Pinnacle Systems NEXIS - 19.5 Administrator’s Guide

Avid NEXIS

Administration Guide

Version 2019.5

Legal Notices

Product specifications are subject to change without notice and do not represent a commitment on the part of Avid Technology, Inc.

This product is subject to the terms and conditions of a software license agreement provided with the software. The product may only be used in accordance with the license agreement.

This product may be protected by one or more U.S. and non-U.S patents. Details are available at www.avid.com/patents.

This guide is protected by copyright. This guide is for your personal use and may not be reproduced or distributed, in whole or in part, without permission of Avid. Reasonable care has been taken in preparing this guide; however, it may contain omissions, technical inaccuracies, or typographical errors. Avid Technology, Inc. disclaims liability for all losses incurred through the use of this document. Product specifications are subject to change without notice.

Part of the software embedded in this product is gSOAP software.

THE SOFTWARE IN THIS PRODUCT WAS IN PART PROVIDED BY GENIVIA INC AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The following disclaimer is required by Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics, Inc. for the use of their TIFF library:

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software [i.e., the TIFF library] and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that (i) the above copyright notices and this permission notice appear in all copies of the software and related documentation, and (ii) the names of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics may not be used in any advertising or publicity relating to the software without the specific, prior written permission of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS-IS” AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

IN NO EVENT SHALL SAM LEFFLER OR SILICON GRAPHICS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER OR NOT ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGE, AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

The following disclaimer is required by the Independent JPEG Group:

This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.

This Software may contain components licensed under the following conditions:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by the University of California, Berkeley. The name of the University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of Daniel Dardailler not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. Daniel Dardailler makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that this entire notice is included in all copies of any software which is or includes a copy or modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting documentation for such software.

THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY. IN PARTICULAR, NEITHER THE AUTHOR NOR AT&T MAKES ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE MERCHANTABILITY OF THIS SOFTWARE OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.

The following disclaimer is required by Paradigm Matrix:

Portions of this software licensed from Paradigm Matrix.

The following disclaimer is required by Ray Sauers Associates, Inc.:

“Install-It” is licensed from Ray Sauers Associates, Inc. End-User is prohibited from taking any action to derive a source code equivalent of “Install-It,” including by reverse assembly or reverse compilation, Ray Sauers Associates, Inc. shall in no event be liable for any damages resulting from reseller’s failure to perform reseller’s obligation; or any damages arising from use or operation of reseller ’s products or the software; or any other damages, including but not limited to, incidental, direct, indirect, special or consequential Damages including lost profits, or damages resulting from loss of use or inability to use reseller’s products or the software for any reason including copyright or patent infringement, or lost data, even if Ray Sauers Associates has been advised, knew or should have known of the possibility of such damages.

The following disclaimer is required by Videomedia, Inc.:

“Videomedia, Inc. makes no warranties whatsoever, either express or implied, regarding this product, including warranties with respect to its merchantability or its fitness for any particular purpose.”

“This software contains V-LAN ver. 3.0 Command Protocols which communicate with V-LAN ver. 3.0 products developed by Videomedia, Inc. and V-LAN ver. 3.0 compatible products developed by third parties under license from Videomedia, Inc. Use of this software will allow “frame accurate” editing control of applicable videotape recorder decks, videodisc recorders/players and the like.”

The following disclaimer is required by Altura Software, Inc. for the use of its Mac2Win software and Sample Source Code:

The following disclaimer is required by Interplay Entertainment Corp.:

The “Interplay” name is used with the permission of Interplay Entertainment Corp., which bears no responsibility for Avid products.

This product includes portions of the Alloy Look & Feel software from Incors GmbH.

This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/).

This product may include the JCifs library, for which the following notice applies:

Avid Interplay contains components licensed from LavanTech. These components may only be used as part of and in connection with Avid Interplay.

Attn. Government User(s). Restricted Rights Legend

U.S. GOVERNMENT RESTRICTED RIGHTS. This Software and its documentation are “commercial computer software” or “commercial computer software documentation.” In the event that such Software or documentation is acquired by or on behalf of a unit or agency of the U.S. Government, all rights with respect to this Software and documentation are subject to the terms of the License Agreement, pursuant to FAR §12.212(a) and/or DFARS §227.7202-1(a), as applicable.

Trademarks

Avid, the Avid Logo, Avid Everywhere, Avid DNXHD, Avid DNXHR, Avid NEXIS, Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, AirSpeed, Eleven, EUCON, Interplay, iNEWS, ISIS, Mbox, MediaCentral, Media Composer, NewsCutter, Pro Tools, ProSet and RealSet, Maestro, PlayMaker, Sibelius, Symphony, and all related product names and logos, are registered or unregistered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. The Interplay name is used with the permission of the Interplay Entertainment Corp. which bears no responsibility for Avid products. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For a full list of Avid trademarks, see: http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/trademarks.

The following disclaimer is required by Apple Computer, Inc.:

APPLE COMPUTER, INC. MAKES NO WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THIS PRODUCT, INCLUDING WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO ITS MERCHANTABILITY OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES IS NOT PERMITTED BY SOME STATES. THE ABOVE EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. THIS WARRANTY PROVIDES YOU WITH SPECIFIC LEGAL RIGHTS. THERE MAY BE OTHER RIGHTS THAT YOU MAY HAVE WHICH VARY FROM STATE TO STATE.

Avid NEXIS Administration Guide Version 2019.5 • Created 5/31/19 • This document is distributed by Avid in online (electronic) form only, and is not available for purchase in printed form.

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Using This Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Who Should Use This Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Symbols and Conventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

If You Need Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Accessing the Online Documentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Avid Training Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Chapter 1 Configuring and Managing the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Avid NEXIS Configuration Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Creating the Avid NEXIS File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Binding Media Packs to the File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Setting the System Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Configuring the Notification Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Changing the Administrator Password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Configuring DNS Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Securing the Avid NEXIS Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Securing Access to the Management Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Changing the BMC Password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Changing the Storage System Name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Enabling Link Aggregation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Upgrading the System (On-Premise Only). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Changing the System IP Address (On-Premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Follow-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 2 Working with the Management Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Opening the Management Console. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Understanding the Management Console Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Navigation Sidebar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Action Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Testing the Network Speed to the Cloud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Canceling an Operation or Ignoring Changes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Filtering, Sorting, and Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Displaying the System Monitor View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Updating the Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Selecting Multiple Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Guidelines for Names and Passwords. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Customizing the System Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Configuring System Preferences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Configuring SNMP Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Downloading the MIB File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Enabling SNMP on the Avid NEXIS System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Chapter 3 Managing Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Storage Group Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Managing Storage Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Creating Storage Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Activating Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Renaming Storage Groups (On-Premise Only). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Increasing a Storage Group’s Capacity (On-Premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Displaying Storage Group Details. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Deleting Storage Groups (On-Premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Managing Workspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Workspace Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Media Pack Protection Methods (On-Premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Creating Workspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Workspaces List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Displaying Workspace Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Resizing Workspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Duplicating Workspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Deleting Workspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Renaming Workspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Setting Event Triggers for a Workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Managing User Access Privileges for Workspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Moving a Workspace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Displaying Cloud Subscription Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Workspace Redistribution (On-Premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Managing Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Engines Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Displaying Engine Details. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Understanding Engine and Storage Controller Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Managing Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Controllers Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Displaying Controller Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Understanding Network Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Managing Media Packs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Media Packs Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Displaying Media Pack Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Understanding Media Pack Status. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Adding Unassigned Media Packs to Storage Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

About Removing Media Packs from Storage Groups (On-Premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Removing Media Packs from a Storage Group. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Displaying Drive Details (On-Premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

SSD Health (On-premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Disk Status (On-premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Identifying the Slot Number for a Failing or Failed Drive (On-premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Clearing a Foreign Disk Error (On-premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Unbinding Media Packs from the Avid NEXIS File System (On-premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Removing Orphaned Media Packs (On-premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Chapter 4 Managing Users and Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Managing Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

User Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Creating Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Duplicating Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Changing User Details. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Deleting Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Disabling Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Displaying User Details. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Managing LDAP Accounts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Configuring External Authentication of Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Installing the LDAP Sync Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Opening the LDAP Sync Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Using the LDAP Sync Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Managing User Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Adding User Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Modifying User Group Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Deleting User Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Displaying User Group Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Managing Bandwidth Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Adding Bandwidth Limits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Displaying Bandwidth Limits Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Changing Bandwidth Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Deleting Bandwidth Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Chapter 5 Monitoring the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Monitoring Client Bandwidth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Monitoring System Connection Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Connection Status Descriptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Monitoring Redistributions (On-premise Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Monitoring Client Reservations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Displaying Event History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Managing System Logs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Displaying System Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Clearing System Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Managing Media Pack Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Displaying Media Pack Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Capturing System Information (Avid NEXIS Snapshots) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Working with Snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Working with Snapshot Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Chapter 6 Avid NEXIS Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Installing the Avid NEXIS Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Opening the Avid NEXIS Toolbox. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Connection Analyzer Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Log Aggregator Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Using the Log Aggregator Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Displaying Aggregate Logs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Disk Analyzer Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Running Tests with the Disk Analyzer Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Updating the Disk Analyzer Tool Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Saving Disk Analyzer Test Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Media Pack Parameters Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Using the Media Pack Parameters Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Retrieving Media Pack Flag Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Media Pack Log Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Chapter 7 Data Migration Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Installing the Data Migration Utility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Logging Into the Data Migration Utility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Data Migration Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Data Migration Buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Migration Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Transfer Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Running the Data Migration Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Transfer Queue and Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

vii

Using This Guide

The Avid NEXIS® software-defined storage system provides a high-performance distributed file system that contains high-capacity shared media storage for workgroups of connected devices. This user’s guide describes how to connect your client system to the storage system, mount Workspaces, and configure your system for best performance.

Unless noted otherwise, the material in this document applies to the Windows systems.The majority of screen shots in this document were captured on a Windows system, but the information applies to all operating systems. Where differences exist, information on the differences is provided.

The documentation describes the features and hardware of all models. Your system might not contain certain features and hardware that are covered in this guide.

Who Should Use This Guide

This guide is intended for users who need to manage the Avid NEXIS media network. You should have a basic understanding of how to use and manage the Windows operating system or the Mac OS X systems, and you should be familiar with basic workgroup and network concepts.

, Mac OS® X, and Linux operating

Symbols and Conventions

Avid documentation uses the following symbols and conventions:

Symbol or Convention Meaning or Action

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.

A warning describes an action that could cause you physical harm. Follow the guidelines in this document or on the unit itself when handling electrical equipment.

A user tip provides a helpful hint that can aid users in getting the most from their system.

n n

A shortcut shows the user keyboard or mouse shortcuts for a procedure or command.

> This symbol indicates menu commands (and subcommands) in the order you select them. For

example, File > Import means to open the File menu and then select the Import command.

This symbol indicates a single-step procedure. Multiple arrows in a list indicate that you perform one of the actions listed.

(Windows), (Windows only), (Macintosh), or (Macintosh only)

This text indicates that the information applies only to the specified operating system, either Windows or Macintosh OS X.

Bold font Bold font is primarily used in task instructions to identify user interface items and keyboard

sequences.

Symbol or Convention Meaning or Action

Italic font Italic font is used to emphasize certain words and to indicate variables.

Courier Bold font

Ctrl+key or mouse action Press and hold the first key while you press the last key or perform the mouse action. For

| (pipe character) The pipe character is used in some Avid product names, such as Interplay | Production. In this

If You Need Help

If you are having trouble using your Avid product:

1. Retry the action, carefully following the instructions given for that task in this guide. It is especially important to check each step of your workflow.

2. Check the latest information that might have become available after the documentation was published.

Always check online for the most up-to-date release notes or ReadMe because the online version is updated whenever new information becomes available. To view the online versions, visit the Knowledge

Base at www.avid.com/support.

3. Check the documentation that came with your Avid application or your hardware for maintenance or hardware-related issues.

4. Visit the online Knowledge Base at www.avid.com/support. Online services are available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Search this online Knowledge Base to find answers, to view error messages, to access troubleshooting tips, to download upgrades, and to read or join online message-board discussions.

Courier Bold font identifies text that you type.

example, Command+Option+C or Ctrl+drag.

document, the pipe is used in product names when they are in headings or at their first use in text.

Accessing the Online Documentation

The Avid online documentation contains all the product documentation in PDF format. You can access the documentation from the Knowledge Base site specific to your release. Download and install Acrobat Reader before you access the PDF documentation.

Avid Training Services

Avid makes lifelong learning, career advancement, and personal development easy and convenient. Avid understands that the knowledge you need to differentiate yourself is always changing, and Avid continually updates course content and offers new training delivery methods that accommodate your pressured and competitive work environment.

For information on courses/schedules, training centers, certifications, courseware, and books, please visit

www.avid.com/support and follow the Training links, or call Avid Sales at 800-949-AVID (800-949-2843).

1 Configuring and Managing the System

An Avid NEXIS system can be:

• On-premise—One or more Avid NEXIS chassis, either Engines (Enterprise or PRO) running an embedded System Director or Enterprise Engines plus a System Director Appliance for system management. You (or Avid Professional Services) install the system and the software.

- An on-premise system can have Storage Groups built from HDD and SSD Media Packs, and optionally

Cloudspaces.

- Cloudspaces—A combination of an on-premise system plus Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, which are

Workspaces that use cloud storage connected to your on-premise storage. You manage the Cloudspaces through the same Management Console as the rest of the on-premise system. Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces is available on a new or existing Avid NEXIS system running version 2019.4 or later. Cloudspaces are intended for near-line storage, not real-time workflows such as Media Composer or Pro Tools.

• Cloud—Deployed, configured, and managed completely in the Cloud, with no hardware on-site at your location. This is known as an Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage system. Avid deploys (provisions) the Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage for you. After provisioning, complete the configuration as described in this guide.

This chapter describes how to complete the setup of a new Avid NEXIS system, whether Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage or an on-premise system (with or without Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces). For on-premise systems, this chapter assumes the hardware has already been installed in your environment and updated from the factory version to the latest Avid NEXIS software version. For instructions, see the Avid NEXIS Setup and Maintenance Guide.

This chapter also covers routine system management, including setting bandwidth limits, and performing software upgrades.

Avid NEXIS Configuration Overview

To make an Avid NEXIS system fully usable to clients, do the following:

1. Create the file system. See “Creating the Avid NEXIS File System” on page 2.

2. Bind Media Packs to the file system. See “Binding Media Packs to the File System” on page 2.

3. Set the system time. See “Setting the System Time” on page 3.

4. Configure notification to send email to one or more accounts when a problem occurs. See “Configuring the

Notification Service” on page 4.

5. Create one or more Storage Groups from the Media Packs, depending on your hardware and what kind of Media Pack protections you want to use. See “Managing Storage” on page 25.

6. Create Workspaces within the Storage Groups. See “Managing Storage” on page 25.

7. Optionally, activate Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces. See “Activating Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces” on page 30.

8. Create user or device accounts to allow clients to connect to Workspaces. You can do one or both of the following:

- Create user accounts on the Avid NEXIS system itself (see “Managing Users and Groups” on page 58).

- Configure Avid NEXIS to connect to an LDAP server to authenticate external users (see “Configuring

External Authentication of Users” on page 62).

In addition, see the following to make your system more secure and robust (some apply only to on-premise systems):

• “Changing the Administrator Password” on page 5

• “Configuring DNS Service” on page 6

• “Changing the BMC Password” on page 7

• “Changing the Storage System Name” on page 10

• “Enabling Link Aggregation” on page 10

Creating the Avid NEXIS File System

Creating a new file system is the first step to making the storage space usable.

If a file system already exists, creating a new one permanently deletes it and all users, groups, Workspaces,

Storage Groups and other objects. All Media Packs are unbound; all other settings, such as External Authentication and Notification Service, are cleared and must be reconfigured after the new file system is created; and the Administrator (Management Console) password (if changed) reverts to the default.

To create a new file system:

1. Open a browser and enter either the hostname (if DNS is configured) or the IP address of the System Director.

The Management Console login window opens.

2. Enter the user name “administrator” and the administrator password (default before a file system exists is se-admin) and click Sign In.

3. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Settings.

4. Click File System.

5. From the drop-down box, select Create New File System, then click Submit.

A confirmation screen appears, asking you to confirm the operation, which will destroy all existing data (if any) on the Avid NEXIS system, and create a new file system.

6. Click OK.

The Results panel displays progress messages. When the file system is created, you can complete the system configuration.

Binding Media Packs to the File System

After you have created an active file system, bind the on-premise Media Packs to it.

For Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage or Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces Media Packs, the Cloud performance bind option

is applied automatically. Cloud Media Packs have an initial status of Spare - Bound.

Binding a Media Pack formats it to a specific performance capability. Some bind options are available only on specific Engine types, as follows.

Bind Option Intended Use Available On

High Performance (1024KB strip size) High-bandwidth media playback, such as

UHD/4K finish and color-correction workflows

Scale-Out (512KB strip size) Suitable for a broad variety of workflows up to

the supported client count for your Avid NEXIS model

SSD Ultra-high bandwidth media playback Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD only

Avid NEXIS | PRO

Avid NEXIS | E2

Avid NEXIS | E4

Avid NEXIS | E5

Avid NEXIS | PRO

Avid NEXIS | E2

Avid NEXIS | E4

Avid NEXIS | E5

Avid NEXIS | E5 NL

Media Pack performance types cannot be changed after the pack is bound. To change a Media Pack’s performance type, unbind it and then rebind it as a different supported performance type (not supported on Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD Engines, Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage, or Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces Media Packs.)

To bind Media Packs:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Media Packs.

2. Select a Media Pack.

3. Click Bind.

4. A warning dialog is displayed asking you to confirm the operation. Click OK.

5. In the Media Pack Bind Settings dialog box, choose the bind setting for the Media Pack.

6. Click Save.

When the Media Pack is bound, its icon changes from white to green, and the state is Spare - Bound.

7. Create a Storage Group. See “Creating Storage Groups” on page 29.

Setting the System Time

For on-premise systems, you can configure the system time manually or use one or two external NTP servers. (If you configure an NTP server and enter the system time manually, the NTP server takes precedence.)

You typically set the system time or configure NTP servers during initial system setup, but you can change the system time or the NTP server information (for example if the IP address of an NTP server changed) at any time.

For Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage, the system time and NTP Servers are configured automatically during the Azure provisioning process. You can change the NTP server to one that is accessible from Azure.

To set system time, or add or change and NTP server:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then System Setup.

2. Click the Date/Time tab.

3. To configure an NTP server, check the box and enter the IP addresses or host names for up to two NTP servers on your network.

4. To set the date and time manually:

a. Enter the current date and time in the fields (on-premise only).

b. Choose a time zone from the list.

5. Click Save.

A warning message asks you to confirm the action. Click OK, or click Reset to undo the changes.

Configuring the Notification Service

The Notification service watches the system logs and sends email to one or more addresses you configure. The service supports filters that allow you to specify the type of error message that triggers an email notification and to set parameters for each type of error message—Error, Warning, and Information messages.

You can configure Avid NEXIS to send notification emails for one or more of the following subsystem categories and the severity level that will trigger notification:

• Server Control—Reports messages about internal operations, including problems saving metadata to disk

• System Director—Reports messages about the Avid NEXIS file system, metadata, memory, system drives, and the System Director IP address and networking

• Avid Storage General—Reports messages about Workspaces (such as changing its size), password changes, Media Packs, and network communication errors detected by an Avid NEXIS component

• Storage Manager General—Reports messages about general Media Pack operations, such as initialization and status changes

To configure the Notification Service:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Users, then Notifications.

2. In the configuration panel, do the following:

a. Enter the IP address for your network’s SMTP (email) server.

b. (Optional) If your SMTP server uses a port other than 25 (default), enter the port number. Port 25 is

appropriate for most cases.

c. Enter at least one email address that will receive the notifications.

d. Click Save.

3. To add more than one name, click Add in the Contacts area. There is no enforced limit to the number of contacts you can add.

a. Enter a name for the contact in the Name field. This can be any name you want to assign to the user; it

does not have to be the same as the email account name.

b. Enter a valid email address for the contact.

