DVG recently installed a Facilis 96TB TerraBlock shared storage system at CBN in Virginia Beach . The objective was to have a cost-effective solution that was stable and affordable. “We selected the Facilis TerraBlock system because, among other reasons, they were budget-friendly,” says Trauffer, the primary administrator for the TerraBlock system. “We got a lot of performance and a lot of storage for our dollar, compared to other systems.” With the installation of the Facilis system, the International department has reaped a number of advantages – and at the top of the list is flexibility. “We have Mac and Windows users all accessing the same volumes simultaneously, and all are connected through the TerraBlock Manager,” says Trauffer. “We’re all talking over Ethernet.” “With TerraBlock, we never have to deal with file permission problems as both Mac and Windows users can read and write simultaneously to any and all volumes. TerraBlock has provided a very stable platform in this regard,” says Trauffer.
Currently, there are approximately 80 workstations running Adobe Premiere and Apple’s Final Cut Pro 7 (which is being phased out) that connect to the TerraBlock system. A Mac Pro connects via Fibre Channel and serves as a nearline storage server. According to Trauffer, it serves two major functions. First, it hosts a Telestream Episode encoding system. Second, they use StorageDNA’s DNA Sync media synchronization engine to clone certain TerraBlock volumes to a backup RAID pool. “This allows for a volume or file to be restored in case of accidental deletion,” Trauffer explains.
More details can be found in this article on the project in Multichannel News.