Avid Unity MediaNet 1.1 User guide

Brand: Avid

Model: Unity MediaNet 1.1

Category: Software

Type: User guide

tools for storytellers™

Avid Unity

™

MediaNet

Administration Guide

Release 1.1

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Avid Unity MediaNet Administration Guide • Part 0130-04386-01 Rev. A • Dec. 1999

Contents

Using This Guide

Who Should Use This Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

About This Guide

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Symbols and Conventions

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

If You Need Help

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Related Information

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

If You Have Documentation Comments

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

How to Order Documentation

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Chapter 1 Introduction

Avid Unity MediaNet Environment Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

MediaNet Storage

Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

MediaNet from the User’s Perspective

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Avid Unity MediaNet Configuration

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Overall Considerations

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Setting Up and Managing Your Drive Hardware

. . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Assigning Drives to Allocation Groups

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Creating and Sizing Workspaces

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Access Control (Users and Access Privileges)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Data Protection

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Tasks and Tools

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Tasks

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Tools

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

The MediaNet Setup Manager

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

The Administration Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

The Monitor Tool

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 2 MediaNet Setup Manager

MediaNet Setup Manager Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Starting the MediaNet Setup Manager

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Creating a New Drive Set

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Using the Configuration Assistant to Create a Drive Set

. . . . . 32

Creating an Administration Drive Manually

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Creating an

Administration Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Identifying the Administration Drive

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Creating the Data Drive Set

from Raw Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Creating a Data Drive Set from an Existing

MediaShare F/C File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Adding Spare Data Drives to the Data Drive Set

. . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Adding New MEDIArray Drives to Your

MediaNet Environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Adding Active Data Drives to an Existing Drive Set

. . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Adding Drives That Were Previously Used as

Data Drives in Another Drive Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Adding Drives That Are Not Raw or That Were Used

Previously as Data Drives in Another Drive Set. . . . . . . . . . . 38

Adding Raw Drives

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Managing Drive Problems

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Identifying Bad Drives

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Repairing t

he Drive Set by Swapping Out Bad Data Drives. . 40

Recovering from an Administration Drive Failure

. . . . . . . . . . 42

Replacing Bad Drives

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Setting Drive Mode Pages

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Deleting an Existing Data Drive Set

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Rebuilding an Existing Data Drive Set

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Bringing the Drive Set Online and Taking It Offline. . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Bringing the Drive Set Online

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Taking the Drive Set Offline

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Starting and Stopping the MediaNet File Manager

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Reestablishing MediaNet Setup Manager’s Connection to the

MediaNet File Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Chapter 3 Using the Administration Tool

Administration Tool User Interface Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

User Interface Component Descriptions

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

User Interface Tab Descriptions

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Getting Help with the Administration Tool

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Starting the Administration Tool

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Logging In

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Setting Administration

Tool Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Setting the Administration Password

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Setting

Workspace and Monitor Graph Bar Colors . . . . . . . . . . 59

Changing Your User

Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Changing Your Workspace Tab

Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Changing Your Monitor Tab Preferences

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Exporting and Importing Preferences

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Exporting a Preference Set

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Importing a Preference Set

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Reestablishing Administration Tool’s Connection to the

MediaNet File Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Chapter 4 Managing Allocation Groups

Overview of the Allocation Groups Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Allocation Group Usage Guidelines

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Creating a New Allocation Group

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Assigning an Allocation Group to a Single User for

Uncompressed Finishing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Adding Drives to an Existing Allocation Group

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Removing Drives from an Existing Allocation Group . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Renaming an Allocation Group

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Deleting an Allocation Group

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Chapter 5 Managing Workspaces

Overview of the Workspace Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Reading the Workspace List

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Changing the Workspace List

Graph Display. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Selecting Linear or Logarithmic Graph Display

. . . . . . . . . 78

Scaling the Graph

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Saving Your Workspace List Graph Settings

. . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Creating New Workspaces

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Duplicating Existing Workspaces

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Changing Workspace Size

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Increasing Workspace Size

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Decreasing Workspace Size

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Renaming Workspaces

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Deleting Workspaces

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Protecting Workspaces

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Enabling Protection of New Files Only