4. In the Filters panel, check the boxes according to which types of errors from which subsystems you want the contacts to receive notice for.

5. Click Save.

- A confirmation message is displayed in the Results area.

- If you started or stopped the Notification Service, the Service State will change to reflect the new service

state.

6. (Optional) To test the notification settings, click Run Test.

The Results area displays the status (success or failure) of the test.

Changing the Administrator Password

The Avid NEXIS system has several passwords:

• The Administrator password, used when you log into the Management Console. You can change this after creating a file system. This password is separate from the password used to log into the Agent.

• The password for the Agent. This password is used for initial system setup ( systems) and for logging into the Agent.

The Agent password can also be used to log into the Management Console. This is intented behavior to provide an

emergency method of logging in to the system. Therefore, Avid recommends changing both the Agent password (see the Avid NEXIS Setup and Maintenance Guide) and the Management Console password.

• The password for the BMC (Baseboard Management Controller), which is a low-level process on the Storage Controller that manages the BIOS, MAC addresses, and other internal functions (on-premise only).

By default, the BMC password has been set at the factory to be the same as the system setup password (

), but this could be a security concern in some environments. See “Changing the BMC Password” on

admin

page 7.

For on-premise systems, the default password for the Management Console Administrator is se-admin before a file system has been created. If a file system exists, the default password is blank. The Administrator password for Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage is set at the time of provisioning.

Avid highly recommends that you set or change the Administrator password when you configure an on-premise system.

See “Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on page 22 for valid password characters and the maximum length.

To change the Administrator password:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Users, then Administrator.

se-admin

for on-premise

se-

2. Type the current Administrator password in the Current Password field.

3. Type the new Administrator password in the New Password field.

4. Type the new Administrator password again in the Verify Password field.

5. Click Submit.

- The Administrator Password is changed to the new value.

- A confirmation message appears in the Results area.

If you forget the Administrator password you have created, contact Avid Customer Care.

Configuring DNS Service

For on-premise systems, if your network environment includes one or more Domain Name servers, you can add the Avid NEXIS system to the DNS service, and add the DNS domain to Avid NEXIS. This enables you to open the Management Console using the System Director host name, instead of the IP address. Enabling DNS also allows you to use LDAP for external user authentication; for more information, see “Configuring External

Authentication of Users” on page 62.

For Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, you must configure DNS to access the external Cloud storage.

To configure DNS:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then System Setup.

2. In the Domain Name Service area, enter the following information:

- The DNS domain for your organization. For Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, this is the domain providing the

external cloud storage.

- One or more IP addresses for the DNS servers separated by spaces

- (Optional) Additional domains in your environment (if applicable) to search through when trying to

resolve a host name.

3. Click Save.

If you enter an invalid IP address, an error message is displayed.

4. Add the Avid NEXIS system to your DNS service.

Securing the Avid NEXIS Infrastructure

If your environment requires tight security, you can restrict access to the Management Console using TLS (Transport Layer Security, often referred to as SSL) encryption, and you can change the BMC password.

Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces Security

If you plan to deploy Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces (available with Avid NEXIS | FS Version 2019.4 and higher), you must configure DNS to allow communication to the cloud storage service (see “Configuring DNS Service” on

page 6). Communication to the Cloudspace originates from the Avid NEXIS system; there are no inbound calls or

connections.

Avid recommends that the Avid NEXIS system remain behind a firewall, configured to prevent all inbound connections. To enable the necessary Cloudspaces connections, configure the firewall to allow traffic on ports 443 and 80. All communication from the Avid NEXIS system to the cloud storage service is encrypted during transit with access controlled by an access key.

All data in Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces is encrypted while stored in the cloud.

Securing Access to the Management Console

By default, the Management Console uses unencrypted HTTP. However, you can also run the Management Console using HTTPS (TLS). When TLS is enabled, the Avid NEXIS generates a self-signed certificate that prompts a browser warning.

To run the Management Console unencrypted:

t Open a browser and enter: http://<IP address>

The browser bar looks like the following:

To run the Management Console encrypted:

t Open a browser and enter: https://<IP address>

The browser bar looks like the following, but the traffic is being encrypted and is secure:

Changing the BMC Password

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage.

If your lab environment or company requires it, you can change the BMC password to prevent unauthorized access to the hardware.

To change the BMC password:

1. Connect a computer or laptop to the Management Port on the Storage Controller, as shown:

2. Open a browser window and go to the address:

169.254.10.250

, which is the default IP address of the BMC

controller.

root

3. Log in using the user name

and the password

se-admin

4. In the BMC interface, click the Configuration tab.

5. Select Users from the pull-down menu.

6. Click Modify User.

7. Click the Change Password checkbox, enter a new password in the Password and Confirm Password fields, then click Modify.

8. Click OK.

9. Log out of the BMC interface.

Changing the Storage System Name

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage.

The Storage System name represents all the Avid NEXIS Engines (and the System Director Appliance, if applicable) operating as one shared-storage system.

Do not rename a storage system that has Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces activated and in use. Changing the name will cause you to lose access to your cloud data.

The name can be up to 31 English alphanumeric characters long, any combination of upper and lower case (a-z and A-Z), can contain a dash or hyphen (-), and must start and end with a letter or number.

Renaming the system requires a reboot. You might want to perform this change when clients are not connected and actively using the system.

Change all the non-System Director Engines first, then change the SDA or Engine running the System Director last.

To change the Storage System Name:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then System Setup.

2. Select any Engine not running the System Director. Click System.

3. Enter a new name into the Storage System Name field, then click Save.

A confirmation message is displayed stating that the system might reboot. Click OK.

When the system reboots, you can log into the Management Console again

The login screen is displayed before the file system might be ready to support logins. When you log in, if the system is not ready, a counter is displayed showing that the system will retry your login up to four times. If the system is still not ready after four tries, the message “System not responding” is displayed. Wait a few more minutes and try again.

4. Repeat this procedure on all Engines except the SDA or the one running the System Director.

5. Change the Storage System Name on the SDA or the Engine running the System Director. Make sure this is the last Engine to be changed.

When the last Engine has rebooted, clients can reconnect to the system. Users might need to refresh the host list in the Client Manager to see the new name.

Enabling Link Aggregation

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage.

If your environment supports and requires it, you can configure link aggregation (also called redundant networking, NIC teaming, link bundling, or port trunking) on the network ports on each controller, which provides redundancy in case one network port fails. The Avid NEXIS implementation follows the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) standard. (Link aggregation is not supported on Avid NEXIS | PRO.)

LACP is supported in systems with one or two Controllers, but if two Controllers are present, it is enabled on both. The Ethernet ports on all installed Controllers must be connected to one or more supported switches.

In a configuration with multiple Engines or a System Director Appliance, you enable LACP on each Engine and the System Director Appliance individually, in any order. Furthermore, you can choose which chassis have LACP enabled. For instance, you can enable LACP only on the Engine running the System Director (or the System Director Appliance), or on all Engines (and the System Director Appliance), or any combination, based on your needs.

The overall procedure for enabling LACP is as follows:

1. Enable LACP on the switch.

2. Enable LACP on the Avid NEXIS.

3. Connect the cables between the switch and the Avid NEXIS.

Enabling link aggregation is a disruptive process that temporarily causes loss of connection. Therefore Avid

recommends enabling LACP during initial system setup and configuration, or during a maintenance window, and connecting a computer to the Management Port on the target Engine or SDA to maintain access.

To enable link aggregation:

1. Enable link aggregation on the connected switch or switches. For more information, see the Avid NEXIS Network and Switch Guide.

The switch will lose connectivity to the Avid NEXIS system until LACP is enabled on Avid NEXIS and the cables are connected.

2. Connect a computer to the Avid NEAvid NEXISXIS Engine or SDA via the Management Port.

3. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then System Setup.

4. Click Interfaces.

5. In the Data Interface section, check the box for Link Aggregation.

6. Click Save.

A warning confirmation message warns you that the engine might reboot. Click OK.

When the system restarts, link aggregation is enabled on the network ports on all installed controllers.

If an error occurs with the LACP configuration, a status message is displayed.

7. Connect cables from both NIC ports on the Controllers to the LACP-enabled switch. See the Avid NEXIS Setup and Maintenance Guide for example LACP cable configurations.

8. Repeat steps 2 through 7 on all chassis (Engines or SDA) on which you want LACP enabled.

To disable link aggregation:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then System Setup.

2. Click Interfaces.

3. In the Data Interfaces section, uncheck the box for Link Aggregation.

4. Click Save.

A confirmation message warns you that the engine might reboot. Click OK.

When the system restarts, link aggregation is disabled on the network ports on all installed controllers.

To verify or monitor the status of link aggregation on the controllers, see “Managing Controllers” on page 47.

Upgrading the System (On-Premise Only)

When new releases of the Avid NEXIS software are available, you can upgrade the Avid NEXIS clients and system to take advantage of new features and bug fixes.

All the system components (Engines and System Director Appliance, if applicable) are updated at the same time, through one operation.

To upgrade an Avid NEXIS System:

1. On your local computer, download the new software from Avid, using your support account.

2. Unzip the software on your computer.

3. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then System Setup.

4. Click the Install tab.

5. Click Choose File (or Browse on Firefox), navigate to the location of the software kit contents that you just unzipped, and select the .bin file.

6. Click Upgrade.

The kit is installed on each member of the system.

The current login session ends, closing the Management Console. When the system reboots, the login screen is displayed.

7. Close the browser or tab.

Closing the browser window or tab clears the cache and forces the browser to load the login screen for the new software version.

8. Open the browser or a new tab and enter either the hostname (if DNS is configured) or the IP address of the System Director.

The Management Console login window opens.

The login screen is displayed before the file system might be ready to support logins. When you log in, if the

system is not ready, a counter is displayed showing that the system will retry your login up to four times. If the system is still not ready after four tries, the message “System not responding” is displayed. Wait a few more minutes and try again.

9. Log back in to the Management Console.

10. Click Dashboard (if not already displayed) and look under the System heading to confirm the new version.

Changing the System IP Address (On-Premise Only)

If your network changes or you need to move your Avid NEXIS shared-storage system to a new location on a different network, you can change the IP addresses of all the Engines and the SDA (all the Controllers in the system).

The Avid NEXIS system will reboot during this process. Make sure clients are not trying to access Workspaces.

If the system uses NTP servers, DNS, LDAP, SNMP or SMTP, and those servers’ addresses are also changing, you can change the configuration while changing the Avid NEXIS IP addresses.

Put any Interplay | Media Indexer servers or MediaCentral Media Index services connected to the Avid NEXIS into standby mode until after all the IP addresses are changed and the entire shared-storage system has finished rebooting.

Before You Begin

Make sure you have the following:

• Range of new IP addresses for all the system components

• For Avid NEXIS systems using external servers for services, new IP addresses of these servers if they are also changing

To change the system IP addresses:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then System Setup.

2. Select the SDA, if applicable, or any Engine.

3. On the blue System tab, if using DNS, edit the DNS domain, server list and search list, if they are also changing.

4. Click the blue Interfaces tab.

5. Edit the IP address, netmask and gateway for the installed Controllers. (The second Controller inherits these values from the first Controller.)

6. If using NTP, and that server IP address is also changing, click Date/Time.

7. Edit the NTP server IP addresses.

10. After the system reboots, open the Management Console and verify that all the Engines and the SDA are

Follow-Up

After you have changed all the IP addresses and the system is back up and running, do the following as needed.

• If Email notification, LDAP, or SNMP is configured and those server IP addresses also changed, make sure to

• Open the Client Manager on all client systems that formerly had access to the Avid NEXIS system and make

8. Click Save.

9. In the warning dialog box, click OK.

reported.

update them on the Avid NEXIS system.

sure they can reconnect to the system. You might need to change the Avid NEXIS system IP address in the Remote Hosts settings.

2 Working with the Management Console

The Management Console is the interface to manage and monitor the Avid NEXIS system.

When you access the Management Console, the Login page opens. Enter a user name and password to log in. If you type the wrong password, an error message appears and the Login dialog box reappears.

To set or change the administrator password, see “Changing the Administrator Password” on page 5.

Standard Avid NEXIS client users can log in to the Management Console, but will have limited access to the Management Console interface (Dashboard and Installers pages only). They can see certain information about the network through the Client Manager. For more information about the Client Manager, see the Avid NEXIS Client Help.

Opening the Management Console

The Management Console runs within one of the following qualified web browsers:

• Windows—Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome

• OS X—Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome

• RedHat Linux and CentOS—Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome

Performing administrative functions in more than one instance of the Management Console at the same time can cause unexpected results.

To open the Management Console as Administrator:

1. Open your web browser and in the address bar enter one of the following:

t System Director Name of an on-premise system (if DNS is configured; see “Configuring DNS Service”

on page 6)

t IP address of the System Director. (This is the IP address of the Storage Controller running the System

Director; whether in a single- or multi-Engine configuration or in a System Director Appliance.)

t For Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage, the Microsoft Azure Public IP address or DNS name.

The Login dialog box for the Management Console opens.

2. Enter the Administrator user name and password.

3. Click Sign In or press Enter.

The Management Console Home page opens.

To log out of the Management Console:

t Open the drop-down list in the upper right corner of the screen and select Log Out.

For system security, the Management Console session closes (logs out) automatically after two hours of inactivity (even if Continuous Refresh is running—see “Action Tools” on page 17), and you must log back in.

Understanding the Management Console Interface

The Management Console user interface has the following main components.

The Management Console presents slightly different functions for Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage systems, and for

on-premise systems depending on whether Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces are available and activated. Differences are noted in this guide.

1 Navigation Sidebar—Main menus for managing the Avid NEXIS system. See “Navigation Sidebar” on page 16.

2 Menu Selection, Messages, and Action tools area—Displays the name of the selected menu item, and action

tools (icons) for available actions based on the objects being displayed. See “Action Tools” on page 17.

Also displays error, warning, or status messages relating to actions taken, such as successful completion of an operation.

3 Main page—Displays detailed information for the menu item selected in the navigation sidebar.

4 Application menu—Contains links to actions you can take on the Management Console UI itself:

• Open the Classic Management Console (requires Adobe Flash Player and is not available on Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage systems)

• Open the System Monitor View (see “Displaying the System Monitor View” on page 20)

• Log out

Help menu—Open links to the documentation for Avid NEXIS, and a link to the disk slot diagrams for all Avid NEXIS models

Navigation Sidebar

The Navigation sidebar is divided into the following main sections: System, Storage, Monitoring, Users, and Logs, each of which expands to display functions or objects related to that category.

System Section

The System section contains:

• Dashboard (displayed by default when you log into a running, configured system)—Displays overall health and status information about the system. You can display a dashboard for the Avid NEXIS system as a whole, or just for Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, if configured. See “Dashboards” on page 18.

• Bandwidth Limits—Lets you create, edit, sort and manage bandwidth limits for clients.

• Installers—Provides links to the installers for the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, LDAP Sync Tool (on-premise only), Avid NEXIS Client software, and Avid NEXIS software to install on other Engines (on-premise only).

• System Setup—Displays information about the current configuration and lets you edit various attributes and settings.

• Settings—Manages system preferences, the file system setup, and metadata.

• Services—Displays details about your Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces configuration, if applicable, including the subscription plan and status and the amount of storage and download data included by default. Also lets you activate cloud storage if not configured (see “Activating Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces” on page 30).

• Snapshots—Lets you create a snapshot of the current state of the Avid NEXIS system.

Storage Section

The Storage section contains:

• Workspaces—Displays current Workspaces and lets you create, modify and delete Workspaces and their attributes.

• Storage Groups—Displays current Storage Groups and lets you create, modify and delete Storage Groups and their attributes.

• Engines (on-premise only)—Displays current Engines and lets you modify some Engine attributes.

• Controllers (on-premise only)—Displays current Controller information and lets you modify some Controller attributes.

• Media Packs—Displays current Media Pack information and lets you modify some Media Pack attributes.

Monitoring Section

The Monitoring section contains:

• Client Bandwidth—Displays total system bandwidth use, and bandwidth consumption of each connected system.

• Connection Status—Displays the users and other entities connected to (or logged into) the system, including internal users such as the Storage Managers.

• Redistribution (on-premise only)—Displays information about any in-progress redistributions, and which Media Packs are involved.

• Reservations—Displays any bandwidth reservations set inside the Client Manager.

Users Section

The Users section contains:

• Users—Lets you create, edit, sort and manage user accounts.

• Groups—Lets you create, edit, sort and manage user groups.

• Notifications—Lets you configure an SMTP server for email notifications and filter which types of system

• External Authentication (on-premise only)—Lets you configure and manage external authentication servers

• Administrator—Lets you change the administrator password, which controls access to the Management

Logs Section

The Logs section contains:

• Event History—Displays the past 5 days (96 hours) of system status information. You can download the

• System Logs—Lets you choose from various logs to display.

• Media Pack Logs—Displays log files for the Media Packs in the system.

Action Tools

events are sent to the contacts you configure.

for LDAP.

Console.

history as a zip file, and then send the file to Avid Customer Care upon request.

Depending on which section is open in the System Navigation sidebar, various action tools (listed here alphabetically) are displayed.

Action Tool Action Description

Add Allows you to create a new workspace, user, user group, storage group,

bandwidth limit, or contact for email notification.

Advanced Applies to Engines, Controllers, and Media Packs.

Lets you view details about the physical components of the shared-storage system, such as hardware status (fans, system temperature, and other data), and disk status (operational status, slot number, SSD health if applicable, and other data).

Clear In the Logs–Event History section, clears the history status flags.

In the Logs–System Logs section, clears the log viewer.

Delete (All) Applies to bandwidth limits, snapshots and archives, Workspaces and Storage

Groups, users and user groups, system logs and Media Pack logs.

Deletes the selected object or all relevant objects.

Disable Logs Applies to Media Pack Logs only.

Lets you disable or enable collection of Media Pack logs. The color if the action tool indicates to current behavior:

• Gray—Disabled

• Blue—Enabled

Action Tool Action Description (Continued)

Download In the Logs–Event History section, lets you download the event history to a file

which you can send to Avid Customer Care if requested.

Dump All Logs Applies to Media Pack Logs only.

Lets you create a dumpfile of all the Media Pack logs. You can retrieve and send this file to Avid Customer Care if requested.

Duplicate Applies to Workspaces and users.

Lets you duplicate a Workspace or user.

Edit Toggles edit mode for an object, which also displays additional details for an

object. Select a different object to edit it or display its details. Click Edit again to close edit mode.

Filter When clicked, displays filter options for the displayed objects. See “Filtering,

Sorting, and Searching” on page 19.

Redistribution Applies to on-premise Workspaces only.

Allows you to start, suspend, and resume Workspace redistribution.

Dashboards

The Management Console displays the dashboard for the entire Avid NEXIS system by default—you can toggle between the Cloud Dashboard and the System Dashboard.

The System dashboard displays the following data:

• Performance, bandwidth, and connection status for the entire system (on-premise and Cloudspaces, if configured)

Refresh (or Continuous Refresh)

Reset Applies in Edit mode only.

Take New Snapshot (or Archive)

Refreshes the display. If a down arrow is present, lets you choose between Refresh (which refreshes the display once) or Continuous Refresh (which continues to refresh the display until either you leave the screen or disable Continuous Refresh mode).

In Continuous Refresh mode, blue text displays “Continuous refresh enabled” and the blue Refresh icon spins.

Undoes any changes you have made to an object (name, size, password, or other attributes).

Applies to Snapshots and Archives.

Creates a new system snapshot, or a new archive of existing snapshots.

• On-premise storage usage and system messages

• General information, such as the system name, version, and overall usage data (this panel is common to both the System and Cloud dashboards) and the status of the Cloudspaces activation

The Cloud dashboard displays the following data:

• Cloud-specific storage usage, bandwidth, and data download metrics

• General information, such as the system name, version, and overall usage data (this panel is common to both the System and Cloud dashboards) and the status of the Cloudspaces activation

The cloud-specific data includes:

• Cloud storage in GB/day for the past 30 days

• Cloud bandwidth in MB/sec; also lets you perform a cloud speed test (see “Testing the Network Speed to the

Cloud” on page 19)

• Data download (amount of data downloaded or read from cloud storage over the past 30 days). Depending on the amount of data being read, the read might come from cache and not the cloud. Data read from cache does not count against the data download statistics.

