Anyone using iSCSI for session sharing?

[IO Composer]

That's certainly good to know!

[Mario C]

Originally Posted by ekuehnl

I've used the SNS solution extensively. It works great, but collaboration is severely limited by the volume-based locking scheme. You really need volumes dedicated to each user. If you're looking to create a single volume per project you'll have to look elsewhere. File-based locking is one of the areas where Unity excels, but unfortunately it isn't a Mac solution.

This is true. We long for the days of OS9 and PT5 where we could share Unity with multiple write-access users. Unity and OSX just never got along that well. Unity was also rather painless in letting us dynamically create workspaces as needed. SNS will not do that very easily.

In the meantime, SNS works wonderfully. We run large sessions regularly (granted, what's large for us may not be large to others.)

We have our storage divided into a few dedicated workspaces: 3 for post work, 2 for simple VO projects, 2 for specific clients, and then some for archives and SFX libraries. This works pretty well for our workflow. If you need to share projects, then you will need to figure a method of transferring sessions/assets.

[Pythagor]

Originally Posted by Mario C

This works pretty well for our workflow. If you need to share projects, then you will need to figure a method of transferring sessions/assets.

that's why dynamicdrivepool is more flexible. We can work with one disk attached to all studios and share projects virtually without any limitations.

[laki]

Originally Posted by Pythagor

that's why dynamicdrivepool is more flexible. We can work with one disk attached to all studios and share projects virtually without any limitations.

What's your track count like?

[Pythagor]

theoretically we have 7 studios x 25 tracks 48/24 and 1 DVPAL per studio. In fact 80 tracks at mixing studio have not disturb work at others. But this is our system. track count is a question of price.

[ultrasonic]

Originally Posted by Pythagor

that's why dynamicdrivepool is more flexible. We can work with one disk attached to all studios and share projects virtually without any limitations.

Are you saying that two users can write to the same Pro Tools session at the same time?

[Pythagor]

not exactly. i can make a copy of session file and yes open it and play all files that are recorded. I also can probably rerecord a file in destructive mode if i hate a guy who records but i never tried.there is no way session will be automatically updated. but you don't need to copy files

[Wellnitz]

Tigas wrote:

"AFAIK, ProTools also does not support XSan (or other Stornext SANs), MetaSAN, and in OSX it does not even support Unity (only as a glorified network drive)"


Nop, if you look into PT 8.03 you can see that xsan volumes are record volumes. I have just recorded 80 tracks as test on xsan.

my 2 cents

Jochen

[Wellnitz]

Hi pythagor,

that´s pretty much our setup. We have 7 Audiosuites attached to the DDP with 20 TB as audioserver. Each with 25 tracks 16/48 and xsan as videoserver and a sas mediaserver as news videoserver. So we have three servers attached to our PT systems for our tapless workflow.


regards

Jochen

[tigas]

Originally Posted by Wellnitz

Tigas wrote:

"AFAIK, ProTools also does not support XSan (or other Stornext SANs), MetaSAN, and in OSX it does not even support Unity (only as a glorified network drive)"


Nop, if you look into PT 8.03 you can see that xsan volumes are record volumes. I have just recorded 80 tracks as test on xsan.

my 2 cents

Jochen

I remember someone saying that in another thread (maybe you?) and I was waiting for confirmation.

Also about DDP: I had looked into it and it seems a very nice solution. We just have this FC infrastructure already in place, it's hard to go backwards to GbE. The only limitation with DDP, Xsan or MetaSAN is that you can't have two systems writing to the same session FILE or, more generally, to the same file at the same time, and destructive editing (pencil tool) or recording can create problems for other users of the same file.