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Disabling Protection of

New Files Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Protecting All Files

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Unprotecting All Files

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Optimizing Workspace Protection and Efficiency

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

When Should I Optimize a Workspace?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Optimizing a Workspace

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Moving a Workspace to Another Allocation Group

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Chapter 6 Managing User Accounts

The User Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

The Guest User Account

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Creating User Accounts

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Duplicating Existing User Accounts

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Renaming User Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Changing User Passwords

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Deleting User Accounts

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Workspace Access Privileges

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Access Privilege

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Changing Workspace

Access Privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Chapter 7 Monitoring System Usage and Messages

The Monitor Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Changing the Monitor List Graph Display

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Selecting Linear or Logarithmic Graph Display

. . . . . . . . 103

Scaling the Graph

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Saving Your Monitor List Graph Settings

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

The Log Tab

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Viewing and Managing the Log File

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Index

Using This Guide

Congratulations on your purchase of Avid Unity™ MediaNet

Release 1.1, a high-performance distributed file system that provides

high-capacity shared media storage for a workgroup of connected

Avid

systems.

Who Should Use This Guide

This reference guide is intended for MediaNet administrators

responsible for the setup and day-to-day running of a MediaNet

workgroup.

About This Guide

The Contents lists all topics included in the book. They are presented

with the following overall structure:

•The Introduction in Chapter 1

helps you get oriented with

beginning concepts, general administration concepts, tasks and

tools, and configuration strategies. Chapter 2

describes how to use

the MediaNet Setup Manager. Chapter 3

describes how to use the

Avid Unity Administration Tool. You should read all of these

chapters.

• The main body of the guide (Chapter 4

, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, and

Chapter 7

) follows the natural flow of your day-to-day

administration tasks, with clear and comprehensive step-by-step

procedures.

• A detailed Index helps you quickly locate specific topics.

Symbols and Conventions

The MediaNet documentation uses the following special symbols and

conventions:

1. Numbered lists, when order is important.

a. Alphabetical lists, when the order of secondary items is

important.

• Bulleted lists, when the order of the items is unimportant.

- Indented dashed lists, when the order of subtopics is

unimportant.

Look here in the margin

for tips.

In the margin you will find tips that help you perform tasks more

easily and efficiently.

A note provides important related information, reminders, recommendations,

and strong suggestions.

A caution means that a specific action you take could cause harm to

your computer or cause you to lose data.

If You Need Help

If you are having trouble using MediaNet, you should:

1. Retry the action, carefully following the instructions given for that

task in this guide.

2. Check the documentation that came with your hardware for

maintenance or hardware-related issues.

3. Check the Customer Service and News and Publications sections

of the Avid Web site at http://www.avid.com for the latest FAQs,

Tips & Techniques, Film + Television Update, and other Avid

online offerings.

4. Check the Avid Bulletin Board, “Avid Online,” for information on

product and user conferences. If you do not find the solution to

your problem, you can exchange information with other Avid

customers and Avid Customer Support representatives.

5. Contact your local Avid Reseller; in North America, you may

contact Avid Customer Support at 800-800-AVID (2843).

For general information, call your local Avid Reseller; in North America, call

the Avid Customer Relations Desk at 800-894-5654.

Related Information

The following documents provide more information about MediaNet:

• Avid Unity MediaNet for Windows NT Clients Quick Start Card

• Avid Unity MediaNet for Macintosh Clients Quick Start Card

• Avid Unity MediaNet Site Preparation Guide

• Avid Unity MediaNet Setup Guide

• Avid Unity MediaNet Release Notes

• Avid Products Collaboration Guide

The most recent update of the Avid Products Collaboration Guide is

available in the Documentation section of the Avid Customer

Service Knowledge Center. To access the Avid Customer Service

Knowledge Center, click the Avid Customer Service link at

www.avid.com and select Knowledge Center.

MediaNet also provides Help systems that provide complete

information about using the Setup Manager, the Administration Tool,

and the Monitor Tool.

If You Have Documentation Comments

Avid Technology continuously seeks to improve its documentation.

We value your comments about this manual or other Avid-supplied

documentation.