• General information, such as the system name, version, and overall usage data (this panel is common to both the System and Cloud dashboards) and the status of the Cloudspaces activation

For details about your cloud subscription, see “Displaying Cloud Subscription Data” on page 41.

Testing the Network Speed to the Cloud

To make sure your network is performing well between the Avid NEXIS system and the cloud storage, you can run a cloud speed test. The test runs for the amount of time it takes to upload and then download a 1GB packet of data to and from the cloud storage account; usually under three minutes. Running the test has no effect on your Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, but might incur a small charge for the download. The data is deleted after the test completes.

The test will not start if there is current I/O to an Avid NEXIS Cloudspace, and will stop if I/O begins after the test

is started.

To run a Cloud Speed Test:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Dashboard.

2. Click the Cloud tab.

3. In the Cloud Bandwidth panel, click Cloud Speed Test.

The test starts and runs until complete, or until I/O starts to an Avid NEXIS Cloudspace. The Cloud Bandwidth graph displays the progress of the test. Uploads are tested first, then downloads.

The Total bandwidth fields show the peak and average speed of the upload or download while the test is running. When complete, the status field shows ‘Test completed,’ and the average download and upload speeds are reported.

Canceling an Operation or Ignoring Changes

During any operation where you are adding an object (such as a Workspace, Storage Group, or User) or making changes to an object (such as changing a name, size, or other attributes) the Save button becomes active. If you decide not to complete the operation, click Refresh to trigger a warning message that your changes have not been saved. Click Ignore to discard your changes and exit Add or Edit mode. The display refreshes and restores the original information.

Filtering, Sorting, and Searching

You can filter, sort, and search for specific objects in most of the displays.

Sorting Objects

The sort options depend on the type of objects displayed. To display all objects, click Refresh.

Category or Object Type Sort Options

Bandwidth Limits Name, Bandwidth, Description

Workspaces Name, Storage Group, Engine Protection Mode, Media Pack Protection Mode

Storage Groups Name, Mirror Capable

Engines Name, Product, Product Part Number, Serial Number, Type

Controllers Host Name, BMC Version, Controller Serial Number, Engine Serial Number

Media Packs Name, Host Name, State, Engine Serial Number, Storage Group

Users Name, Flags, Bandwidth

Groups Name

Filtering and Searching for Objects

You can search among all objects in a category (for example, among all users or all Workspaces) or you can search within a filtered list.

For example, on the Workspaces page, select Name from the sort options, then start typing in the Search field. Only names matching or containing the typed characters are displayed. Or you can select Storage Group from the sort options and type in the Search field. Only Workspaces in Storage Groups matching or containing the typed characters are displayed.

Displaying the System Monitor View

By default, the Management Console logs you out after two hours of inactivity. Instead of running the Management Console, you can display the System Monitor view, which does not log you out. System Monitor view constantly displays the Dashboard view without the navigation sidebar, as shown in the following figure:

To display the System Monitor View:

t In the Application menu (see “Understanding the Management Console Interface” on page 15), select System

Monitor View.

This lets you keep system information visible on a screen without allowing another user to accidentally or intentionally make changes to the configuration, and is a safe way to continuously watch system performance and see any alerts or warnings. You can toggle the display to view information for the whole system or only the cloud.

Click Exit View to log in again for full administrator access.

Updating the Display

You can update onscreen information to reflect recent system changes by clicking Refresh. You can also set the display to refresh continuously.

To enable Continuous Refresh:

t On any screen that displays the Refresh icon with a down arrow (drop-down menu), open the menu and select

Continuous refresh.

Continuous refresh mode is enabled, the refresh icon spins continuously, and a status message is displayed on the screen as long as it remains enabled.

To disable Continuous Refresh:

t Click the spinning Refresh icon, click any other action button on the screen, or click a different navigation

sidebar menu item.

Selecting Multiple Items

You can select multiple items in many Management Console windows, as follows, similar to selecting multiple items in Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder:

To Select This Do This

One item Click the item or its checkbox.

Multiple, non-contiguous items Ctrl+click each item you want to select, or click the checkbox for each item.

Multiple, contiguous items Click the first item, then Shift+click on the last item, or click the checkbox for each

All items Click the All checkbox. See the following example.

The following figure shows the All check box on the Users page.

item.

Guidelines for Names and Passwords

Text fields for Workspaces, users, user groups, and Storage Groups support Unicode characters. The length of the field is limited by the number of bytes used by the variable-length UTF-8 encoding of its Unicode characters. For example, the 9-character English name Workspace, when encoded as UTF-8, consumes nine bytes, but the 7character word Workspace in Japanese, when encoded as UTF-8, consumes 21 bytes. The byte length of any Unicode field’s UTF-8 encoding must fit within the specified limit.

Passwords cannot use Unicode; they must use only ASCII characters.

In addition:

• Storage Group, User, and User Group names can be up to 31 characters, including spaces, and cannot start or end with a period.

• Workspace names can be up to 31 characters, including spaces, and cannot start or end with a period.

• Passwords can be up to 127 ASCII characters (127 bytes).

• Do not use the following characters in any name fields:

Character Name Character Name

^ Circumflex accent | Vertical line

\ Backslash [ Left square bracket

/ Forward slash ] Right square bracket

: Colon + Plus sign

* Asterisk = Equals sign

Character Name Character Name(Continued)

? Question mark % Percent sign

" Double quotation mark ; Semicolon

< Less-than sign , Comma

> Greater-than sign @ Commercial At symbol

Customizing the System Settings

You can set parameters that customize the basic functionality of the Avid NEXIS system:

• General Preferences—These control general system behaviors and are described in the following table.

• Logging Preferences—These control what types of logs are collected and the severity and verbosity of the event being logged. These are not described here; do not change these unless instructed to do so by Avid Customer Care.

General Preferences

Option Type Default Description

Total System Bandwidth (MB/sec)

Default Bandwidth for Auto Created Devices (MB/sec)

Force Manual Device Creation

Default LCT Threshold (ms)

Default Hard Disk Error Threshold

text (numeric)

check box Disabled If enabled, clients without an entry in the Bandwidth Limits list

text (numeric)

1000 MB/sec Total reservation bandwidth allowed by the system, in MB/sec.

When this value has been reached, Avid NEXIS will no longer accept bandwidth reservations from clients.

This value does not represent the actual bandwidth capabilities of

the Avid NEXIS system. For more information about Avid NEXIS bandwidth capabilities, see Avid NEXIS Documentation.

0 Bandwidth limitation for devices that are automatically created

at connection time.

The default value (0) grants unlimited bandwidth.

are not allowed to connect. Manually create an entry for every client computer that is expected to connect to the Avid NEXIS system.

0 Defines the upper limit of the Long Command Time (LCT)

value, above which the Media Pack will report a Disk Degraded condition to the System Director.

The default value (0) sets the LCT threshold to the internal system default of 750ms.

0 Defines the upper limit for number of hard disk errors before

the Media Pack reports a Disk Failure condition to the System Director.

The default (0) uses the internal system value of 25 errors.

History Data Collection check box Enabled When enabled (default), collects system history data (see

“Displaying Event History” on page 76. If disabled (for support

use only), the system stops collecting new data, but existing data is retained.

Configuring System Preferences

To configure System preferences:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Settings.

2. Click Preferences, if not already displayed.

3. Configure the settings you want.

As soon as you make a change, the Save icon is displayed.

4. (Optional) To revert all options to the previously saved values, click Reset.

5. Click Save.

Configuring SNMP Monitoring

You can monitor your Avid NEXIS system using an SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) application.

Avid NEXIS supports only unidirectional (read-only) SNMP communication.

Downloading the MIB File

A MIB (Management Information Base) file is a virtual database that describes the objects available from the managed device. Using this information, you can send queries for objects specified in the MIB file.

To download the MIB file:

1. In the Management Console, click System, then Settings.

2. Click the SNMP tab.

3. Click Download next to the Avid NEXIS MIB file and load it into your SNMP manager.

Enabling SNMP on the Avid NEXIS System

To enable SNMP monitoring:

1. In the Management Console, click System, then Settings.

2. Click the SNMP tab.

3. Check the box to enable SNMP, and enter the following information. All fields are optional (except Community string) and can have up to 255 alphanumeric characters.

t Community string—Set to the read-only string ‘public’ by default. Change this to the string recognized

by your SNMP manager.

t System name—Name of the Avid NEXIS shared-storage system

t Location—Description of where this Avid NEXIS system is located (for example, building name, floor,

department, or any description that is useful to your organization)

t Contact—Name of the person to contact about SNMP query results. Can include an email address and

phone number.

4. Click Save.

3 Managing Storage

Storage consists of the Storage Groups, Workspaces and Media Packs in your shared-storage system. Depending on your configuration, some components are on-premise (one or more physical Avid NEXIS Engines, possibly with a System Director Appliance, at your location or managed locally). Other components might be completely cloud-based, such as Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage systems, or a combination of on-premise and cloud-based, such as with Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces that are managed with an on-premise system.

Storage Groups are collections of Media Packs, enabling you to create large pools of storage for media files accessible within a shared-storage environment. Media Packs can be either on-premise (in your Avid NEXIS Engines) or in the cloud. Storage Groups give you flexibility in allocating storage capacity and bandwidth among users or groups with different functions or workflow requirements, or as a means of mitigating the risk of various disk failure scenarios.

You can create mirror-capable Storage Groups to prevent disruption from the failure of an entire Engine. (For more information see “Protecting Workspaces from Engine Failure (Media Mirroring—On-Premise Only)” on

page 26.)

Within Storage Groups, you create Workspaces. Workspaces are virtual volumes that can be resized dynamically. Workspaces allow you to subdivide the space in the Storage Groups to accommodate projects and users. Clients mount Workspaces to capture, edit, and play back media files.

For on-premise systems, managing storage also involves managing the hardware: physical Media Packs (drives), Engines, and Controllers.

Storage Group Considerations

Planning your Storage Groups differs for on-premise systems, Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage systems, and onpremise systems with access to Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces.

Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage Systems

In Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage, the Avid NEXIS system is entirely in the cloud. You have a single (virtual) Media Pack, sized according to your license. You create a single Storage Group using that Media Pack. The Media Pack is bound to the Avid NEXIS file system with the Cloud performance option. The Storage Group performance type is Cloud. Concepts described in the following sections for on-premise systems, such as Media Pack protection type and Media Mirroring (Engine protection) do not apply.

On-Premise Systems with Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces

Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces and Storage Groups provide cloud storage integrated with an on-premise Avid NEXIS system and managed through the same Management Console. You can purchase a subscription for Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces either at the time you order an Avid NEXIS system or later, and then activate your access to this space through the Management Console on a running Avid NEXIS system (see “Activating Avid NEXIS |

Cloudspaces” on page 30). Concepts described in the following sections for on-premise systems, such as Media

Pack protection type and Media Mirroring (Engine protection) do not apply.

On-Premise Storage Groups

On-premise Storage Groups exist on your local Avid NEXIS hardware. On-premise Storage Groups support several different Media Pack bind options, and Engine and Media Pack protection options, depending on your hardware. The total Storage Group capacity is based on the number and capacity of all the Media Packs in the group, and the types of Media Pack protections you choose.

Using a single Storage group provides the highest bandwidth to all users and Workspaces. The Workspaces can use different protection modes in the same Storage Group. Unless you have specialized needs, Avid recommends creating a single Storage Group containing multiple Workspaces, each with different protection schemes as needed.

Storage Group Space and Media Pack Capacity (On-Premise Only)

The total available Storage Group space is a multiple of the smallest Media Pack in the Storage Group. Avid recommends always using the same capacity Media Packs within a Storage Group.

For example, a Storage Group with four Media Packs, each of 20TB, has a total capacity of 80TB. However, a Storage Group with two 20TB Media Packs and two 40TB Media Packs also has a total capacity of 80TB.

Similarly, make sure to use drives of the same size within a Media Pack. Media Pack capacity is a multiple of the smallest drive in the pack. If necessary, you can use a larger capacity drive to replace a smaller one in a Media Pack, but the extra capacity of the larger drive is not used. The Media Pack will not accept a smaller drive to replace a larger drive.

Protecting Workspaces from Engine Failure (Media Mirroring—On-Premise Only)

Media mirroring is a feature that can protect Workspaces from the failure of an entire Engine in a Storage Group. It requires a shared-storage system consisting of a System Director Appliance and at least three (3) Engines of the same type with the same number and capacity of Media Packs.

If your workflow requires 24/7 uptime, Avid strongly recommends using media mirroring.

The Media Packs in a mirror-capable Storage Groups must be bound with the Scale-out performance bind option. See “Binding Media Packs to the File System” on page 2.

When you create a Storage Group from those Media Packs, the Storage Group is mirror capable, which allows you to create mirrored Workspaces in that group. All writes to a mirrored Workspace are duplicated (mirrored) to another Engine in the Storage Group, so if one entire Engine fails, the data (and the Workspace) survives.

Avid does not recommend splitting Engines between multiple mirror-capable Storage Groups. For example, consider three Avid NEXIS | E5 Engines, each with six 60TB Media Packs. Avid recommends adding all 18 Media Packs to the same Storage Group (which will be mirror-capable), as shown.

You can also divide the Media Packs into one mirror-capable Storage Group, and one non-mirror-capable Storage Group:

However, Avid does not recommend creating multiple mirror-capable Storage Groups from the same set of Engines:

If the Storage Group does not initially meet the requirements to support mirrored Workspaces, you can add Engines or Media Packs later to make the Storage Group mirror-capable, as long as the Storage Group ultimately contains at least three (3) Engines of the same type with the same number and capacity Media Packs.

If a Storage Group is already mirror capable, you can add more Engines of the same type, if they have the same number of Media Packs, with the same capacity, as the other Engines already in the group.

You can apply mirroring to any or all of the Workspaces in that Storage Group, but after applied to a Workspace it cannot be changed.

Storage Group Space and Media Mirroring (On-Premise Only)

Media mirroring prevents media loss if an entire Engine fails, but reduces the overall amount of usable space in the Storage Group. Because all writes to a mirrored Workspace are made to two Engines in the Storage Group, the Storage Group capacity is reduced by the amount of space used by the mirrored Workspaces.

Mirrored Workspaces can use either one-disk or two-disk protection. The protection mode cannot be changed after the Workspace is created. Disk protection is used with mirrored Workspaces to repair and rebuild disk failures within a Media Pack.

Net usable space in the Storage Group is determined as follows:

Media Pack Protection Type File Size Multiplier Net Storage Group Space

Two-disk 2 (for each mirror copy), then x 1.25 =

file size x 2.5

One-disk 2 (for each mirror copy), then 1.125 =

file size x 2.25

Changes to Mirror-Capable Storage Groups (On-Premise Only)

60TB Storage Group with all two-disk protected Workspaces: 60/2.5 = 24TB

60TB Storage Group with all two-disk protected Workspaces: 60/2.25 = 26TB

You can add matching-capacity Media Packs to a mirror-capable Storage Group, either by adding similar Engines with the same capacity Media Packs as are already in the group or by adding more Media Packs to an Engine with available slots. You can remove Engines or Media Packs as long as the group has enough space to maintain any current mirrored Workspaces, and remains mirror-capable.

Storage Group Performance Options (On-Premise Only)

The performance type of a Storage Group depends on the bind option of the Media Packs in the Storage Group. On-premise Storage Groups have the following characteristics based on the performance type:

Storage Group Performance Type Intended Workflow

Scale-out

Available on all models except Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD

High Performance

Available on all models except Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD

SSD Performance

Available only on Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD

General purpose Yes, with a System Director

Small number of clients (fewer than 10)

Playback of ultra highbandwidth media

All of these Storage Group types can be part of the same Avid NEXIS shared-storage system.

Managing Storage Groups

You can increase the amount of space in a Storage Group at any time, with some exceptions. For more information, see “Adding Unassigned Media Packs to Storage Groups” on page 51.

If you have Media Packs of different capacities, you can create separate Storage Groups to segregate them.

Supports Media Mirroring?

Appliance

No 1GbE, 2x1GbE, 10GbE,

No 40GbE

Supported Connection Speeds

1GbE, 2x1GbE, 10GbE, 2x10GbE, 40GbE

2x10GbE, 40GbE

Creating Storage Groups

To create Storage Groups, select Media Packs that are bound to the Avid NEXIS file system with the appropriate bind setting (performance type). See “Binding Media Packs to the File System” on page 2 and “Storage Group

Performance Options (On-Premise Only)” on page 29 for more information. Ideally, add Media Packs of the same

size to a Storage Group.

To use media mirroring (applies to on-premise Storage Groups only), make sure the Storage Group meets or can meet the requirements in “Protecting Workspaces from Engine Failure” on page 33.

On systems running Avid NEXIS 2019.4 or higher, when you activate cloud storage (see “Activating Avid NEXIS

| Cloudspaces” on page 30), a cloud Media Pack and Storage Group are created and configured automatically. By

default, the cloud Media Pack name is similar to on-premise Media Packs, and the cloud Storage Group is named Cloudspaces.

To create a Storage Group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Storage Groups.

2. Click Add.

3. In the Name text box, type a name for the Storage Group. See “Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on

page 22 for more information.

4. In the Media Packs panel, select the Media Packs you want to add to the new Storage Group.

If you choose multiple Media Packs of different performance types you receive an error message.

5. Click Add.

6. Click Save.

The Media Pack state changes to Active - Bound, and the Storage Group is created. (If another Storage Group has the same name an error is displayed.)

Activating Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces

Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces are Workspaces that provide space in a cloud storage account which you purchase from Avid. Cloudspaces are for media that you might not use frequently but want to have available more readily than on a tape or other external backup. You can configure Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces on an on-premise Avid NEXIS system, providing local and Cloud-based storage in one shared-storage system and visible from one management interface. See the Avid NEXIS ReadMe for configuration requirements and limits.

To activate Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces:

1. Log into your Avid account.

2. Choose and purchase a cloud subscription plan from among those listed.

3. In a few minutes you will receive email with instructions on how to get your System ID and activation file; you will need these to activate Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces on the Avid NEXIS system.

4. Save the activation file on a system accessible to your Avid NEXIS system.

5. Open the Management Console on the Avid NEXIS system for which you purchased the cloud storage plan.

If you want to deploy Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces on other systems, you must purchase additional plans. Each system ID and activation file is unique to a specific Avid NEXIS system.

6. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Services.

For more information about Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, click the “Learn more” link.

7. Enter the System ID and navigate to the location of the saved activation file, then click Activate.

A confirmation message indicates that Cloudspaces will be activated and asks whether you want to continue. Click OK.

When activated, the subscription status field on the Services page and on the Dashboard (lower right corner) changes to Active (see “Dashboards” on page 18). The cloud Media Pack is automatically created and bound, and the cloud Storage Group, named Cloudspaces, is automatically created using the cloud Media Pack. You can now create a Cloudspace in that Storage Group; see “Managing Workspaces” on page 32.

Only one cloud Media Pack and cloud Storage Group exists on an Avid NEXIS system. Both the Media pack and the Storage Group have a capacity of approximately 2PB, the maximum capacity supported.

After activation, the Services page does not display the System ID or Activation file name, for security. You do not need to re-enter that information when you upgrade your system to later Avid NEXIS versions.

Renaming Storage Groups (On-Premise Only)

You can rename an on-premise Storage Group. (The cloud Storage Group cannot be renamed.) Storage Group names must be unique within a shared-storage system.

To rename a Storage Group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Storage Groups.

2. Select the Storage Group you want to rename and click Edit.

3. Change the Storage Group name, then click Save.

Increasing a Storage Group’s Capacity (On-Premise Only)

A Storage Group’s capacity is the product of the smallest Media Pack in it, multiplied by the total number of Media Packs in that group. For more information, see “Storage Group Considerations” on page 25.

