Thank you Cabsat 2025 for this lovely Award Presentation Party!

DDP10EF holds up to 10NVME SSDs.
The capacity is up to 300TB.
Bandwidth total up to 40GB/s.
Linux, Windows and Mac desktop bandwidth up to 8 GB/s.

Ardis’s French speaking
Ardis’ French speaking Sales & Business Development for Belgium and France, Mr. Pascal Collard, said, that he was very pleased about this new dealership.

“We organized two busy days of training for 7 technical support and installation engineers of CTM, and all went very positive. This Engineering and Support Team is ready for their job! “

The CTM Technical Location Department

The CTM Server Room

The CTM microDDP10G and Hybride DDP

CTM Seminar

CTM technical instructions

Also Ardis Technologies newly prepared 4 AVFS solutions:

1. 1. The introduction of the new 1U Dual HA AVFSHead
   2. HA storage setup of the AVFSHead with the Infortrend DS series
   3. HA storage setup of the AVFSHead with the Seagate NYTRO and EXOS series and last but not least
   4. Integration of the AVFS file system, Excelero’s NVMesh and 200GbE Mellanox card in a 1U NVME Flash equipped Supermicro system to provide 8,5 GB/s bandwidth to a Linux/Resolve workstation.

But as we all know, unfortunately the show could not go on.
However, please stay tuned because we will discuss this solutions separately shortly.

Analysing audit files

A standard audit file is generated. Such file lists which user at which desktop accesses which filesystem file and path, what sort of access in which directory. It also list the users connect and disconnect behaviour. A file can be created, read, written, moved/copied and deleted. These commands are listed. It is recorded with day and time. Such files can be checked and analysed for patterns and behaviour at any moment afterwards. Most of the auditing is required to solve a security issue which has been caused accidently. However there will be situations where faul play is suspected and then sometimes the deed has been done and the guilty one is gone.

Real time auditing

Therefore the auditing also allows instant real time monitoring of which users have access, what sort of access at which desktop to which file in which directory and to which volume the user connects and disconnects. Because the amount of real time information can be overwhelming a few filter option examples such as for a desktop, a path and a file type are included in the manual. Other filters can be configured.

 
Where does the auditing program run?

The program is part of the AVFS file system, for DDP’s it runs on the DDP and for AVFS it runs on the HA Dual AVFSHead and requires V5.03.005 software with  Debian 10 as Linux operating system. With the integration into AVFS it is straightforward to limit the amount of data to just the relevant metadata on a standard time scale of 5 seconds. The commands are READ, WRITE, DELETE, MOUNT, UNMOUNT, RENAME. A copy of a file for example is then a CREATE, READ, WRITE sequence while a MOVE in AVFS is mostly a RENAME with the data itself not moving.

How does it show up?
Proper auditing must have a real time possibility. Therefore a graphical user interface is not the best solution and the command line interface should be used.
In the Terminal window a copy process of file cp1.mov from fv to fv/drama looks like this:

2021-05-25 15:02:32.799029007 CONNECT   iqn.mini  MOUNT volume ‘fv’ to 
iqn.mini(172.16.5.4) user ‘jan’…
2021-05-25 15:13:06.139037187 CREATE    iqn.mini  |drama/cp1.mov
2021-05-25 15:13:06.205854374 READ      iqn.mini  |/cp1.mov
2021-05-25 15:13:08.142345253 WRITE     iqn.mini  |drama/cp1.mov

Organisations with security recommendations

Organisations such as the Motion Pictures Association of America and the Content Delivery and Security Association, have published ‘best security practices’ documents for production, post production and music recording studios.

In line encryption

Another measure which can be taken is data encryption.  Encryption can be done off line or in real time. Off line encryption can be done by using a utility who takes files or folders as input and generate encrypted output. The encrypted material with the key can then be send out for example. With in line encryption the data is encrypted while written to disk and a key is needed to decrypt it for play out. For in line encryption a group of spindles and or SSDs must have the encryption functionality. They can be combined in one system with groups of spindles and or SSDs without the encryption option.

Based in the heart of historic downtown St. John’s, the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-operative (NIFCO) provides television and film producers with the full range of post production services.

