dramas, online movies, etc.

The management team of RGBworks has a wealth of resources in the industry and close ties with the film and television industry in Hong Kong and China. The team has professional knowledge and rich experience in both pre-production and post-production work, and therefore can accurately meet customers' requirements for color. RGBworks is a professional color correction company with many senior post-production operators and colorists. In addition, it is also a certified training center for Blackmagic Design and Dolby Vision certified color grading house. The post-grading of many movies also came from RGBworks, such as the movie "Chasing the Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch" and "Big Superstition: Year of the Pig," the entertainment TV shows "The Sound 2019" and "Amazing Voice," the online movie “My Kickass Wife,” etc.

RGBworks uses Apple's Mac for color correction and editing. From MacBook Pro to the latest iMac Pro, all Mac devices are working independently. Data sharing has to be done by moving storage devices or copying data to/from each other, which not only wastes usability but also reduces work efficiency. When it comes to other solutions, the bandwidth of traditional NAS cannot fulfill the working requirements of RGBworks. Although FC SAN can provide sufficient bandwidth, the high cost makes it prohibitive.

Upon understanding their workflow and requirements for data sharing and performance, we recommended our T-Share (Thunderbolt 3 shareable storage) solution to RGBworks.

Two A12T3-Share from Accusys’ T-Share series are flexibly distributed in two production rooms, and are connected to Accusys’ ThunderBox (PCIe 3.0 expansion box) through PCIe cables. The hosts in color correction rooms are also connected to ThunderBox via Accusys’ C2M (PCIe to Thunderbolt converter) and PCIe cables, solving the distance problem between the color correction room and the other two production rooms. With Apple's Xsan file system, all the Mac hosts of RGBworks can access the same storage pool, share materials, and improve work efficiency.

With this flexible Thunderbolt 3 shareable storage system, RGBworks has satisfied the needs for data input, sharing, editing, color-matching and backup. Its read and write performance speed of over 2000MB/s can fully meet the professional and fast-paced high-end color correction work of RGBworks, and put the working methods of process, collaboration, quickness, and simplicity to practice.

Not only does this Accusys T-Share SAN have excellent performance, but its price is far lower than traditional FC SAN solutions. Moreover, the flexible deployment of this T-Share system allows more users with complex environments to enjoy convenient applications.

Case Study: HA-AP Appliance in a Large Cigarette Factory in China -- Part 2 of 3

Preface

Last month we introduced the profile of a large cigarette factory (or “CSCF” for short) and its challenge in guaranteeing data protection and business continuity. The CSCF technical team eventually decided on the HA-AP high-availability storage architecture to protect against any single-point of failure in the storage system. In this issue, we will illustrate why the HA-AP high-availability storage architecture fits the bill.

Solution: The HA-AP High-availability Storage Architecture

For the CSCF technical team, the HA-AP high-availability storage architecture offers the following technical advantages over other comparable solutions:

1） Open and scalable storage compatibility: the HA-AP Appliance is designed as a

non-virtualization storage gateway that does not change any information on the original LUN; it supports and manages heterogeneous storage systems of different brands and models. If HA-AP is removed from the storage architecture, the original LUN remains accessible to the connected hosts.

2） Simple configuration and saving host resources: typical virtualization storage gateways

have a complicated system structure, requiring a dedicated management server as well as a metadata volume for storing system configurations. They take a long time to deploy and are labor-intensive in the process of installation, configuration, and maintenance; on top of concerns over system stability and safety. The HA-AP Appliance is a purpose-built hardware device based on an embedded operating system and enterprise-grade modular structure; which does not consume any host resources, and is completely rid of the aforementioned concerns.

3） Synchronous data replication guaranteeing data protection: the HA-AP Appliance enables

active-active mirroring of two storage systems, offering real time synchronous data replication and storage redundancy. With HA-AP solution, the upper-layer applications will continue to run without disruption when a single storage system fails, and data protection is guaranteed.

4） Instantaneous failover that meets high business continuity requirements: HA-AP handles

instantaneous failover and failback automatically without human intervention upon any single point of failure in storage systems, network connection, or the HA-AP Appliance engine itself; achieving true RPO=0 and RTO=0.

After three days of cooperation between CSCF and the Loxoll team, the deployment of the same-site active-active data center was completed and passed the acceptance tests by the CSCF technical team. So far, the new data center has been running flawlessly for three months since November 2019. What is the overall architecture design of this solution? What changes has the new data center brought to the core business system of CSCF? Please stay tuned for our next issue.

HA-AP Firmware Upgraded to 15.9.8.4OR

HA-AP firmware has been upgraded to version 15.9.8.4OR. The content of this upgrade is as follows:

1） Fixed the problem that engine rebooting during rebuild might cause error AH_8.
2） Fixed ATS compatibility issues with VMware host.
3） Fixed slow datastore creation by VMware hosts on mirror LUN supporting ATS.
4） Improved the logic of handling SCSI CAW command: optimized from obtaining the        comparison data and write data separately to obtaining the comparison data and write data        from host at the same time.

If you have any questions, please email info@loxoll.com or consult our engineers.