Within a Storage Group, you can replace smaller capacity Media Packs with larger ones through a series of add and remove operations, which trigger Workspace redistribution (see “Workspace Redistribution (On-Premise

Only)” on page 42). After all the Media Packs in the Storage Group are the same (larger) size and the Workspace

redistributions are complete, the Storage Group includes the additional space.

To remove (smaller) Media Packs, see “Removing Media Packs from a Storage Group” on page 53.

To add (larger) Media Packs, see “Adding Unassigned Media Packs to Storage Groups” on page 51.

Displaying Storage Group Details

The Storage Groups page of the Management Console allows you to create, delete, rename, and manage Storage Groups.

The Details and Media Packs panels display information about the currently selected Storage Group and the Media Packs it contains, as seen by the System Director. Some of the information is embedded in the Media Pack, and other information is assigned to the Media Pack by the Avid NEXIS software.

To see display or hide detailed information about a Storage Group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Storage Groups.

2. Double-click a Storage Group.

Storage Groups List

The following information is displayed for all Storage Groups. This information is also displayed in the Details panel for a selected Storage Group.

Heading Description

Name Displays the name of the currently selected Storage Group

Performance Displays the performance bind setting of the Media Packs in the Storage Group, which determines

Mirror Capable (onpremise only)

which workflow the Workspaces can support. In Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage and Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces configurations, the Storage Group performance type is Cloud.

Displays whether the Storage Group supports Engine protection on Workspaces in the group (see

“Protecting Workspaces from Engine Failure (Media Mirroring—On-Premise Only)” on page 26).

Values are Yes or No.

Capacity Displays the total storage capacity of the selected Storage Group

Effective Displays the effective (available) storage capacity of the selected Storage Group based on the

Media Pack protection types assigned to the current Workspaces in the group

Heading Description(Continued)

Used Displays the amount of storage space that currently contains user data

Unused Displays the amount of storage space that currently contains no data in the Media Packs assigned to

the selected Storage Group

Allocated Displays the amount of storage space assigned to Workspaces in the selected Storage Group

Unallocated Displays the amount of storage space available to create more Workspaces in the selected

Storage Group

Files Displays the number of files in all Workspaces in the selected Storage Group

Directories Displays the number of directories in all Workspaces in the selected Storage Group

You can sort the information in the Storage Groups page by clicking any column heading.

Deleting Storage Groups (On-Premise Only)

You can delete a Storage Group only if it is empty (does not contain Workspaces). If the Storage Group you want to delete contains Workspaces, see “Deleting Workspaces” on page 38.

On systems with Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces configured, you cannot delete the cloud Storage Group.

To delete a Storage Group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Storage Groups.

2. In the Storage Groups list, select one or more Storage Groups (or click All to select all Storage Groups) to delete.

If the selection includes the cloud Storage Group, it will not be deleted and an error is displayed.

3. Click Delete.

A dialog box opens asking you to confirm the action.

4. Click Ye s .

The Storage Group is deleted.

After the Storage Group is deleted, all of the Media Packs previously in the Storage Group appear in the Media Packs panel as Spare.

Managing Workspaces

Workspaces (including Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces) are the storage objects that clients mount and use. You can create and delete Workspaces and Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, and change their name, size, user access and permissions, and event triggers.

Throughout this guide, the term Workspace will apply to both on-premise Workspaces and Avid NEXIS |

Cloudspaces, unless otherwise specified.

Workspace Considerations

Before you create Workspaces:

• Consider how you want to allocate them. For example, you can create Workspaces for specific projects, groups, individual clients, streaming bit rates, media types, media distributors, or a combination of these.

• Consider whether you want to apply access restrictions, and what type.

• Determine how much storage each Workspace requires and allocate space accordingly. This might be a function of project size, number of clients, media duration, or media resolution.

• For on-premise systems, determine the Media Pack protection type you want (see “Media Pack Protection

Methods (On-Premise Only)” on page 33) and the performance requirements. For example, if you have a

High Performance Storage Group you can create High Performance Workspaces. For more information see

“Storage Group Considerations” on page 25

Avid NEXIS systems work reliably even when 100% full. However, Avid suggests reserving some space in onpremise Storage Groups rather than assigning all of it immediately to Workspaces. Allocated space tends to be filled quickly and you might need more later to accommodate a new project or client or to extend or protect an existing Workspace. In these situations, it is easier to use space held in reserve than to take it away from an existing Workspace.

Media Pack Protection Methods (On-Premise Only)

Workspaces serve different purposes, and might need different levels of protection against data loss when a drive in a Media Pack fails, or when an entire Engine fails. Avid recommends protecting all your Workspaces whenever possible.

Protecting Workspaces from Drive Failure

To protect a Workspace from drive failure, choose from the following options when you create the Workspace:

• Two Disk Protection—Workspace data can tolerate the simultaneous failure of two drives per Media Pack. Offers the best protection but requires the most space in the Storage Group.

• One Disk Protection—Workspace data can tolerate the failure of one drive per Media Pack. Offers some protection, but requires timely replacement of failed drives.

• Unprotected—Workspace data is lost if a single drive in any Media Pack fails. Uses the least space in the Storage Group. In a mirror-capable Storage Group, you cannot choose this option if you also want mirrored engine protection.

If you want to ensure protection of your files at all times, always choose a protection mode when creating new Workspaces (before any files are stored on the Workspace). You cannot change the protection mode later.

If a Storage Group contains Workspaces with different protection modes, when Media Pack drives fail, the Workspaces with one-disk protection are rebuilt at a higher priority than those with two-disk protection. After all one-disk protected Workspaces are rebuilt, the two-disk protected Workspace rebuilds begin. The Workspaces list displays the rebuild operations pending and in progress (including percent done) for all Workspaces.

Protecting Workspaces from Engine Failure

Mirrored Workspaces protect against data loss if an entire Engine fails.

To create mirrored Workspaces, the Storage Group must contain at least three Media Packs from at least three identical Engines: three Avid NEXIS | E2, three Avid NEXIS | E4, or three Avid NEXIS | E5 Engines, with a System Director Appliance. In addition, each Engine must contain the same number of Media Packs as the others,

and the Media Packs must be of equal capacity: all 20TB or all 60TB. (If a Storage Group can support Engine protection for Workspaces, the Mirror Capable column on the Storage Groups page displays Yes. See

“Storage Groups List” on page 31.)

If you enable Engine protection (mirroring) on a Workspace, you cannot disable it.

Creating Workspaces

Workspaces can have unique access privileges, permissions, protection modes (on-premise only), and event triggers. At least one Storage Group must exist before you can create a Workspace; see “Creating Storage Groups”

on page 29. You must have an active cloud subscription and cloud Storage Group to create Avid NEXIS |

Cloudspaces; see “Activating Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces” on page 30.

Each Workspace must have a unique name within the whole shared-storage system, even if you have multiple Storage Groups.

To create a new Workspace:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Click Add.

The Attributes panel opens.

3. In the Name text box, type a name for the Workspace. See “Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on page 22 for more information.

4. If you have multiple Storage Groups, click the Storage Group drop-down list and select the Storage Group in which you want to create the Workspace. If you select the Cloud Storage Group, the Engine Protection and Media Pack Protection fields do not apply and are not shown.

The Storage Group name appears in the Storage Group text box.

5. For an on-premise Workspace, do the following, otherwise skip to the next step:

a. If applicable, choose an Engine Protection Mode (if the Storage Group supports it): either Unprotected

(default) or Mirrored.

b. If applicable, choose a Media Pack Protection Mode. Each Workspace in a Storage Group can use a

different mode. In a mirror-capable Storage Group, you must choose either one-disk or two-disk protection for the Workspace.

If the Storage Group does not support the protection mode you selected, you must choose either a different Storage

Group or a different protection mode.

6. Type a size for the Workspace in the Capacity text box. The Capacity text box contains the default size (214.74 GB), and the maximum size is shown next to it.

The minimum Workspace size is 1.073 GB.

If all storage in an on-premise Storage Group is allocated to existing Workspaces, you can recapture some space by making an existing Workspace smaller. For more information, see “Resizing Workspaces” on

page 36.

7. (Optional) To set a Warning event trigger, select the type of trigger from the drop-down list (either Used % > or Unused GB <), then type in a value.

8. (Optional) To set an Error event trigger, select the type of trigger from the drop-down list (either Used % > or Unused GB <), then type in a value.

For more information, see “Setting Event Triggers for a Workspace” on page 39.

9. In the User Access panel, set the User and User Group access privileges (for more information, see “Setting or

Changing Workspace Access Privileges” on page 41).

10. Click Save.

The new Workspace appears in the Workspaces list, and the Create Workspace dialog box refreshes to allow you to create a new Workspace.

If a Workspace with the same name exists already, an error occurs.

Workspaces List

The Workspaces list displays all Workspaces, the Storage Groups they are in, and Workspace details.

Heading Description

Name Lists the names of all Workspaces in the selected Storage Groups and an icon

indicating the Workspace status:

• Green—Workspace is OK

• Green with UP arrow—Workspace is High Performance or SSD performance and is OK

• Yellow—Media Packs are rebuilding a drive

Storage Group Displays the Storage Group that contains the Workspace

Capacity Lists the total storage capacity of each Workspace

Maximum Lists the maximum amount of storage space available for the Workspace on the

network

Performance Displays the bind setting on the Media Pack (Scale-Out, SSD, or High for on-premise

Media Packs, Cloud for cloud Media Packs)

Engine Protection Mode Displays the Engine protection mode applied to the Workspaces (Mirrored or

Unprotected for on-premise Workspaces, Unprotected for Cloudspaces because Engine protection is not applicable)

Media Pack Protection Mode Displays the Media Pack protection mode applied to the Workspaces (Two Disk

Protection, One Disk Protection, or Unprotected for on-premise Workspaces, Cloud for Cloudspaces)

Used Displays the amount of storage space currently in use in the Workspace

Unused Lists the amount of storage space that currently has no data written on it in each

Workspace

Space on Disk Lists the amount of disk space actually used by the data in the Workspace, accounting

for the Media Pack protection mode and some overhead.

Heading Description

Status Displays the Workspace status, such as:

Config Changes Displays the number of changes to a Storage Group that involve moving data—for

Files Lists the total number of files stored in the Workspace

To sort the information in the Media Packs panel, click any column heading.

Displaying Workspace Details

The Workspaces panel in the Management Console displays detailed information and allows you to manage onpremise Workspaces and Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces.

• Workspace is about to be deleted (“Delete pending”)

• Workspace is running out of space

• Workspace is full

• Redistribution pending

• Redistribution in progress

• Rebuild pending (after a drive in a Media Pack failed)

• Rebuild in progress (shows percent done)

example, the number of times a Media Pack has been added or removed

To see detailed information about a Workspace:

t In the Workspaces list, either select a Workspace and click Edit, or double-click a Workspace name.

To close the Details panel:

t Click Edit or Refresh.

The Details panel (Edit mode) contains the same information as the Workspaces column list and includes the following additional functions and information:

• Resize slider, which lets you quickly change the Workspace capacity (to change the size to a specific value, enter a number in the Capacity field instead. See “Resizing Workspaces” on page 36.)

• Number of directories in the Workspace

• Warning event trigger—the value in used percentage (%) or unused gigabytes (GB) of storage at which a warning event is written to the Event Log

• Error event trigger—the value in used percentage (%) or unused gigabytes (GB) of storage at which an error event is written to the Event Log

• User access list—all users and groups and their respective privileges. For information on access privileges, see “Managing User Access Privileges for Workspaces” on page 40.

Resizing Workspaces

You can make a Workspace larger or smaller, but you cannot make it smaller than either the amount of in-use space or the minimum size (1.073GB). For an on-premise Workspace, you also cannot make it larger than the remaining available space in the Storage Group.

If you have set event triggers on a Workspace, and you receive notification that a Workspace is running out of free space, you can increase its size. Alternatively, you might need to make a Workspace smaller to create space in the Storage Group for other Workspaces or to reserve storage for future use.

The Storage Group must contain at least as much available space as the amount by which you want to increase the Workspace. If not, for on-premise systems you can add more Media Packs to the Storage Group first; see “Adding

Unassigned Media Packs to Storage Groups” on page 51.

There are two ways to change the size of a Workspace, both of which are available in Edit mode:

• Use the slider to change the size without requiring confirmation. You cannot undo this operation.

The numbers shown in each slider use different scales for on-premise versus cloud Storage Groups.

Using the sizing slider for a Cloudspace can take a long time. To change the size significantly, hold the slider in

place until the number stops changing, or use the Capacity text field to enter a new value, then click Save.

• Enter a new value in the Capacity text box. Click Save to make the change take effect, or click Reset to undo the change.

To change the size of a Workspace:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Double-click a Workspace to open Edit mode.

3. (Optional) Expand the Capacity Tracker to see a pie chart that shows the real-time effect on the Storage Group of changing the Workspace size. For example:

4. Change the size using the slider, or by entering a value in the Capacity field and clicking Save.

The Capacity Tracker chart shows the effect on the Storage Group that the Workspace belongs to. The gray area is the amount of space available in the Storage Group, and the aqua area is the new size of the Workspace. Both are shown as a percentage of the total Storage Group capacity.

Duplicating Workspaces

When you duplicate a Workspace, the new Workspace inherits the attributes of the original. You can change any of the attributes on the new Workspace except the Engine protection mode and the Storage Group (on-premise only). The new Workspace does not contain the data from the original.

The name of the new Workspace is the same as the original, with a 1 appended, except if a Workspace with that name already exists. In such cases, the name of the new Workspace is the next available sequential number after the existing name.

For example, copying Workspace1 results in Workspace11. If Workspace11 already exists, the new one is named Workspace12. If Workspace 12 already exists, the new one is named Workspace121.

Duplicated Workspace names are created by appending a 1 (or the next available sequential digit), not by

incrementing the number by 1. Copying Workspaces can result in names that are not in sequence with the originals, and can jump to a 3-digit, 4-digit, or longer suffix depending on the existing Workspace names.

The Storage Group must contain at least as much available space as the size of the Workspace you are

duplicating.

To duplicate a Workspace:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Select the Workspace you want to duplicate.

3. Click Duplicate.

4. (Optional) You can change the name, size, Media Pack protection mode (on-premise only), event triggers, or user access.

5. Click Save.

The new Workspace appears in the Workspace list, and the Details panel is refreshed.

If there is not enough free space for the Workspace, an error is displayed. Change the size of the Workspace.

Deleting Workspaces

You can delete Workspaces that are not currently being accessed by any clients, whether or not the Workspaces have media files stored on them. Deleting a Workspace returns its capacity to the amount of available space in the Storage Group.

Before deleting a Workspace, make sure that its media is moved, backed up, or no longer needed.

If you delete a Workspace that has been mapped to a local drive by a client, the client can no longer access that Workspace. Clients should unmap the deleted Workspace using the Avid Client Manager. For more information, see the Avid NEXIS Client Manager Installation and User’s Guide or the Client Manager Help.

For on-premise Workspaces, redistribution starts automatically when you delete a Workspace. During periods of high client usage, this might reduce client performance, resulting in dropped frames, underruns, and failed captures. If possible, delete Workspaces during periods of light client activity. You can suspend and resume redistribution as needed.

To delete one or more Workspaces:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. In the Workspaces list, select one or more Workspaces to delete. (Click All to select all Workspaces.)

3. Click Delete.

A confirmation dialog is displayed, asking you to confirm the operation.

4. Click OK.

The Workspace is deleted.

Renaming Workspaces

You can rename a Workspace at any time, even when it is being used by client workstations and mapped to a local drive or by letterless mapping (to a Universal Naming Convention path) on the client system. The Workspace name will be different the next time clients need to access it.

As a best practice, Avid recommends that users unmount the Workspace you want to rename before you proceed.

To rename a Workspace:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Double-click the Workspace name you want to change.

3. Type a new name in the Name text box.

For information on valid and invalid characters, see “Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on page 22.

4. (Optional) Click Reset to undo any modifications made to the Workspace information.

5. Click Save.

Setting Event Triggers for a Workspace

Event triggers will write events to the Event log when Workspace capacity is less than a specified value, or when used Workspace capacity exceeds a specified percentage. You can create triggers for both Warning and Error events:

• Warning events indicate that the amount of used or unused space in the Workspace is nearing a threshold that you set, and you have time to take action (increase the size of the Workspace or change the event trigger) before it can cause problems.

• Error events indicate that the amount of used or unused space in the Workspace has already met the critical threshold that you set. Take immediate action to correct the problem.

If you have email notifications enabled, you can receive email notifications when Workspace capacity events occur. For more information, see “Configuring the Notification Service” on page 4.

To set an event trigger:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Double-click the Workspace for which you want to set a trigger.

3. (Optional) Select one of the following from the Warning Event Trigger drop-down list:

t Unused GB < (Trigger a warning when unused capacity falls below the specified value, in gigabytes)

t Used % > (Trigger a warning when used capacity exceeds the specified percentage value)

4. Type a value in the text field for the capacity at which you want the event to be triggered.

5. (Optional) Select one of the following from the Error Event Trigger “used” list:

t Unused GB < (Trigger a warning when unused capacity falls below the specified value, in gigabytes)

t Used % > (Trigger warning when used capacity exceeds the specified percentage value)

6. Type a value in the text field for the capacity at which you want the event to be triggered.

7. Click Save.

Managing User Access Privileges for Workspaces

You can set the following privileges for user and user group access to Workspaces:

Icon (Blue=enabled, white=disabled) Access Type Definition

Read/Write User (client) can mount, read and write to the Workspace

Read User (client) can mount and read from the Workspace

None User (client) cannot read, write, or mount the Workspace

By default, new accounts do not have access privileges to Workspaces until an administrator assigns them (see

“Creating Users” on page 59). You can customize access for each client to every Workspace, if necessary.

You can control access either from the Workspace level (specifying the access to that Workspace for every user and group on the system)—or from the user or group level (granting access to a user or group for all or specific Workspaces, or preventing a user or a whole group of users from accessing one or more Workspaces).

To modify an individual client’s or group’s access privileges, see “Changing User Details” on page 60. To control access to a Workspace for all users and groups, see “Setting or Changing Workspace Access Privileges” on

page 41.

You also can give users different access privileges from those given to the group to which they belong. The group’s privileges set the baseline for all group members, and you can tailor the privileges for specific members of that group.

For example, you can grant a group read/write access, then restrict some members to read-only or no access. Alternatively, you can give the group read-only (or no) access, but specify read or read-write access for some members of the group. This can be useful for projects that include users who need a variety of permissions.

When a user has a different access type than the group it belongs to, the User Access table displays the user’s

custom access privilege in the Effective column.

Changes to Workspace privileges take effect as follows:

Current Privilege New Privilege Effect

None Read or Read/Write Available immediately

Read Read/Write Available immediately

Read/Write Read Apply immediately. If a file is open for writing, client retains write

privilege until file is closed.

Read or Read/Write None If a client is already at the Workspace selection stage when the access

privileges are removed, the Workspaces remain in the display. Future attempts to access the Workspaces will be unsuccessful.

Setting or Changing Workspace Access Privileges

You can set access privileges for users and user groups when the client accounts are created (see “Creating Users”

on page 59 and “Adding User Groups” on page 70), or later (see “Changing User Details” on page 60).

Alternatively you can set, modify, and monitor access privileges to Workspaces without having to modify individual client accounts.

Make sure all users have unmounted the Workspace before you change its access privileges.

To set or change user or user group access to a Workspace:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Double-click a Workspace.

3. In the User Access panel, select one or more users (or click All to select all users) and click the icon for the privilege you are granting to the users of that Workspace. The icon turns blue when enabled and the Access value in the User Access table changes immediately.

Moving a Workspace

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

You can move a Workspace from one Storage Group to another that has the same or a compatible performance type as the original. Storage Group performance is based on the bind setting of the Media Packs in the Storage Group. Scale-Out performance and SSD performance Media Packs use the same bind setting; therefore, Workspaces can move between Storage Groups of that performance type.