Simply e-mail your documentation comments to Avid Technology at

Te[email protected]

Please include the title of the document, its part number, revision, and

the specific section you’re commenting on in all correspondence.

How to Order Documentation

To order additional copies of this documentation from within the

United States, call Avid Telesales at 800-949-AVID (2843). If you are

placing an order from outside the United States, contact your local

Avid representative.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Avid Unity MediaNet is a high-performance distributed file system

that provides high-capacity shared media storage for a number of

connected Avid systems.

This chapter describes:

• Avid Unity MediaNet Environment Overview

• Avid Unity MediaNet Configuration Overview

• Tasks and Tools

• The MediaNet Setup Manager

• The Administration Tool

• The Monitor Tool

Avid Unity MediaNet Environment Overview

The MediaNet environment consists of:

• MediaNet clients — Avid systems enabled to use the MediaNet

file system.

• Fibre Channel network — High-bandwidth network technology

that supports the high throughput required to allow multiple

users to share video and audio simultaneously. A Fibre Channel

switch provides the backbone of the network.

• Shared Fibre Channel drives — A collection of fibre channel

drives enclosed in one or more rack-mountable MEDIArray

™

enclosures and managed as a single virtual unit by the MediaNet

File Manager service on the MediaNet Server.

• MediaNet Server — A Windows NT

server on which the

MediaNet File Manager that controls the MediaNet file system

runs.

Together, these components enable up to nine client workstations to

simultaneously connect to the shared drives and to record, play, and

edit video and audio media in real time.

Figure 1-1 MediaNet Environment Architectural Overview

Fibre Channel

MediaNet

Server

drives

Client

(Up to nine clients total)

Switch

Fibre Channel

network connections

MediaNet Storage Architecture

MediaNet simplifies the management of your storage hardware by

combining all of your physical data drives into a drive set that provides

a single, large file system. To use the MediaNet file system, you must

first assign all data drives in the drive set into allocation groups that are

individually managed file system partitions that span multiple

physical drives. Although you can assign all of your data drives to a

single allocation group, performance considerations might require you

to divide your drives into multiple allocation groups.

Allocation groups can be divided, according to your particular needs

at any given time, into one or more dynamically resizable virtual

volumes, or workspaces. These workspaces are the MediaNet elements

that are made available for mounting on client workstations (the drive

set and allocation groups are transparent to client users).

Data drives

(& optional

spares)

Drive Set

Physical (Hardware) Perspective

Logical (User’s) Perspective

MediaNet Workspaces

Workspaces

of various sizes

The drive set is partitioned into

These are transparent to the

user who sees only one or more

one or more allocation groups.

Allocation group 1

Allocation group 2

workspaces available to them.

Administration drive

Access to MediaNet is controlled by allocating user accounts with read

access, write access, or both to each workspace. Data integrity can be

ensured by optionally protecting workspaces. Protection involves a

redundant configuration in which files written to protected

workspaces are duplicated on more than one drive. This allows a

protected workspace to be quickly repaired with no data loss after a

drive fails.

A summary of the MediaNet storage architecture follows:

• The MediaNet storage hardware is managed as a drive set that

forms the core of the MediaNet file system. Physically, the drive

set comprises a number of different types of drives:

- Administration drive — A special drive that facilitates

communication about the MediaNet file system between

client workstations and the MediaNet File Manager.

- Data drives — Contain the media data that client

workstations store and access on the drive set.

- Spare drives — Spare drives can be quickly swapped for bad

data drives in the event of failure.

• The data drives in the drive set are assigned into one or more file

system partitions called allocation groups.

• Each allocation group is subdivided and managed as an unlimited

number of virtual workspaces. Each workspace has a set of

characteristics that you can change at any time:

- Size — Each workspace can be set to any size such that the

sum of the sizes of all the workspaces does not exceed the total

size of the allocation group.

- Protection — If active, media files written to the workspace

are duplicated on different physical drives to avoid data loss

in the event of drive failure. A protected workspace uses twice

as much storage space as an unprotected workspace.

- Access privileges — Determine whether users can mount,

read, or read and write to a workspace.