NIFCO looks like a movie set from the outside with beautiful row housing that is over a 100 years old, but the interior has been extensively renovated to house modern sound studios and online colour correction suites. We spoke with Facility Director Steve Cook and Facility Technician Bern Hammond about their DDP shared storage systems and media workflow.

What type of storage did you use before discovering Dynamic Drive Pool (DDP)?

We got our first Avid Unity system in 2003. It was a really small system, only a few Terabytes, but that was a lot back then.

Later we replaced it with a larger Avid ISIS. Back then we were an Avid house, mostly using Symphony, Avid DS and Pro Tools.

When we started looking around for better cost and flexibility, the DDP really caught our eye for simplicity of operation. We thought it was great. It’s Linux, it’s open, you can get it to do things, and there are many people you can get assistance from if you need it. At that point we had started using DaVinci Resolve and Mistika Ultima. Since we were using different types of software, we wanted something that could be connected to more operating systems and workstations.

How did you come across DDP by Ardis Technologies?

Word of mouth. It was about ten years ago when Steve was on a forum and a fellow from New York was saying that he had used DDP with Avid DS and was happy with it. That introduced us to it and we did some research to find out more. Then we went to NAB and chatted with Michael, Richard and Steve from CineSys and Jan de Wit from Ardis Technologies, who gave us a demo. One of the things that I like about the DDP is that because it’s Linux based, it opens up the ability to take a folder, or a drive, or a volume on the DDP and I can Samba share it if I have to. It’s easy for push and pull.

What software do you run in the suites at NIFCO?

For sound, we have Avid ProTools audio editing suites and a foley recording studio that are all connected to the DDP. Upstairs in our picture department we have a Mistika Ultima system, DaVinci Resolve, and a daily system with Express Dailies running off it.
We also have Symphony and a few Avid Media Composer seats.

Are you working remotely now due to COVID-19?

There have luckily been very few cases of Covid in the Newfoundland region, but we were working from home for about four months after it all started in March. A few shows were delayed, but Steve – who also does colour grading – brought home the DaVinci Resolve system to colour correct a couple of features, short films and documentaries. Bern set up a VPN into the office to make it easier for everyone to work remotely. We do have restrictions and protocols that we have to follow, but we are still able to do in person shoots.

You also use the Archiware software for backup. How has that worked out so far?

It’s great. Once again, it’s one of those things that just runs. We use the backup module as a safety backup. Occasionally, we have to restore a client request from a project that we’ve deleted, but that’s easy to do. However, the activity on the drives takes a bit of a performance hit when you do a restore.

What services did CineSys provide?

The DDP systems were set up and supported by CineSys and their Support Engineer has been over here in St John’s a couple of times. We’re hoping to upgrade to the next version once we can find time in our busy schedule. We’ve been working on a TV series for the past two years that has no room in between seasons to do an upgrade. It’s called Hudson & Rex and it airs on City tv in Canada and more than a hundred countries around the world. But, the DDP has kept up with it and we haven’t had any downtime because of the DDP. It’s the backbone of the place.

Any future plans, or fun projects on the horizon?

We always have independent feature films that are coming up from Atlantic Canada. And we also do our own training programs throughout the year. There is a First Time Filmmakers Program where participants can produce a short film and Picture Start is a trainee program for people that want to get into feature films.
This year we have many short films, a couple of feature films, a bunch of documentaries and even an animated Christmas short that we started on for next year.

About the company NIFCO

Location: St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Names: Steve Cook, Facility Director, Colourist and Bern Hammond, Facility Technician.
NIFCO currently has two DDP systems: a larger 60-bay chassis with a 16-bay head for video, and another 16-bay for audio. They run 10GbE as their high-speed connectivity to all systems and can have up to 10 suites going at the same time.

About DDP

Dynamic Drive Pool (DDP) is manufactured by Ardis Technologies. It is an award-winning shared storage system with advanced SSD caching, load balancing, automatic data redistribution, linear bandwidth scaling, and mirroring all available in a single namespace. DDP is an IP based SAN, all-in-one box solution with a built-in metadata controller that requires only one Ethernet network. Driven by iSCSI and the Ardis AVFS file system, DDP enables full project and file level based sharing using nearly 100% of the available Ethernet bandwidth. DDP is a simple and effective storage solution dedicated to meeting the demands of film, video, graphics and audio users.

Thank you for this nice story and the pictures CineSys, Petra!