Moving a Workspace is subject to the following restrictions:

• The destination Storage Group must have free space equal to the size of the Workspace you are moving into it. If not, add more Media Packs to the Storage Group first; see “Adding Unassigned Media Packs to

Storage Groups” on page 51.

• If the original Storage Group is mirror-capable and the Workspace is currently mirrored, you can move it only to another mirror-capable Storage Group.

• The Media Pack protection (Unprotected, One-Disk, or Two-Disk) of the Workspace remains the same and cannot be changed after the move.

The Workspace can remain in use during the move operation—clients do not have to unmount or stop using it.

To move a Workspace and all of its contents to another Storage Group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Double-click a Workspace or select it and click Edit.

3. In the Attributes panel, select a different Storage Group for the Workspace from the drop-down list.

4. Click Save.

5. In the confirmation dialog, click OK.

The Workspace starts moving to the new Storage Group, and displays the status ‘redistribution pending’ or ‘redistribution in progress’ until the move is complete.

Displaying Cloud Subscription Data

In a configuration with Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces activated and in use, you can see details about your cloud storage subscription and your data upload and download allowances.

The Management Console does not display information about your cloud storage billing data. To see billing

information, log into your Avid account.

To see cloud subscription details:

t In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Services.

The Services page is displayed, and looks similar to the following figure:

The Subscription panel shows the following information:

• Status (Active or Not Activated)

• Plan—Shows the plan you are currently subscribed to

• Expiration date—When your subscription expires

• Included storage—The default amount of cloud storage space a subscription allows you to use free of charge

• Included download data—(If applicable) How much data you can download from Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces to a local client system before additional charges apply

After activation, the Activation panel does not display the System ID or name of the activation file, for security.

Workspace Redistribution (On-Premise Only)

Redistribution is an operation that evenly distributes all files in a Workspace across the Media Packs in the Storage Group to provide optimal file system performance. Data chunks are distributed across multiple Media Packs to ensure redundancy and protect against data loss. When redistribution occurs, it affects all the Workspaces in a Storage Group.

Operations that initiate redistribution of data include:

• Adding or removing Media Packs from a Storage Group

• Deleting Workspaces

• Moving Workspaces to a different Storage Group

About Configuration Changes

The configuration of a Storage Group is based on the Media Packs that make up that group. When you add or remove Media Packs from the Storage Group:

• A configuration change is made

• An incremental redistribution is performed to balance the files in the Storage Group across the Media Packs

Deleting and moving Workspaces results in a redistribution but does not cause a configuration change. You can see the number of configuration changes that have been applied to a Workspace; see “Displaying Workspace

Details” on page 36.

After 20 configuration changes, the Workspaces page displays a warning to perform a full redistribution. You can manually initiate a Full Redistribution for a non-mirror-capable Storage Group at any time using the Workspaces page in the Management Console. Until then, the system continues to function, but the affected Workspaces and the system status remain at Warning until a full redistribution is performed (see “Performing a Full

Redistribution” on page 44).

Redistribution Reference Information and Restrictions

After 30 configuration changes without a full redistribution, the system will perform a full redistribution automatically. This could significantly reduce system performance until the redistribution operation has completed.

• The Avid NEXIS supports add, remove, and full redistributions under load for all Storage Groups.

- A load condition exists when the Workspace has active clients (reading and writing to the Workspace).

- A no load condition exists when a Workspace is not mounted or has inactive clients (the Workspace might

be mounted but clients are not performing reads or writes).

• When redistributing under load, allow the redistribution to complete before initiating a second redistribution.

• System performance can degrade significantly during redistribution in a Storage Group with the maximum client count. Reducing the number of clients allows the active clients using the Storage Group to function normally, with successful playback and captures. Perform redistributions during periods of light client activity, or reduce the overall load if client performance degrades (for example, the client experiences dropped frames, underruns, and failed captures). Limitations on expected client performance during redistribution include the following:

- Reducing audio tracks from 8 to 4 during playback might be required during redistribution. (Normal

operation supports 2 streams of video 8 tracks of audio.)

- Reducing the number of video streams from 2 to 1 might be required during redistribution. (Normal

operation supports 2 streams of video.)

You can suspend and resume redistribution on all Workspaces as needed.

• The amount of time a redistribution takes depends on whether the Workspace is in a load or a no load condition, whether you are adding or removing a Media Pack, and how much data in the Storage Group must be redistributed.

• Redistributions are performed on 20 Workspaces at a time. If your Storage Group exceeds 20 Workspaces, the Workspace status shows “Redistribution In Process” for the first 20 Workspaces and “Redistribution Pending” for the rest of the Workspaces in that Storage Group. As Workspaces finish with the redistribution, the Workspaces with “Redistribution Pending” status start to redistribute until all the Workspaces in that Storage Group have finished the redistribution.

• Do not unbind or physically remove a Media Pack until the redistribution is complete and it has been removed from the Storage Group.

Performing a Full Redistribution

Data loss can occur if you remove or unbind a Media Pack from the shared-storage network before redistribution is complete; physically remove more than one Media Pack from a Storage Group before performing a redistribution; or turn off any of the Engines before redistribution is complete.

In addition to automatic redistribution operations (see “Workspace Redistribution (On-Premise Only)” on

page 42), you can also initiate redistribution manually; for example, to perform a full redistribution when the

Config Changes count exceeds 20. (For information about Config Changes, see “Displaying Workspace Details”

on page 36.)

When the Config Changes count reaches 20, a message is displayed recommending that you perform

redistribution.

Initiating, suspending, and resuming redistribution applies to all Workspaces in the Storage Group. You can also perform redistribution on multiple Storage Groups at the same time.

To redistribute Workspaces manually:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Select one or more Workspaces. (Click All to select all Workspaces.)

3. Click the Redistribution tool icon.

4. Click Start Redistribution.

5. In the confirmation dialog box, click OK.

Files are redistributed, and the count in the Config Changes column is reset to zero. The amount of time required for the redistribution depends on the amount of data in the Workspaces.

Suspending Redistribution

Under some conditions, you might have to suspend or resume an in-progress redistribution.

The Resume Redistribution and Suspend Redistribution options can result in degraded system performance. Suspending redistributions can have serious consequences for the file system if not monitored closely. These two Advanced Commands options should be used by Avid Customer Care personnel or under Avid Customer Care direction.

To suspend a redistribution:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Select one or more Workspaces. (Click All to select all Workspaces.)

3. Click the Redistribution tool icon.

4. Click Suspend Redistribution.

Continuous Refresh is enabled automatically. All Workspaces show the status “redistribution suspended.”

Resuming Redistribution

If you manually suspend a redistribution, you must also manually resume it. Suspending redistributions should be considered temporary. Do not leave Workspaces in the suspended state for extended periods of time.

To resume a redistribution:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Workspaces.

2. Select one or more Workspaces. (Click All to select all Workspaces.)

3. Click the Redistribution tool icon.

4. Click Resume Redistribution.

5. In the confirmation dialog box, click OK.

Redistribution is resumed for all Workspaces in the selected Storage Groups.

Redistribution Status Definitions

The following table lists the status messages relating to redistribution, and a brief description.

Some Media Pack errors, not strictly related to redistribution, can interrupt redistribution or cause it to fail. See

“Understanding Media Pack Status” on page 50.

Status Comments

initializing redistribution The Media Pack is determining which blocks will be moved.

redistribution pending Workspace redistribution is about to start, either automatically as the result of configuration

redistribution in progress Workspaces are being evenly redistributed across all the Media Packs in the Storage Group.

redistribution suspended Workspace redistribution was manually suspended.

stalled redistribution The Media Pack is currently stalled while trying to move blocks to other Media Packs. This

Managing Engines

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

In the Storage section of the navigation sidebar, the Engines menu item displays information about all Engines connected to the shared-storage network.

Engines Page

changes, or because it was manually restarted.

If a Storage Group contains more than 20 Workspaces, they are redistributed in batches of 20 at a time.

The time it takes to redistribute the data depends on the amount of data in the Storage Group.

might be a temporary condition; if it persists and the overall redistribution has been determined to be stalled contact Avid Customer Care.

The Engines page displays a list of all the Engines in the shared-storage system, and the following information.

Heading Description

Name Displays the user-created name of the Engine or System Director Appliance

Product Displays the Avid model name of the Engine or System Director Appliance

Product Part Number Displays the Avid part number of the Engine or System Director Appliance

Enclosure ID Displays the number (from 00 - 99) assigned to the Engine. In a lab with many Avid NEXIS

systems, assigning an Enclosure ID can help you identify a particular Engine.

The Enclosure ID is displayed in the window on the left side of the Engine.

Serial Number Serial number of the Engine or System Director Appliance

Status Time The last time the System Director logged the status of the Engine

Status Displays changes in the working status due to upgrade installation or failure. See

“Understanding Engine and Storage Controller Status” on page 47.

Available Lists the number of unbound (available) Media Packs in each Engine

Spare Lists the number of spare Media Packs in each Engine (the Media Pack is bound but not part of

a Storage Group)

Active Lists the number of active Media Packs in each Engine

Type Indicates the function of the Engine, and can be one of the following values:

• Storage with SD—Running as a storage engine and the embedded System Director

• SDA—Running as the System Director Appliance (does not provide storage)

• Storage Engine—Running as a storage engine only

You can sort the information by clicking any column heading. Also see “Filtering, Sorting, and Searching” on

page 19.

Displaying Engine Details

To see detailed information about an Engine:

1. Do one of the following:

t Double-click an Engine name.

t Select an Engine and click Advanced.

The following tabs are displayed: Details (default), Hardware, and Disks.

- Details—Displays additional information about the Engine, such as the Storage Controllers and Media

Packs physically located in that Engine.

- Hardware—Displays the status of the fans and power supplies in the Engine.

- Disks—Displays details about the disks in the Engine, such as serial number, slot number, capacity,

which Media Pack they are part of, and firmware version.

To close the Advanced panel:

t Double-click the Engine name or click Advanced.

Understanding Engine and Storage Controller Status

Engines or Storage Controllers can have one of the following status values that relate to the software installed on them, or to their validity in the configuration. If the field is empty, the Engine or Storage Controller is operating normally.

Status Description

Installing The Avid NEXIS software is being installed

Install failed The software installation failed. Contact Customer Care.

Install waiting The installation is in progress

Install needed This status can mean either of the following, but always applies to a multi-Engine configuration:

• The System Director is running a different version from the other Engines

• The other Engines completed their upgrades before the System Director did, and were communicating with the System Director before it had restarted due to its upgrade. Their version status is accurately reported but fenced themselves off the rest of the system to avoid file system corruption. To resolve this issue, reboot the Engines displaying this status.

Install downloading The Avid NEXIS software kit is downloading from the Avid support site.

Install Phase (1, 2, 3) The software installation is in the specified phase

Invalid Configuration An unsupported Storage Controller is present in the Engine. Remove it and replace it with a

valid Storage Controller for the Engine type. For more information, see the Setup and Maintenance Guide for the Engine model.

Managing Controllers

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

In the Storage section, the Controllers menu item displays information about the Controllers in all Engines and the System Director Appliance, if applicable, connected to the shared-storage network.

Controllers Page

The Controllers page displays a list of all the Controllers in the shared-storage system, as follows.

Heading Description

Host Name Displays the name of the Engine or System Director Appliance in which the Controller is

installed

Status Time The last time the System Director logged the status of the Engine

Status Displays changes in the working status due to upgrade installation or failure. See

“Understanding Engine and Storage Controller Status” on page 47.

Avid NEXIS Version Displays the Avid version installed on the Controller

BMC Version Displays the BMC version on the Controller

Controller Serial Number Serial number of the Controller

Heading Description(Continued)

Engine Serial Number Serial number of the Engine in which the Controller is installed

Free Memory The amount of available memory on the Controller

Total Memory The total amount of memory on the Controller

You can sort the information by clicking any column heading. Also see “Filtering, Sorting, and Searching” on

page 19.

Displaying Controller Details

To see detailed information about a Controller:

1. Do one of the following:

t Double-click a Controller name.

t Select a Controller and click Advanced.

The following tabs are displayed: Details (default), Network, Services, System, and Tools.

- Details—Displays additional information about the Controller, such as the part number, slot number and position, and more memory information. Also shows the Media Packs this Controller is managing.

- Network—Displays the interface addresses and status, including LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) status, port information, and interface statistics. See Understanding Network Status.

- Services—Displays the services running on this Controller and their status.

- System—Displays the operating system version, processor type, number of processors, and how long the Controller has been running since last reboot. Also display disk space usage information.

- Tools—Lets you reboot or shut down the entire system.

To close the Advanced panel:

t Double-click the Engine name or click Advanced.

Understanding Network Status

The Data Interface port is the connection between the Engine (or System Director Appliance) and the switches. Each controller has two Data Interface ports that can be connected to one or more switches. If using LACP, both ports on the controller (or controllers) must be connected to one or more switches.

The Interconnect Interface is the connection between the redundant controllers. A system can have one controller and still use LACP.

The Management Interface is typically used only to connect the system to a computer, such as during software installation and initial configuration.

The Network status values have the following meanings:

Status Description

up LACP is enabled, port is up, and the network connection is OK

down LACP is not enabled, and the port is not in use. This is not an error condition.

Status Description

degraded LACP is enabled, but a network error exists:

• Make sure LACP is enabled on all the connected switches

• Check the switches and your network

• Check the cables between the ports and the switches

Not Found The system has no information about the port. This is not an error condition; for example, the

Management Port is not commonly in use during normal system operation. It reports no status to the System Director.

Managing Media Packs

You can display general or detailed information and statistics for Media Packs, bind them (to add them to a Storage Group) or unbind them.

The Media Packs page displays general information about all the Media Packs in the system. Each Media Pack has a colored icon indicating its status:

Icon Color Description

White Media Pack is unbound (not linked to the Avid NEXIS file system)

Green Media Pack is bound to the file system and operating normally

Green with up arrow Media Pack is bound to the file system as High or SSD performance and operating normally (on-

Yellow Media Pack might be experiencing degraded performance

Blue An installation or software upgrade is in progress

Red Problem within the Media Pack, such as a disk failure

Media Packs Page

The Media Packs page displays a list of all the Media Packs in the shared-storage system, as follows.

Heading Description

Media Pack Name Name of the Media Pack.

Performance Performance type of the Media Pack, which indicates the bind setting (Scale-Out, SSD, or High

Host Name Name of the Engine or System Director Appliance managing the Media Pack

premise only)

Media Pack names are assigned by the system and have the format MPnnn, where nnn is a sequential number indicating the order in which the Media Pack was bound to the system; the name has no significance and cannot be changed.

for on-premise Media Packs, Cloud for cloud Media Packs)

Status Time The last time the System Director logged the status of the Media Pack

Status Media Pack status (see “Understanding Media Pack Status” on page 50)

Heading Description(Continued)

State Media Pack state (whether or not it is bound, spare, or active)

Uptime How long the system has been running since the last reboot

Capacity Media Pack capacity in GB

Usable The amount of usable space on the Media Pack

Used The amount of used space on the Media Pack

Avid NEXIS version Version running on the system

Engine serial number Serial number of the Engine where the Media Pack is installed

Storage Group Name of the Storage Group to which the Media Pack belongs

You can sort the information by clicking any column heading. Also see “Filtering, Sorting, and Searching” on

page 19.

Displaying Media Pack Details

To see detailed information about a Media Pack:

t In the Media Packs list, double-click a Media Pack or click the Advanced icon.

Click the blue tabs to see specific types of information.

For an on-premise system, if a Media Pack contains a replacement drive of a different size, the actual disk size is

shown in the Disks list in the Details panel, but the Media Pack uses only the amount of space that equals the smaller disk sizes. You can replace a smaller drive with a larger drive, but not vice versa.

Understanding Media Pack Status

The Status column reports the status of the Media Packs logged by the System Director. For Media Packs in correct working order, no status value is shown.

When the Media Pack has reached its full allocated virtual space limit, the status Disk Full is displayed.

A Media Pack can have one of the following status values, in alphabetical order. Some of these statuses apply to on-premise systems only.

Status Description

Cloud Account credential not valid

Cloud BW Test In Progress The cloud Media Pack is currently running a cloud bandwidth test to determine current

Cloud communication issues The cloud Media Pack is not currently able to communicate with the cloud provider

The cloud account and access key are not valid or have not yet been entered to access the cloud provider and enable I/O to Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces

potential read/write bandwidth from the Avid NEXIS system to the cloud provider

through the data center. The Avid NEXIS Cloudspace is not accessible.

Database Failure Media pack metadata cannot be read. Call Avid Customer Care.

Disk Failure The hard disk error threshold for a disk has been exceeded and the Media Pack has set the

disk offline. The default threshold is 25 hard errors.

Status (Continued) Description (Continued)

Disk full One or more Media Packs in a Storage Group has reached its full capacity. Even if some of

the Media Packs still have available space, the Storage Group is considered full as soon as one Media Pack is filled. As data is written and deleted, some Media Packs are filled before others. During redistribution, the data is redistributed evenly among the Media Packs.

Disk Performance Degraded Disk performance is reduced, because either:

• A disk has logged Long Command Times. The Avid NEXIS system clears this log weekly. The Long Command Time counter is also cleared during a reboot.

• A disk has reached 50% of its hard error threshold. Replace the disk soon.

• The system has detected an increase in bad drive sectors in the past week. Replace the disk soon.

Drive rebuilding The contents of a data drive are being rebuilt from the other drives in the Media Pack

(after you replace a failed drive)

Initializing Media Pack is initializing (for example after a reboot)

Invalid number of drives One or more drives are missing from the Media Pack

Last Cloud BW Test Aborted An in-progress cloud speed test was stopped because I/O to a Workspace began. (The

Cloud Speed Test will not run if I/O is occurring.)

Missing Disks - unbound The system starts a Storage Manager process for every Media Pack that the Engine can

support, whether drives are available or not. When enough drives are found, a Storage Manager creates a Media Pack from those drives. If a Storage Manager cannot find disks it had previously, it reports them as missing.

Network degraded The IP interfaces on the Media Pack have failed or the Media Pack has experienced at

least a 10% error rate (usually due to lost packets), indicating a network communication problem (possibly a cable or switch issue).

Although the Media Pack is reporting and detecting the errors, it is usually not the Media Pack itself that is the problem. Each Media Pack has an associated Storage Manager that could be experiencing a problem.

Offline A Media Pack was set offline by the system.

Orphaned A Media Pack has become dissociated from the file system it was bound to. See

“Removing Orphaned Media Packs (On-premise Only)” on page 57.

Recovering Mirrors The Avid NEXIS system is rebuilding a mirrored Workspace from its mirrors.

Rectifying Files The Avid NEXIS system is cleaning up deleted files and verifying existing files on Media

Packs. This occurs every time the system restarts and every 10 days thereafter. Each Media Pack staggers its process so that they do not run simultaneously.

Redistributing The Media Pack is involved in a Workspace redistribution operation.

Redistribution details available The Media Pack experienced an error during a Workspace redistribution operation. See the

logs for more information.

Adding Unassigned Media Packs to Storage Groups

You can add bound Media Packs to an existing Storage Group or create a new Storage Group. In Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage, only one Media Pack and Storage Group is supported.

Adding and removing Media Packs to an on-premise Storage Group redistributes files in the Storage Group across the currently available Media Packs. For more information, see“Workspace Redistribution (On-Premise Only)” on

page 42.

You can add Media Packs to a Storage Group if the performance types match: for example, you can add Scale-Out

Media Packs to a Scale-Out Storage Group, or add High Performance Media Packs to a High Performance Storage Group. You cannot add Media Packs from an incompatible Engine to a mirror-capable Storage Group.

To add Media Packs to a Storage Group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Storage Groups.

2. Select a Storage Group and click Edit.

3. Select one or more available Media Packs, or click All to select all available Media Packs.

4. Click Add to add the selected unassigned Media Packs to the Storage Group.

The Storage Media Packs panel refreshes to display the selected Media Packs added to the Storage Group.

5. Click Save.

The Media Packs are added to the Storage Group and any necessary redistribution is performed.

