Moving sessions and shared storage

[swpowe]

I'm trying to find a solution to sharing sessions between multiple editors. I'm having two problems. Short term and Long term.

Short Term - In the past I've been able to simply copy a session folder (with the session, audio files, fade files, etc) from machine to machine and I could just open things and get started. Recently, I've been having to relink all of the media which takes way too long. Any ideas why this has started happening? We aren't changing the structure of any of the sessions, all the audio and fade files are still inside the session folder but they are running off a different computer. I'd like to get this working again.

Long Term - I'm looking for solutions that will allow a single SAN to store all of our sessions and each editor to be able to open right off the SAN. I'm looking for solutions specifically used with Pro Tools. We've tried some iScsi stuff in the past couldn't ever get it to really work. We'd really like to be able to open sessions or record to sessions right on a central server and not have to move sessions around at all. Any ideas?

[Park Seward]

Since PT doesn't work with a RAID, I don't think it will work on a SAN. But if you get it working, I'm sure many would like to hear about it.

[Ferret]

I use an Atto R680 card with an AIC XJ1000-2123 disk array. Unbelievable track count. The XJ100-2123 has two up-link ports. Pro tool sees the Atto R680 as a disk and not as a raid array. Works great.

[mtung]

I use an iSCSI system with an infortrend RAID appliance and am very happy. Only one person can write to a partition at a time though. But having said that, we pretty much do what you want day in and day out. We avoid the relink hassle by using the "Save a session copy." Then close the session you just saved a copy of and then open that same session from the new copy you just made. It knows where all the files are. The only time I have had to come up with a work around is when using elastic audio. But there is a work around for that as well. I'm not sure if this is helpful or not.

When I was in the market for a SAN, I looked at every software vendor I could find, and some seem to promise the multiuser-multipartion-simultaneous-writing-for-all-users but when you dig a little deeper into how the nuts and bolts go together, it was always a no-go for Protools use.

My RAID setup even though it's iSCSI is WAY faster than a locally connected FW 800 disk. In fact, I wouldn't even be able to run my sessions off of one disk. The raid pretty takes everything I can throw at it, even at 100+ tracks simultaneously from four different studios.

Again, I'm not sure if this is helpful or not.

mike

[rafukyo]

Hi Mike

Could you please describe your system config? Which app's are you using to setup the iScsi Raid? I'm starting to learn this field. I want to setup the studio I work in the same way you do. Are you using this:

http://www.studionetworksolutions.co...p?t=more&pi=11


Thanks in advance

Rafi