MediaNet from the User’s Perspective

MediaNet client users mount MediaNet workspaces on their

workstations (requiring a user account to do so). Once mounted,

workspaces behave like local media drives that can be accessed by

others working on the same project. If properly configured, this allows

several users to access the same media and to start using it

immediately after it has been created.

Avid Unity MediaNet Configuration Overview

The MediaNet environment allows you to centrally manage very large

amounts of storage that multiple MediaNet clients can access to share

video, audio, and effects media in an intuitive, collaborative

workgroup. As administrator, it is your job to make sure that

MediaNet is always configured to optimize workflow in what can be a

rapidly changing working environment.

Overall Considerations

The following strategic considerations will determine your priorities

when making configuration decisions and trade-offs (possibly

impacting more than one aspect of your configuration):

• What is your site type?

In-house and rental editing suites will probably require very

different administration requirements, particularly in terms of

workspace access restrictions and how often you need to

reconfigure workspaces and users.

• Does your workgroup include dual-stream uncompressed clients?

If so, you will need to set up special hardware and allocation

group configurations.

• How large is your drive set and what kinds of clients do you need

to support?

If your drive set is very large, or has different drive types, you will

probably need to assign your data drives to more than one

allocation group to optimize performance.

• Will your client users be working on individual projects with their

own media or will they be collaborating on team projects that use

the same source media?

These factors affect how you should allocate workspaces and user

accounts.

• Is security or ease of access more important at your site?

Individual password user accounts combined with tightly

controlled workspace access privileges provide the most security

at the cost of restricting user flexibility.

• Which is more important at your site: the integrity and speed at

which your media can be recovered in the event of hardware

failure or maximizing available storage space?

These factors determine whether you will want to protect your

workspaces.

The following sections provide a high-level overview of the

configuration implications of your answers to these questions.

Setting Up and Managing Your Drive Hardware

Setting up your hardware to create a drive set is very straightforward

and should only need to be done during the initial setup of your

MediaNet installation, unless you later want to add or remove drives.

The most important decisions you must make are which drive to

allocate an administration drive and whether you want to allocate

spare data drives so that they can be rapidly swapped in for faulty

data drives.

For more information, see Chapter 2

Assigning Drives to Allocation Groups

MediaNet requires you to assign the data drives in your drive set that

you want to be available as storage to one or more allocation groups.

Because MediaNet handles the drives in each allocation group as a

separate unit, creating multiple allocation groups allows you to:

• Support dual-stream uncompressed clients (also requires a special

hardware configuration).

• Break up very large drive sets into smaller units that reduce the

scope of data loss in the event of a drive failure in an unprotected

environment (see “Data Protection” on page 22

• Efficiently accommodate drives of different speeds and sizes.

For more information about creating and managing allocation groups,

see Chapter 4

Creating and Sizing Workspaces

Because workspaces are virtual rather than physical partitions, they

are very easy to create, resize dynamically, and delete to accommodate

your environment’s needs. This flexibility allows you to tailor your

workspace allocation to accurately meet the needs of your

environment now — reconfiguring your workspaces later to

accommodate future projects or users is not inconvenient or time

consuming.

First, you must consider how you want to allocate workspaces. Do you

want to allocate them to accommodate projects, teams, individual

users, or a combination of one or more of these?

Once you have determined how you plan to allocate workspaces,

you’ll need to determine how much storage each workspace will

require (a function of media duration and, for video, resolution) and

allocate space accordingly.

When sizing workspaces, you should consider reserving some space rather

than assigning all of it immediately. Once space is allocated, it tends to be

filled quickly and you might later need space to accommodate a new project or

user or to extend or protect an existing workspace. In such a situation, it

tends to be much easier to use space held in reserve than to take it away from

an existing workspace.

When allocating and sizing workspaces, you should also consider

whether access restrictions are required and whether protection for

data integrity is necessary for each workspace. For more information,

see “Access Control (Users and Access Privileges)” on page 21

and

“Data Protection” on page 22

For more information about allocating and sizing workspaces, see

Chapter 5

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Avid Unity MediaNet 1.1 User guide

Brand: Avid

Model: Unity MediaNet 1.1

Category: Software

Type: User guide

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Avid Unity MediaNet 1.1 User guide

Avid Unity MediaNet 1.1 User guide

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