After 20 configuration changes, the system recommends that you perform a full redistribution. Redistribution is

not required until 30 configuration changes are recorded, in which case the redistribution occurs automatically. You can suspend and resume the redistribution as needed. See “Suspending Redistribution” on page 44.

About Removing Media Packs from Storage Groups (On-Premise Only)

You can remove a Media Pack from a Storage Group for several reasons:

• To add it to another Storage Group (performance types must match)

• To remove it from the Engine

• To replace it with a larger-capacity Media Pack (see “Adding Unassigned Media Packs to Storage Groups” on

page 51)

Removing a Media Pack from a Storage Group is subject to the following restrictions:

• The Storage Group must have at least as much free space as the capacity of the Media Pack you want to remove, so the Workspaces can be redistributed (see “Workspace Redistribution (On-Premise Only)” on

page 42).

• You cannot remove Media Packs if the Storage Group will have less than either the used space or the allocated space. To make enough free space, you can delete files from the current Workspaces, or reduce or delete Workspaces themselves. See “Resizing Workspaces” on page 36 and “Deleting Workspaces” on

page 38.

• You cannot remove the last Media Pack from a Storage Group, but if no Workspaces exist, you can delete the Storage Group itself, which returns the Media Pack to the spare state.

Media Packs removed from the Storage Group are returned to the system’s pool of unassigned (spare) Media Packs.

Removing a Media Pack during high client usage can reduce performance on your clients, possibly resulting in dropped frames, underruns, and failed captures. To avoid this, remove Media Packs during periods of light client activity. You can suspend and resume a redistribution as needed.

Removing Media Packs from a Storage Group

You must remove a Media Pack from its Storage Group before you can add it to a different one or remove it from the Engine altogether.

To remove Media Packs from a Storage Group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Storage Groups.

2. In the Storage Groups list, select the Storage Group that contains the Media Packs you want to remove, and then do one of the following:

t Click Edit.

t Double-click the Storage Group name.

The Attributes panel displays all the information on the selected Storage Group.

3. In the Media Packs panel, select the Media Packs you want to remove from the Storage Group. Click All to select all Media Packs.

4. Click Remove.

5. In the confirmation dialog, click OK to continue.

6. Click Save.

If Workspaces need to be moved, redistribution begins automatically. The Media Packs panel refreshes and displays the selected Media Packs as Spare.

When the redistribution is complete, you can unbind the Media Packs from the Avid NEXIS file system (see

“Unbinding Media Packs from the Avid NEXIS File System (On-premise Only)” on page 56) or add them to

a different Storage Group (see “Adding Unassigned Media Packs to Storage Groups” on page 51).

Displaying Drive Details (On-Premise Only)

You can display detailed information about the drives in a Media Pack, spare drives in the Engine (if applicable), and the system drives.

To see detailed information about a Media Pack drive:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Media Packs.

2. Double-click a Media Pack name.

The blue tabs categorize related information to simplify the display.

3. Click a blue tab to see additional details.

If you replace a failed drive with a larger drive, the actual size is shown in the Capacity field, but the Media Pack

treats it as the same size as the original drive. You cannot replace a larger drive with a smaller drive.

To see detailed information about a spare or system drive:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Engines.

2. Double-click an Engine name.

The blue tabs categorize related information to simplify the display.

For SSDs, such as system drives or all drives in Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD, the SSD Health is also displayed, showing a percentage of life left. When the SSD Health drops to 25% (the warning threshold) notification is sent to the administrator (see “SSD Health (On-premise Only)” on page 54).

To close the Details panel:

t Click Advanced in the toolbar.

SSD Health (On-premise Only)

In all Engines and the System Director Appliance, the system drives are solid-state (SSDs). In Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD Engines, Media Pack drives are also SSDs.

You can see the SSD drive health as follows:

• On the Engines page, click Advanced, then click Disks. SSD Health is a column in the Disks table.

• On the Media Packs page, click Advanced, then click Disks. SSD Health is a column in the Disks table.

If an SSD has reached a Warning or Critical threshold (see “SSD Health Values” on page 54) the administrator is notified and the status is displayed in the Management Console. See “Configuring the Notification Service” on

page 4 to configure notification.

SSD Health Values

SSD health is reported as a percentage of SSD life remaining, starting at 100% (full drive life remaining) and decreasing over time. SSD life can vary, but is generally expected to be about five years, or at least as long as the life of the Engine. When an SSD reaches the Warning threshold, or even the Critical threshold, you will have enough time to order and receive a replacement.

Life Remaining Percentage Severity Level Action to Take

100-11% None None—SSD is healthy

10% Warning Near end of life. Order a replacement SSD.

5% Critical At end of life. Replace the SSD.

Disk Status (On-premise Only)

The individual drives in a Media Pack and the system drives can have the following status values:

Status Description

Capacity Insufficient (Applies to system drives only). The system drive is not the appropriate size for the Engine it is

in. Replace the drive with one of the minimum required size.

Empty (Applies to system drives only). The system requires two blank metadata (system) drives. Insert

another blank drive of the same or greater capacity as the other one.

Failed The drive has failed and must be replaced. You cannot reuse it. See “Identifying the Slot Number

for a Failing or Failed Drive (On-premise Only)” on page 55, and see the Avid NEXIS Setup and

Maintenance Guide for your Avid NEXIS model for instructions on replacing a drive.

You must replace a failed system drive with a drive of the same or greater capacity.

Within a Media Pack, you can replace a smaller drive with a larger one (for example, use a 6TB drive to replace a failed 2TB drive), but the Media Pack will use only 2TB of space on the drive. You cannot replace a larger drive with a smaller one in a Media Pack.

Status Description(Continued)

Failing (Applies to Media Pack drives only.) The drive is failing. Although there is no way to tell how

much time you have before the drive fails, this status alerts you to obtain a replacement drive as soon as possible.

See “Identifying the Slot Number for a Failing or Failed Drive (On-premise Only)” on page 55, and see the Avid NEXIS Setup and Maintenance Guide for your Avid NEXIS model for instructions on replacing a drive.

Foreign For Media Pack drives, the drive possibly came from a different Engine, or was removed and

replaced by a spare. To use it, clear the foreign drive configuration; see “Clearing a Foreign Disk

Error (On-premise Only)” on page 56.

Incompatible The Media Pack drives are not the right type for the Engine:

• The Engine is expecting HDD Media Pack drives

• The Engine is expecting SSD Media Pack drives (only in the Avid NEXIS | E2 SSD Engine)

Initializing The Engine is starting up (for example, after a reboot) and performing internal housekeeping.

Invalid mount point Applies to system (metadata) drives only. The system drives cannot be accessed. Contact Avid

Customer Care.

Missing/Empty A drive is missing or the slot is empty. The serial number of any missing drive is displayed with

the status, to help you identify which drive is missing. You can put it into any empty slot.

Operational The drive is functioning normally.

Partition Unsupported (Applies to system drives only). The drive is partitioned for a different Engine than the one it is

in, or some partitions are missing or the wrong size. Remove the drive and insert a blank drive or one partitioned correctly for this Engine.

Rebuilding The data on the drive is being rebuilt from the other drives in the Media Pack, or from the other

system drive. This status occurs after you replace a failed drive.

Spare The drive is a spare. To see all the drives in an Engine, see “Displaying Drive Details (On-

Premise Only)” on page 53.

Unmirrored A system drive is not accessible, leaving the remaining system drive unpaired. Insert an blank

system (metadata) drive. See the Avid NEXIS Setup and Maintenance Guide for information about supported system drive types.

Unsupported The drive was not purchased from Avid and cannot be used in the Engine.

Identifying the Slot Number for a Failing or Failed Drive (On-premise Only)

When a drive is failing or has failed, its status is displayed in several places:

• In the System Dashboard

• On the Engines page in the Storage menu. Click Advanced, then click the Disks tab. The slot number is shown in the disk details table.

• On the Media Packs pane in the Storage menu. Click Advanced, then click the Disks tab. The slot number is shown in the disk details table.

Clearing a Foreign Disk Error (On-premise Only)

The Foreign Disk message is displayed in the following cases:

• When a drive came from a different Media Pack (usually from a different Engine)

• When the drive has been out of the Engine for longer than five minutes, and replaced by a spare drive, then reinserted into the same Engine.

(If a drive is removed accidentally, the Media Pack requests its return for five minutes. If it is reinserted within those five minutes, the Media Pack resumes normal operation. After five minutes, if it was replaced by a spare drive and then reinserted, it is marked Foreign. If a spare drive did not replace the removed drive, the removed drive can rejoin the Media Pack at any time.)

You cannot clear the foreign configuration on a system drive. If a system drive is reporting a status of foreign,

contact Avid Customer Care.

If the drive has failed, you cannot reuse the drive even if you clear the configuration.

Clearing the foreign disk configuration deletes all data on the drive, and is a permanent operation. If you are using a drive that came from a different Media Pack, make sure the original Media Pack no longer needs it.

To replace media drives, see the Avid NEXIS Setup and Maintenance Guide.

To clear the Foreign Drive status:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Engines.

2. Click Advanced, then Disks.

3. Next to the drive, click Clear Foreign Config.

4. A dialog box opens, warning that continuing with this operation will permanently destroy all data on the drive. Type the words

5. After the old configuration is cleared, the drive gets assigned to any Media Pack that needs one, or becomes a spare (if supported in this Engine type).

Destroy My Data

in the text field and click OK to continue.

Unbinding Media Packs from the Avid NEXIS File System (On-premise Only)

Unbinding a Media Pack clears the system metadata from it and removes its bind setting. You can unbind a Media Pack to move it to a different Engine, or to rebind it with a different performance type (bind setting).

Before you can unbind the Media Pack, you must remove it from its current Storage Group (if it belongs to one). Then you can physically pull the drives and insert them into another Engine.

You cannot unbind a Media Pack if it has any drive errors or is missing drives. Replace missing or failed drives.

Removing a Media Pack from an on-premise Storage Group starts a redistribution of all its data to other Media Packs in the same Storage Group. For more information, see “About Removing Media Packs from Storage Groups

(On-Premise Only)” on page 52. When the Media Pack has been removed, its state changes to Spare - Bound.

All the Media Packs you want to unbind must be in the Spare state.

Unbinding a Media Pack when redistribution has not completed will result in permanent data loss!

Redistribution can take a long time; use the Redistribution Monitor tool to track the progress and estimate the time remaining (see “Monitoring Redistributions (On-premise Only)” on page 75).

To unbind a Media Pack from the Avid NEXIS file system:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Media Packs.

2. Select one or more Media Packs to unbind. Click All to select all Media Packs.

3. Click Unbind.

A confirmation dialog appears.

4. Click Ye s to confirm.

The selected Media Pack is removed from the Avid NEXIS file system and its state changes to Unbound.

You can physically remove the media drives from the Engine, or rebind them with a different bind setting. See

“Binding Media Packs to the File System” on page 2.

When you insert drives into a different Engine, they are reported as foreign; clear the Foreign Disk Error on each drive (see “Clearing a Foreign Disk Error (On-premise Only)” on page 56). The new Engine can then use them to create a new Media Pack.

Removing Orphaned Media Packs (On-premise Only)

Media Packs can become orphaned when the file system they were bound to no longer exists. This can occur if a new file system is created on an Avid NEXIS system that had an existing file system, or when adding an Engine or Media Packs from a decommissioned system to a different system. To clear the file system binding and make them available for use in the new file system, remove the Media Packs.

The Remove command erases all data stored on the Media Packs. Do not remove orphaned Media Packs unless you are certain they contain no data you want to save.

To remove orphaned Media Packs:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Storage, then Media Packs.

2. Select the orphaned Media Pack.

3. Click Remove.

A message warns you that removing Media Packs erases all data.

4. Click OK.

The orphaned Media Pack is unbound from the Avid NEXIS file system and removed from the Orphaned Media Pack list.

4 Managing Users and Groups

A client is any user, group, or device that needs to access the Avid NEXIS shared-storage network. Client accounts on Avid NEXIS allow this access and prevent unauthorized users from accessing other users’ data. When you create client accounts, you set basic client information, such as user names and passwords. You can create user groups to organize types of users, or those with access to the same Workspaces, for example.

User accounts have administrative privilege levels, group membership types, and Workspace access. The total number of client accounts can exceed the currently connected clients.

Every Avid NEXIS system has two built-in accounts that cannot be renamed or deleted: Administrator and Guest. The Guest account has no password. The Guest account has access only to the Installers page and the Dashboard page.

Each user and user group account has an associated privilege level that controls their access to files stored in the network.

For on-premise systems, you can configure external authentication instead of (or in addition to) manually creating accounts to allow LDAP users to connect to the Avid NEXIS. To import LDAP users, see “Managing LDAP

Accounts” on page 61.

Users must have access to at least one Workspace before they can use the shared-storage network.

The Avid NEXIS system maintains a record of all attached clients. The client accounts are listed in dialog boxes for each client type.

Some clients might not be able to connect to the shared-storage network if the combined bandwidth requirement

of connected components equals the system limit for bandwidth use. For information on monitoring bandwidth use, see “Monitoring Client Bandwidth” on page 74.

Managing Users

You can create, modify, and delete user accounts, assign users to specific groups, and manage access privileges for all users by the individual user, by user groups, and by Workspaces.

User Flags

Users have flags that you control, to permit or deny them certain abilities, or to indicate that a user is authenticated through LDAP, as follows.

Flag Description

Can resize Check to allow the user to change the size of accessible Workspaces

Remote LDAP user (onpremise only)

Check to indicate that the user’s account is managed by an external LDAP server

Flag Description

Disable user Check to disable the user account. Disabling the account leaves it in place so you can enable it

Creating Users

To create a user account:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Users, then Users.

2. Click Add.

3. Enter a name for the user, a password, the amount of system bandwidth the account can use, and set any user flags (for more information, see “User Flags” on page 58). For password limits and valid characters, see

“Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on page 22.

4. (Optional) In the Group Membership list, select a group and click Member to make the user a member in the group.

By default, new users are not members of any group. The Non-Member button is inactive until you assign the user a group membership.

The Group Membership list shows the user as a member of the group.

5. In the Workspace Access list, for each listed Workspace select one of the following access types:

again later.

By default, new users have no access to Workspaces. (For information on permissions for Workspace access in the network, see “Managing User Access Privileges for Workspaces” on page 40.)

6. Click Save.

Duplicating Users

To quickly create additional user accounts based on one you have already created and modified, you can duplicate the user. Duplicated users inherit the bandwidth allocation and access privileges of the accounts from which they were created.

To duplicate a user account:

1. In the Users list, select the user account you want to duplicate.

2. Click Duplicate.

3. (Optional) Modify any of the attributes of the new user. For more information see “Changing User Details” on

page 60.

4. Click Save.

The new user appears in the Users page.

5. Click Edit to close Edit mode.

Changing User Details

You can change a user account at any time, even when it is being actively used in your work environment, but Avid recommends that users unmount a Workspace if you are changing their access to it.

You cannot rename or delete the default Guest account, but you can change the password (default is blank; no

password), its group membership and Workspace access, and the user flags.

To modify a user account:

1. From the User list, do one of the following:

t Select the user account you want to modify, and click Edit.

t Double-click the user name.

The Details panel displays information about the selected user account.

2. Modify the user options, group memberships, and Workspace access as required. For a list of options, see

“Creating Users” on page 59. You can select multiple groups to make the user a member or non-member of all

of them in one operation. Likewise, you can select multiple Workspaces to give the user the same access option (no access, read-only, or read-write) to all of them in one operation.

3. (Optional) Click Reset to undo any modifications made to the user information.

4. Click Save.

Deleting Users

You can delete any user account except the default Guest user. If you want to keep an account but temporarily prevent its access to the shared-storage network, disable it (see “Disabling Users” on page 60).

Deleting a user that belongs to a group also removes that user name from the group list. If you remove all the users in a group, the group itself is not deleted.

If you delete the client account, its connection to the System Director is broken immediately and any mounted Workspaces are unmounted as soon as they are accessed.

To delete a user account:

1. Ensure that the client account to be deleted is not currently active.

2. From the Users list, select one or more users (or click All to select all users) to delete.

3. Click Delete.

A warning message asks you to confirm the action.

4. Click OK.

Disabling Users

You can remove a user temporarily from the Avid NEXIS shared-storage network by disabling the account. This preserves the client accounts (they remain in the Users list) and allows you to restore their access to the system later.

To re-enable a disabled user account, follow this procedure but uncheck the “disable user” box.

To disable a user account:

1. Make sure that the client account to be disabled is not currently active.

2. From the Users list, do one of the following:

t Select the user and click Edit.

t Double-click the user name.

3. Select the “disable user” check box.

4. (Optional) Click Reset to undo any modifications made to the user information.

5. Click Save.

Displaying User Details

The Details panel displays all information for the currently selected user.

To see information about a user:

t In the User list, do one of the following:

- Select the user and click Edit.

- Double-click the user name.

The Users page displays all the information for the selected user.

To close the User Details panel, do one of the following:

t Click Refresh.

t Click Edit.

Managing LDAP Accounts

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an Internet protocol that some applications use to retrieve information—such as account information, user names, and groups—from a server. The LDAP Sync tool allows Avid NEXIS administrators to synchronize Avid NEXIS user accounts with existing LDAP user accounts and to create or modify a large number of users and groups within the Avid NEXIS system.

Avid NEXIS supports the following mechanisms for LDAP authentication:

• LDAP over TLS (Transport Layer Security). The System Director tries to use this first.

• SASL DIGEST-MD5. If the configured LDAP server does not use TLS, the System Director uses this instead.

Avid NEXIS currently supports only Microsoft Active Directory, and might not be compatible with other LDAP

implementations.

When using TLS, the server can use either a CA-signed certificate or a self-signed certificate. Most Microsoft Active directory servers support DIGEST-MD5.

TLS more strictly enforces Domain Name settings than DIGEST-MD5 did. Specifically, the domain name must be added without the TLD (Top Level Domain); for example, enter yourDomain, not yourDomain.com. Make sure to modify your top-level domain entry and if necessary remove .com, .net, .edu, or any other TLD component.

To use LDAP, you must configure DNS (see “Configuring DNS Service” on page 6) and external user

authentication (see “Configuring External Authentication of Users” on page 62).

The Avid LDAP Sync tool lets you:

• Display user accounts available within a given LDAP service but not in the Avid NEXIS system, and vice versa

• Search for groups and their members on an LDAP server

• Synchronize groups and users between LDAP servers and Avid NEXIS

• Add new groups and users to the Avid NEXIS system

• Grant user memberships to groups

• Remove user membership from a group in Avid NEXIS if the user no longer belongs to that group on the LDAP server

• Generate reports of account actions and see synchronization history

Users synchronized by the LDAP Sync tool will automatically be added as “Remote” users for authentication to the LDAP server.

Users imported by the LDAP Sync Tool cannot log into Avid NEXIS until it is configured for external

authentication. For more information, see “Configuring External Authentication of Users” on page 62.

Configure a connection by entering the LDAP server’s fully qualified name, port, and user distinguished name and password for authentication.

Configuring External Authentication of Users

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

External authentication lets you add users to the Avid NEXIS system who are already configured as LDAP accounts in your environment. When a remote LDAP user logs into the Avid NEXIS system, Avid NEXIS checks with an external LDAP server instead of the local user database to authenticate the user. To enable LDAP users to access the Avid NEXIS system, configure Avid NEXIS to use up to three external LDAP servers for authentication.

Configuring external authentication is optional, but recommended for large numbers of users. Otherwise you must create each user account individually; see “Managing Users and Groups” on page 58. You can use both external authentication and accounts you create on the Avid NEXIS. The system supports up to 5640 user accounts.

To use external authentication using LDAP, enable DNS. See “Configuring DNS Service” on page 6.

For more information on working with LDAP users and groups, see “Managing LDAP Accounts” on page 61.

To configure external authentication:

1. In navigation sidebar, click Users, then External Authentication.

2. In the Domain section, click the Enable check box.

The Domain Name text box becomes active.

3. In the Domain Name text box, enter the domain name of the network to which the LDAP server belongs, including subdomain, if applicable. Do not enter the TLD.

A domain name has several parts, separated by a period or dot; for example, americas.avid.com. The subdomain

in this name is “americas;” the assigned domain is “avid;” and the top-level domain (TLD) is “com.”

Contact your IT administrator for the Legacy Domain Name (also known as the NETBIOS Domain Name) to enter into this field.

4. Click the check box to select Server 0.

The Address text box becomes active.

5. In the Address text box, enter the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of the LDAP server.

Use the format servername.subdomain.domain.tld; for example:

server1.americas.example.com

6. In the Port text box, enter the port number of the LDAP service; usually 389.

The Avid NEXIS system works with LDAP servers that use either LDAP over TLS or SASL DIGEST-MD5, but not

with LDAPS protocol using port 636 (secure socket).

7. (Optional) Repeat steps 3 – 5 (using the “Server 1” and “Server 2” check boxes) to configure additional backup LDAP servers, if applicable.

8. When finished, click Submit.

The domain and LDAP server information is added to the Avid NEXIS database, and a confirmation message is displayed in the Results area.

Installing the LDAP Sync Tool

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

The LDAP Sync Tool is part of the Avid NEXIS software kit, but is not installed by default.

To install the LDAP Sync Tool:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Installers.

2. Click the LDAP Sync Tool executable file appropriate for your operating system.

3. Save the executable file to your computer and install it.

Opening the LDAP Sync Tool

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

You can use the LDAP Sync Tool to configure LDAP connections. If you have not previously configured a connection, enter the connection name and other information specific to the particular LDAP server.

Contact your IT administrator to obtain your LDAP login information. Three failed connection attempts might result in your LDAP user account being disabled.

All connection information is stored locally for the connecting user’s account. To connect from a different

workstation or as another user, re-enter the Avid NEXIS and LDAP login information.

Alternatively, you can configure external authentication on the Avid NEXIS to add the LDAP server. See

“Configuring the Notification Service” on page 4.

To open the LDAP Sync Tool:

1. Do one of the following:

t (Windows) From the Start menu select Avid > LDAPSyncTool > Avid LDAP Sync Tool.

t (Mac) Select Applications > Avid NEXIS Tools > LDAP Sync Tool.

The Avid Login dialog box opens.

2. In the Hostname field, enter the host name of the System Director.

3. Enter the administrator password.

4. Click Connect.

t If this is your first time using this tool and an LDAP server is configured, the LDAP Group Selection list

opens. See “Synchronizing LDAP and Avid NEXIS Accounts” on page 66.

t If this is your first time using this tool but no LDAP server is configured, the Connect to LDAP Server

dialog box opens. Enter the information for your LDAP server as shown in the example below and click Connect.

The Avid NEXIS system works with LDAP servers that use either LDAP over TLS or SASL DIGEST-MD5, but not

with LDAPS protocol using port 636 (secure socket).

t If the tool has been used before on this computer, the main window opens.

Using the LDAP Sync Tool

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

The Account Synchronizer is the main window of the Avid NEXIS LDAP Sync Tool. Use the Account Synchronizer to search the LDAP user accounts, synchronize (reconcile) user accounts by adding or removing users from the Avid NEXIS users list, generate a report of the account actions, and see a history of the accounts. You can also modify the display of the Account Synchronizer to filter out unneeded account information.

LDAP Sync Tool—Main Window (Account Synchronizer)

All LDAP reconciliation session data, such as reports and history, are stored in the local user’s account. If you log

into another workstation and/or as a different user, this information will not be available.

When you first connect to the Avid NEXIS and the LDAP server, the Account Synchronizer checks the users in the selected LDAP groups against the Avid NEXIS database and builds a set of actions to reconcile the two. The main window displays the complete set of groups, using buttons with colors and icons to indicate the reconciliation status of each group.

Icon Meaning

The group is in the LDAP database, but not in the Avid NEXIS system. The default action is to add the group and all users to the Avid NEXIS.

The group is in both LDAP and the Avid NEXIS system, but the users are different between the two:

• If the user is in LDAP but not the Avid NEXIS system, the user will be added to the Avid NEXIS system.

• If the user is in the Avid NEXIS system but not in LDAP, the user will be removed from the Avid NEXIS system.

The user will no longer share privileges with the group. The user will still be able to access the Avid NEXIS system, and

membership in other local or LDAP groups is unaffected.

• If the same user name is in both groups but they are intended for different users (for example, have different passwords), the credentials will be validated against LDAP.

LDAP supports having users with the same name but in different OUs, but Avid NEXIS does not check OUs.

The group is in both LDAP and the Avid NEXIS system, and all users are reconciled. No action is taken by default.

The user and/or group is in the Avid NEXIS system, but not LDAP.

By default, all users and groups in this entry will be permanently deleted. To prevent this, manually override the

default action before performing a Reconcile action.

The user is in only an Avid NEXIS group.

By default, all users and groups in this entry will be permanently deleted. To prevent this, manually override the

default action before performing a Reconcile action.

Click any button to see detailed information about the actions you can perform on users in each group.

Changing the Account Synchronizer Display

You can sort the columns in the display alphabetically, and add or remove LDAP groups from the Account Synchronizer display.

To sort columns:

t Click a column heading to sort the contents of the column alphabetically. Click the heading again to reverse

the sort.

To resize columns:

t Click and drag the divider between column headings.

Synchronizing LDAP and Avid NEXIS Accounts

Synchronizing the LDAP/Active Directory and Avid NEXIS user lists consists of the following steps:

• Selecting LDAP groups

• Specifying user-specific synchronization actions

• Performing the synchronization process

The synchronization process only reads the LDAP/Active Directory user list. The Avid NEXIS LDAP Sync Tool

will never alter the LDAP/Active Directory user list.

To add groups to the Account Synchronizer display:

1. Click Select Groups.

The LDAP Group Selection window opens.

On subsequent LDAP Sync Tool sessions, the main window will open after you log in and display the selected

groups from the last session.

2. Select the groups to be synchronized.

To Select This: Do This:

Single group Click the group name.

Multiple non-contiguous groups CTRL-click each name to be selected.

Multiple contiguous groups Click the first group name, then SHIFT-click the last group name.

All groups Press CTRL-A.

3. Click Add Selected.

The LDAP Sync Tool builds a list of sync actions for the selected groups, and displays the selected groups in the main window.

4. (Optional) To print a report of the account list and selections, click Print.

To remove groups from the Account Synchronizer display:

1. Select one or more rows and click Clear Selected to remove the row from the Group list. Ctrl+click (Windows) or Cmd+click (Mac) or Shift+click to select multiple rows.

2. Click Clear All to remove all rows from the Group list.

To modify the default reconciliation actions for individual users:

1. Click the row in the Sync Status column for the appropriate group (each row in the Sync Status column is a button).

The Descriptive name window opens and displays the user names of all members of the group, as well as actions to be taken.

2. You can do the following:

t To show all users, including those which are already reconciled, click Show All.

The “Show All” check box is disabled if all or no users in the group are already reconciled (all users are shown by

default).

t To override the default action, click the check box in the “Avid NEXIS Sync Action” column to deselect

it.

3. (Optional) To print a report of the user list and selections, click Print.

4. Click Close to close the user selection window and return to the main window.

To synchronize LDAP/Active Directory and Avid NEXIS user databases:

t Click Synchronized Marked.

The LDAP Sync Tool performs the reconciliation actions, then displays the groups status in the main window.

To refresh selected entries:

1. Select one or more groups from the main window.

To Select This: Do This:

Single group Click the group name.

Multiple non-contiguous groups CTRL-click each name to be selected.

Multiple contiguous groups Click the first group name, then SHIFT-click the last group name.

All groups Press CTRL-A.

2. Click Reload All.

Information about the selected groups is retrieved from the LDAP server, reassessed, and displayed in the main window.

To see and/or print the History log:

1. Click History.

The Synchronization History window opens.

2. (Optional) To print the History Log, click Print.

The Print dialog opens.

3. (Optional) To clear the History Log, click Delete History.

The Delete History dialog box opens. Click Ye s to delete the history.

4. To close the Synchronization History window, click Close.

To exit the LDAP Sync Tool

1. Do one of the following:

t Click File > Exit

t Click Close Window in the upper right corner of the window.

A confirmation window opens.

2. Click Ye s .

The application closes.

Importing LDAP Users with Incorrectly Formatted LDAP UIDs

When synchronizing users from the LDAP Synchronization Tool, the User ID (also known as the UID) must contain characters that Avid NEXIS allows for valid user names. The entry in the User ID column is used as the Avid NEXIS Username. All LDAP user names and passwords must use only ASCII characters. See “Guidelines

for Names and Passwords” on page 22 for more information about valid and invalid characters.

If the User ID contains any invalid characters:

• The user will not be added to Avid NEXIS

• The synchronization for the group is aborted

• Any subsequent user accounts in the group are not reconciled

In such cases, do one of the following:

• Create the user in Avid NEXIS with a user name that does not contain these illegal characters, and manually add them to groups.

• Update the user entry in the LDAP database with a UID that contains no illegal characters, then run the LDAP Sync Tool again to reconcile the users.

Disconnecting and Reconnecting the LDAP Servers

The connection status button icons indicate whether you are connected to the Avid NEXIS or LDAP servers:

Connected to Avid NEXIS

Disconnected from Avid NEXIS

Connected to LDAP server

Disconnected from LDAP server

You can use the connection status buttons to manually disconnect from and reconnect to the LDAP server. (If the connection to the Avid NEXIS is broken, close the LDAP Sync Tool, then restart it and log in again.) The button icons change depending on your current connection status.

You are disconnected from the Avid NEXIS or LDAP servers if their respective session time-out periods are

exceeded.

To disconnect from the LDAP server:

t Click LDAP.

The LDAP Sync Tool disconnects from the LDAP server, and the LDAP connection status button icon changes to Disconnected.

To connect (or reconnect) to the LDAP server:

1. Click LDAP.

The Connect to LDAP Server window appears.

The text fields will be filled in for you if you have previously logged into the LDAP server within the same session.

2. Click Connect.

The LDAP Sync Tool connects to the LDAP server and the Connection status icon changes to green (connected).

Managing User Groups

User groups allow you to organize and manage users based on their common properties, such as by Workspace access, LDAP users, or other criteria.

Adding User Groups

To add a group account:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Users, then Groups.

2. Click Add.

3. Type a user group name in the Name text box.

If a user group with the name already exists, an error message is displayed.

For information on valid and invalid characters, see “Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on page 22.

4. In the User Membership list, click Member next to a user name to make the user a group member. A user can belong to up to 15 user groups.

By default, new users are listed as “Non-Member.”

5. In the Workspace Access list, set the access privilege for each Workspace. Unless overridden on a per-user or per-Workspace basis (see “Setting or Changing Workspace Access Privileges” on page 41), all the group members have the same access to any given Workspace.

By default, access privileges for new user groups are listed as “None” in the Access category for each Workspace.

Modifying User Group Details

You can rename a user group account, change user membership, and modify Workspace access at any time, even when it is being actively used in your work environment.

Group Details includes the following information:

• Attributes—Group name

• User Membership—Lists all the users who are members of the group and how many groups the member belongs to (maximum of 15 groups)

• Workspace Access—Lists the access granted to all group members for each Workspace

To modify a user group account:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Users, then Groups.

2. Double-click a user group name.

The Details panel displays information about the selected user group account.

3. Modify the user group name as required.

If a user group with the name already exists, an error message tells you to type a new name.

For information on valid and invalid characters, see “Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on page 22.

4. Modify user membership for the user group as required. Select one or more group members, or click All to select all members of the group:

t Click Member to make the user a member in the user group.

t Click Non-Member to remove the user from the user group.

5. Modify Workspace access for the user group as required. Select one or more Workspaces, or click All to select all Workspaces:

t Click No Access to remove Workspace access privileges for the user group.

t Click Read Access to set read-only Workspace access for the user group.

t Click Read-Write Access to set both read and write Workspace access for the user group.

For information on permissions for Workspace access in the network, see “Managing User Access Privileges

for Workspaces” on page 40 and “Setting or Changing Workspace Access Privileges” on page 41.

6. (Optional) Click Reset to undo any modifications made to the client information.

7. Click Save.

Deleting User Groups

You can delete any user group except the default Guest group (of which the default user account, Guest, is a member). Deleting a group does not delete the user accounts who are members of the group.

To delete a user group:

1. Ensure that the user group to be deleted is not currently active.

2. In the navigation sidebar, click Users, then Groups.

3. Select one or more user groups (or click All to select all user groups) to delete.

4. Click Delete.

In the confirmation box, click OK.

Displaying User Group Details

The Details panel displays all information for the currently selected user group.

To see detailed information about a user group:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Users, then Groups.

The Groups page displays all the information for the selected user group. If the Details panel is not visible, click Edit.

2. Double-click a group or select it and click Edit.

To hide the User Membership or Workspace Access panel:

t Click Edit to close edit mode.

Managing Bandwidth Limits

Some client applications try to use as much bandwidth as possible, potentially throttling other users of the system. To control this, you can modify the maximum amount of bandwidth a client can use.

You might need to set a bandwidth limit for a device such as an Avid AirSpeed server if it is consuming more

bandwidth than expected.

Adding Bandwidth Limits

You can create bandwidth limits on the Avid NEXIS system, or they are created automatically, when a client connects to the Avid NEXIS for the first time.

For automatically created entries, the default bandwidth is determined by the system preference setting called Default Bandwidth for Auto Created Devices (MB/sec). The default value of zero (0) means the client has no limit (unlimited bandwidth).

To prevent automatic creation of bandwidth limits:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Settings.

2. Click Preferences if not already selected.

3. Check the box to Force Manual Device Creation.

To create a Bandwidth Limit specification for a client:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Bandwidth Limits.

2. Click Add.

3. Type the name of the device in the Name text box.

If a device with the same name already exists, an error message is displayed.

For information on valid and invalid characters, see “Guidelines for Names and Passwords” on page 22.

4. Type a value in the Bandwidth text box to set the amount of read/write bandwidth (in MB/s) to allocate to the device. A value of 0 (zero) indicates that bandwidth will not be metered.

5. (Optional) Type a description in the Description text box.

6. Click Save.

The Bandwidth Limits list refreshes and displays the new client.

7. Repeat steps 2 through 6 to add more clients.

Displaying Bandwidth Limits Details

The Bandwidth Limits Details panel displays the same information as the Bandwidth Limits list.

To see detailed information about a client or device:

t In the Bandwidth Limits list, double-click a name.

The Bandwidth Limits panel displays the following information:

- Name of the client

- Bandwidth limit for the client in MB/sec

- Bandwidth Mode (currently only Device Bandwidth)

- Description, if any

Changing Bandwidth Limits

You can rename an entry or change the allocated bandwidth or description at any time. Any changes take effect immediately, even if the user is connected.

To modify a Bandwidth Limit entry:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Bandwidth Limits.

2. Select the entry to modify and do one of the following:

t Click Edit.

t Double-click the name.

3. Modify the options as required.

4. (Optional) Click Reset to undo any modifications.

5. Click Save.

Deleting Bandwidth Limits

You can delete a Bandwidth Limit entry for user-created clients or any entry you have modified.

To delete a Bandwidth Limit:

1. Make sure that the client account is not currently connected.

2. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Bandwidth Limits.

3. Select the one or more entries to delete (or click All to select all bandwidth limit entries).

4. Click Delete.

5. In the confirmation dialog box click Delete to confirm that you want to delete the entry.

5 Monitoring the System

This section describes monitoring and logging for the Avid NEXIS shared-storage network and creating snapshots for Avid Customer Care.

Monitoring Client Bandwidth

The Dashboard displays system usage in MB/sec for both reads and writes. You can toggle the display to show only reads or only writes or both. Below the Bandwidth chart, the bandwidth of each connected client is displayed, with separate columns for reads and writes.

More detail is available on the Client Bandwidth page, including system usage, including total system bandwidth use, reads, writes, and consumption by each connected system.

To display client bandwidth:

t In the navigation sidebar, click Monitoring, then Client Bandwidth.

All connected clients are listed, and Continuous Refresh is enabled so you can see the bandwidth usage change in real time. You can clients sort by name.

Monitoring System Connection Status

System connections are all clients and components of the shared-storage system itself that are communicating with the System Director.

Some clients might not be able to connect to the shared-storage network if the combined bandwidth requirement

of connected components equals the system limit for bandwidth use.

To display system connection status:

t In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Dashboard.

The Dashboard displays high-level status only: name, type, and number of messages

t In the navigation sidebar, click Monitoring, then Connection Status.

The Connection Status page shows more detail (see Connection Status Descriptions).

Connection Status Descriptions

The Connection Status area lists the name of the system or device making the connection, the type of connection, and the number of messages per second being transferred between the device and the system. Continuous Refresh is enabled so you can see the changes in real time.

Heading Description

Name The name of the system connected to the Avid NEXIS. This can be an external client or a component

of the Avid NEXIS system itself, such as the Storage Managers.

Heading Description(Continued)

ID An internal numeric identifier used by the System Director to represent the connected system; these

identifiers are assigned when a system first contacts the System Director

OS The operating system running on the connected system (for example, Linux can represent

components of the Avid NEXIS system itself)

Type The category or principal function of the connected system, such as Client or Storage Manager

(every Media Pack has an associated Storage Manager)

License The number of licenses allotted to the connected system

Messages/Second The number of messages per second being sent between the connected system and the Avid NEXIS

Last Seen For inactive components, displays the date and time when the component last sent its status to the

System Director; for active components, displays a zero (0) as the default value

For active components, displays the date and time when the component last sent its status to the System Director.

The System Director removes information about components that have not been seen for a week, unless the component’s bandwidth limit is configured to custom values or the Default Device Bandwidth option in the Preferences dialog box is selected

To sort the information in the Connection Status dialog box, click any column heading.

Monitoring Redistributions (On-premise Only)

You can display detailed information about the progress of redistributions, such as the rate and remaining time, and which Workspaces and Storage Groups are involved.

To display details about redistribution:

t In the Navigation sidebar, click Monitoring, then Redistribution.

The Redistribution Monitor displays the overall system redistribution status, including a progress indicator, the redistribution rate, an estimate of the time remaining, the total GB to be moved, and the total GB that have been moved.

The Workspaces list below the System Information table shows more detail about the Workspaces involved in the redistribution.

Monitoring Client Reservations

You can display the status of client reservations, client system name, and the value of the reservation in MB/sec.

Client reservations are not set on or by the Avid NEXIS system. Normally, bandwidth reservations are initiated and configured automatically by Avid applications based on bandwidth requirements, but you can limit the bandwidth available to client systems. In addition, client workstation users can use the Client Manager to obtain a default bandwidth reservation on the Avid NEXIS system. See the Avid NEXIS Client Installation and User’s Guide for information on setting and applying bandwidth reservations.

The actual bandwidth available to the client is the lowest of the following values:

• The default bandwidth requested by the Client Manager

• The maximum bandwidth assigned by the Avid NEXIS Administrator to the user

• The maximum bandwidth value assigned by the Management Console, either per-device or by the default bandwidth allocation for auto-created devices

• The bandwidth limitation of the client device

To sort the information in the Reservations page, click any column heading.

To display client reservations:

t In the navigation sidebar, click Monitoring, then Reservations.

Displaying Event History

The Event History page displays the past 5 days (96 hours) of system events. You can download the history as a zip file, and then send the file to Avid Customer Care for analysis.

To open the Status History page:

t In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then Event History.

The current day’s events are at the top of the list. Click the icons to show or hide events for:

Information

Upgrades

Warn in gs

Errors

To see all the events for a specific date:

t Click the date you want to look at.

The System Events panel automatically updates the display with detailed information about the selected day’s recorded events, including the specific time, event type, which Engine reported the event, and a description.

To clear Status History Event flag:

t Click Clear History Status Flag.

The status event history panel indicator is cleared.

This command clears the status event history but does not remove any status event history entries.

To download the status history:

t Click Download.

The status event history is saved to a file (named history.zip). If prompted to open or save the file, click Save. By default, the file is saved to the Downloads directory on the computer running the Management Console. You can then send it to Avid Customer Care.

Managing System Logs

The System Logs page provides a complete view of the system-generated events. The logs provide detailed status information that is especially useful to Avid Customer Care personnel for monitoring system status during prolonged operations.

Displaying System Logs

You can filter the log reports to display messages in a particular category (Information, Warnings, Errors), by date, time, subsystem or host (Storage Controller) that generated the event, or by words in the messages themselves.

To display the system logs:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then System Logs.

2. If multiple Engines are present (on-premise only), select the Engine whose logs you want to see. You can sort the Engines by name.

3. In the Select Log list, select a file to display. Your Avid Customer Care representative can guide you in selecting the file to view.

The selected log is displayed.

4. If the log has multiple pages of entries, the total number of messages (log entries) is shown. Click the page numbers or the Next Page, Previous Page, Last Page, First Page icons to display different pages of the log:

Clearing System Logs

Clearing the logs empties the log of all event entries and resets the logging process.

To clear logs:

1. Select a log to clear.

2. Click Clear Log.

The event log for the selected category is cleared, and logging is reset to start recording new events.

Managing Media Pack Logs

This section does not apply to Avid NEXIS Cloud Storage.

Media Pack logs contain information about the drives in the Media Packs. You can filter the information that gets collected in the logs, if requested by Avid Customer Care to help resolve an issue. Normally you do not need to set or change any of the filter settings.

Displaying Media Pack Logs

The Media Pack Logs page contains information primarily for Avid Customer Care use. You can download a specific log file or all log files as instructed, and then send the file to Avid Customer Care for analysis.

To open the Media Pack Logs page:

t In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then Media Pack Logs.

Filtering Media Pack Logs

You can turn certain log levels on to capture specific information as requested by Avid Customer Care.

To filter the Media Pack logs:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then Media Pack Logs.

2. Click the Filters tab.

3. As instructed, choose a log level and check the boxes for the requested filters.

Downloading Media Pack Logs

You can download a Media Pack log to send to Avid Customer Care for further analysis.

To download a Media Pack log:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then Media Pack Logs.

2. Click the Logs tab if not already selected.

3. As instructed, choose a log and click Download next to the log file.

Dumping All Media Pack Logs

You can dump (download) all the Media Pack logs into a file to send to Avid Customer Care for further analysis.

To dump all Media Pack logs:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then Media Pack Logs.

2. Click the Logs tab if not already selected.

3. Click Dump All Logs.

A status message indicates the operation was successful. Avid Customer Care can instruct you how to find and send the dump file.

Deleting All Media Pack Logs

You can delete all the Media Pack logs.

To delete all Media Pack logs:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then Media Pack Logs.

2. Click the Logs tab if not already selected.

3. Click Delete All Logs.

A warning message indicates the operation will affect all Media Pack logs for all Engines in the sharedstorage system. Click OK.

All the Media Pack logs are deleted.

Disabling Media Pack Logging

Normally, you can let Media Pack logs continue to accumulate. If requested by Avid Customer Care, you can temporarily disable logging, delete the existing logs, re-enable logging and start a test to isolate a specific problem. Avid Customer Care will guide you in the precise order of operations based on the circumstances.

Media Pack logs are independent of each other; you can enable and disable logging for individual Media Packs or several.

To disable Media Pack logs:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click Logs, then Media Pack Logs.

2. Click the Logs tab if not already selected.

3. Select a Media Pack, then click Disable Logs.

The icon turns blue, meaning that logging is disabled.

4. Repeat the last step as needed for any other Media Packs (on-premise only).

Capturing System Information (Avid NEXIS Snapshots)

Avid NEXIS Snapshots capture the current state of the system and store that information for you to examine or download later. Avid Customer Care personnel can use this information, coupled with the system logs collected by the Log Aggregator tool (see “Log Aggregator Tool” on page 83), to diagnose and troubleshoot problems.

The following information is collected:

• System Director name, storage system name, the date the snapshot was collected, and the name of the zip file containing the snapshot. For an on-premise system, the System Director name is the name of the Controller running the System Director service. For an system, the System Director name is the name of the virtual machine hosting the System Director.

• The system component information (in .csv and .zip files), including any current warnings or errors and their details

• System Director status and metadata

• All currently configured system preferences

Working with Snapshots

Create a snapshot if requested by Avid Customer Care.

To create a snapshot:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Snapshots.

2. Click Take New Snapshot.

3. Enter a name for the snapshot and click Create.

The snapshot is created and the details are displayed in the Snapshots window.

To see a snapshot:

t By default, the most recent snapshot is displayed automatically. To see a different snapshot, select one from

the list.

To download a snapshot:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Snapshots.

2. Select the snapshot to download.

3. Click Download.

Depending on your browser, the file might be downloaded automatically to the computer’s default Downloads folder, or you are asked to choose whether to save the file or open it. Save the file. Avid Customer Care might ask you to send them that file.

4. To view the contents of the file, unzip or extract the file.

To delete a snapshot:

t Click Delete next to the snapshot you want to delete.

A confirmation message is displayed.

t Click OK.

The selected snapshot is deleted.

To delete all snapshots:

1. Click Delete All (next to the Take New Snapshot icon).

A confirmation dialog window opens.

2. Click OK.

All snapshots are deleted.

Working with Snapshot Archives

When you create a snapshot, the Avid NEXIS Snapshots tool creates a folder which includes a compressed file containing all the collected information. You can combine all the system snapshots into an archive to keep track of the system status—for example, you can archive snapshots weekly or monthly. The Snapshot tool compresses archives in a ZIP file (archivename.zip).

The compressed archive uses the same file name format as the snapshot folder.

You can download the archive in compressed form as a ZIP file by clicking Download.

To create a snapshot archive:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Snapshots.

2. On the Snapshots page, click Archives.

3. Click Take New Archive.

(If no snapshots exist, you cannot create an archive.)

4. Enter a name for the archive and click Create.

5. Click OK to confirm building a new archive from all current snapshots.

The archive is created and listed in the Archives drop-down list. After you create an archive, the snapshots are no longer available to view on the Snapshots screen.

To delete a snapshot archive:

1. Click Delete next to the archive you want to delete.

A confirmation dialog appears.

2. Click OK.

The selected archive is deleted.

To delete all archives:

1. Click Delete All (next to the Take New Archive icon).

A confirmation dialog window opens.

2. Click OK.

All archives are deleted.

6 Avid NEXIS Toolbox

The Avid NEXIS Toolbox is a collection of tools you can use to monitor and perform diagnostic operations on all your Avid NEXIS hardware. The Avid NEXIS Toolbox is included in the Avid NEXIS software kit, but is not installed automatically. You can install it from the Management Console Installers link.

Installing the Avid NEXIS Toolbox

To install the Toolbox:

1. In the navigation sidebar, click System, then Installers.

2. Click the Toolbox file appropriate for your operating system. This downloads the file to your computer.

3. Install the file.

Opening the Avid NEXIS Toolbox

Make sure the Avid NEXIS Toolbox is installed.

To open the Toolbox:

1. Do one of the following:

t (Windows) Select Start, then Avid, then Toolbox, then Avid NEXIS Toolbox.

t (Mac) Select Applications, then Avid NEXISTools, then Avid NEXIS Toolbox.

If any site security warnings open, click Ye s to accept the certificate. If you are not sure about the security requirements of your shared-storage network, see your system administrator.

2. In the Login screen, enter the host name or IP address of your System Director (this might be filled in for you) and the Administrator password, then click OK.

The Avid NEXIS Toolbox opens.

From the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, you can run any of the following tools:

- Connection Analyzer Tool

- Log Aggregator Tool

- Disk Analyzer Tool

- Media Pack Parameters Tool

- Media Pack Log Viewer

Connection Analyzer Tool

The Connection Analyzer provides a quick look at the connection status of all Media Packs in the shared-storage network.

Connection Analyzer Tool

The Connection Analyzer displays connection status in a grid, using the following icons to denote the status of each Media Pack:

Icon Label Status

Session Active Source Media Pack has a session with the target Media Pack

Session Failed Source Media Pack does not have a session with the target Media Pack

No Connection Target Media Pack is not communicating with the System Director

Storage Server Not Running

System Not Responding

To open the Connection Analyzer and test the connection status of Media Packs:

1. In the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, click Connection Analyzer from the left pane.

The Connection Analyzer window opens and checks the connection status of all Media Packs in the network. The tool displays results in a color-coded grid.

Place your pointer over a block in the Connection States column to display a tooltip with details about the Media Pack. If there are more Media Packs than can be displayed in the dialog box, use the scroll bars to see a specific connection.

2. (Optional) Click Info to display version information.

To update the status of Media Packs:

1. Click Start to update the status of Media Packs without reloading the entire list from the System Director.

2. (Optional) To stop the status update operation, do the following:

a. Click Stop.

A confirmation dialog appears.

Microserver failure—Failure in the request to the Media Pack for session information—for example, a failed request resulting from the Media Pack not running or the Media Pack not servicing the request before it timed out

Communication failure—Unable to determine status—for example, there is a network problem between the Connection Analyzer tool and the Media Pack

b. Click Ye s .

The update process stops and the main display returns to the previous result.

Log Aggregator Tool

The Log Aggregator tool, included in the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, allows you to collect a full set of the event logs and system statistics of a network, including installation logs, active Media Packs, and the System Director.

To use the Log Aggregator, you must have Administrative privileges and be logged into a system with access to the shared-storage network.

Run the Log Aggregator from a system with network access to the entire shared-storage network. Otherwise, the

tool cannot collect logs for all systems connected to the network.

The Log Aggregator lists all components of the shared-storage network in a tree view. You can see events:

• For all components in the shared-storage network by selecting all active Avid NEXIS systems in the Selection window (the highest level in the tree view).

• For any subset of components by selecting one or more entries in the Selection window (at a level lower than the Avid NEXIS Systems in the tree view).

You can select which information—from the network, the System Director software, and Media Packs—you want to collect in the log reports. This provides you with a system record that you can use to see error and status messages. The logs provide detailed status information that is especially useful to Avid Customer Care personnel for monitoring system status during prolonged operations.

Do not use the Log Aggregator unless instructed to do so by Avid Customer Care. Improper use could result in system downtime or degraded performance.

Using the Log Aggregator Tool

To use the Log Aggregator tool:

1. In the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, click Log Aggregator in the left pane.

The Log Aggregator window opens.

2. In the Selection window, do one of the following:

t Select all active Avid NEXIS systems to see events from all components in the shared-storage network.

t Select one or more components to see events from specific System Directors, Engines, Media Packs, and

clients attached to the network.

3. Click Configure.

4. Choose the types of data you want collected in the event logs:

5. (Optional) In the Output Directory text section, click Browse to navigate to a directory where you want the logs to be saved, if other than the default (

6. Click OK to close the Aggregator Options dialog box and return to the Log Aggregator.

7. Click Start.

C:\Users\username

The progress bar indicates the status of the log aggregation. The Log Aggregator displays a Success icon (green) or a Fail icon (red) for each system and component logged.

To cancel the log aggregation process, click Stop.

Displaying Aggregate Logs

The Log Aggregator saves individual logs in a log directory called LogAggregator_date-time at the location indicated in the Output Directory section in the Log Aggregator. Subdirectories include separate logs for each component in the network for which you created logs. The Log Aggregator also creates a compressed file containing all logs in the top-level folder (aggregator_results.zip). You can forward this compressed file to your Avid Customer Care representative if requested.

To see saved logs:

1. Navigate to the directory where the Log Aggregator saved the collected logs.

2. Double-click the file name of the log you want to see.

Disk Analyzer Tool

The Disk Analyzer runs the following basic disk performance tests on your Media Packs, which you can run in either Sequential or in Random access mode:

•Read test

• Write test

• Read/Write test

• Erase test

You can also use the Disk Analyzer to collect statistics on the status of Media Packs and network use and redistribution actions, including the statistics generated by Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) and by local Media Pack processes—for example, statistics on Long Command Times (LCT).

S.M.A.R.T. data is also available through the Log Aggregator tool.

You can run the Disk Analyzer on more than one Media Pack at a time, but this might degrade performance on the shared-storage network.

Do not run the Disk Analyzer unless instructed to do so by Avid Customer Care, and only during a maintenance window.

Running Tests with the Disk Analyzer Tool

To open the Disk Analyzer tool and run tests:

1. In the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, click Disk Analyzer in the left pane.

The Disk Analyzer window opens.

2. From the Action drop-down list select one of the following:

- Execute disk tests

- Collect disk statistics

- Collect network statistics

- Collect redistribution statistics

3. In the Selection window, do one of the following:

t Select all active Avid NEXIS systems to test all Media Packs in the shared-storage network.

t Select one or more Media Packs to test specific components in the network.

4. Click Start.

If you selected Execute disk tests, the Disk Test Options dialog box opens.

5. Configure the appropriate options for the test you want to run.

Option Description

Test Type The type of test to be performed: Read, Write, Read/Write, or Erase.

Access Mode Perform sequential or random access test

Duration Test duration either in minutes or number of passes (specify the number of minutes or

passes in the text field)

Refresh Rate Slider bar to specify how often to refresh the test status

Reattach to existing tests By default, starting a new test will abort any currently running tests and clear any

existing results. Select this option to resume any currently running tests and retain the results

6. Click OK to close the Disk Test Options dialog box and return to the Disk Analyzer.

Results of the test display in the Results area.

7. To stop the test at any time, click Stop.

Updating the Disk Analyzer Tool Display

To update the display:

t Click Refresh.

Saving Disk Analyzer Test Results

You can save the results of the Disk Analyzer tests to your local system. The test results are saved in comma separated value (CSV) format.

To save the results of the Disk Analyzer tests:

1. Click Save Results.

The Save Results window opens.

2. Browse to the location on your local system where you want to save the test results and click Save.

The test results are saved to the specified location.

Media Pack Parameters Tool

The Media Pack Parameters tool, included in the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, allows you to set and retrieve Media Pack logging and redistribution flags. This status information is useful to Avid Customer Care personnel for monitoring system status during prolonged operations.

Run the Media Pack Parameters tool from a system with network access to the entire shared-storage network.

Otherwise, the tool cannot collect logs for all systems connected to the network.

To use the Media Pack Flag Parameters, you must have Administrative privileges and be logged into a system with access to the shared-storage network.

The Media Pack Parameters tool lists all components of the shared-storage network in a tree view. You can see events for:

• All components in the shared-storage network—Select all active Avid NEXIS systems in the Selection window (the highest level in the tree view).

• Any subset of components—Select one or more entries in the Selection window (at a level lower than the Avid NEXIS Systems in the tree view).

Do not use the Media Pack Parameters tool unless instructed to do so by Avid Customer Care. Improper use could result in system downtime or degraded performance.

Using the Media Pack Parameters Tool

To use the Media Pack Parameters tool:

1. In the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, click Media Pack Parameters in the left pane.

The Media Pack Parameters window opens.

2. In the Selection window, do one of the following:

t Select all System Directors to see events from all components in the shared-storage network.

t Select one or more Media Packs to see events from specific System Directors.

3. Click Configure.

The Media Pack Parameters dialog box opens.

Retrieving Media Pack Flag Parameters

To retrieve the Media Pack Parameters:

1. Configure the following options to retrieve data:

Option Description

No filtering Selects all of the parameters listed in the Media Pack Parameters window

All other Media Pack Parameters Allows you to specify the data to collect by selecting one or more parameters

Log Level and Throttle Do not change the Log Level or Throttle setting unless instructed to do so by Avid

Customer Care. Improper use could result in system downtime or degraded performance.

2. Click OK to close the Media Pack Parameters dialog box.

3. Click Start.

The Media Pack displays the retrieved information.

Media Pack Log Viewer

The Media Pack Log Viewer is a utility that displays event information about Media Packs. You cannot save the information displayed in the Log Viewer, but you can copy it to a word processing application, such as Notepad. You can also save event logs displayed in the Logging tab. The information is used primarily by Avid Customer Care personnel to help analyze problems with Media Packs.

To use the Media Pack Log Viewer:

1. In the Avid NEXIS Toolbox, click Media Pack Log Viewer.

The Log Viewer opens.

If the Avid NEXIS system has no Media Pack event logs, nothing is displayed.

2. Select an option as described in the following table.

Icon Option Description

Resume Resumes monitoring Media Pack events

Pause Stops monitoring Media Pack events

Clear Clears all event data from the Console View tool

Resync Restores previously-cleared event data to the Console View tool

(None) Autoscroll Scrolls the display to the bottom of the page

(None) Refresh Rate (sec) Sets the rate at which the Console View tool refreshes event data

7 Data Migration Utility

The Data Migration Utility (DMU) is included with the Avid NEXIS software kit for copying data from an ISIS system to an Avid NEXIS system. You can also use DMU to migrate between two ISIS systems or between two Avid NEXIS systems, but this chapter focuses on ISIS to Avid NEXIS migrations.

You can migrate to any Avid NEXIS on-premise system.

The Data Migration Utility does not support the following transfers:

From To

ISIS system Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage system

ISIS system Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces Storage Group

Avid NEXIS system Avid NEXIS | Cloud Storage system

Avid NEXIS system, on-premise Storage Group Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces Storage Group

Prerequisites

Before you migrate data, do the following:

1. On your Windows or Macintosh client, update or install the appropriate Avid NEXIS client software version.

2. Connect your shared storage network cables:

t Windows client—To the network adapter on your Windows client

t Mac client—To the built-in Ethernet port on your Mac client

3. Install the Avid Data Migration software; see “Installing the Data Migration Utility” on page 90.

4. Log into the Management Console on the destination shared-storage system and create a new Storage Group for the Workspaces migrating from the source system.

There must be a Storage Group created on your Avid NEXIS system before you start the Data

Migration Utility.

Installing the Data Migration Utility

To install the Data Migration Utility:

1. Install the Avid NEXIS client software and any updates required for the release.

2. Restart the client.

3. Install the Avid Data Migration software, located in the installer kit in the

\AvidNEXISUtilities\Data Migration Utility\

follow the prompts.

folder. Double-click the installer and

t Windows clients—

Install the Windows software in the following location:

Migration Utility

t Macintosh clients—

Install the Macintosh software in the following location:

Migration Utility

AvidNEXISDataMigrationUtility_Win64.msi

AvidNEXISDataMigrationUtility_MacOSX.dmg

Logging Into the Data Migration Utility

To use the Data Migration Utility you must have the Administrator password for the source ISIS and destination Avid NEXIS systems.

To log into DMU:

1. Do one of the following:

a. [Windows] Click Start, Programs, Avid, Data Migration Utility, and select Data Migration

Utility.

The System Login Dialog box opens.

\Program Files\Avid\Data

/Applications/Avid/Data

b. [OS X] Click Go, Applications, AvidNEXIS Folder, Data Migration Utility.

2. DMU automatically detects available ISIS and Avid NEXIS shared-storage systems and populates the Source and Destination drop-down lists.

a. In the Source field, select the appropriate source ISIS system and enter the ISIS

administrator password.

b. Click Connect or press Enter.

c. In the Destination field, select the appropriate destination Avid NEXIS system enter the

Avid NEXIS Administrator password.

d. Click Connect or press Enter.

3. Click the green check mark to log in or click red X to close the utility.

Data Migration Window

The following illustration describes the sections of the Data Migration Utility window.

Pinnacle Systems NEXIS - 19.5 Administrator’s Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Contents

Using This Guide

Who Should Use This Guide

Symbols and Conventions

If You Need Help

Accessing the Online Documentation

Avid Training Services

1 Configuring and Managing the System

Avid NEXIS Configuration Overview

Creating the Avid NEXIS File System

Binding Media Packs to the File System

Setting the System Time

Configuring the Notification Service

Changing the Administrator Password

Configuring DNS Service

Securing the Avid NEXIS Infrastructure

Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces Security

Securing Access to the Management Console

Changing the BMC Password

Changing the Storage System Name

Enabling Link Aggregation

Upgrading the System (On-Premise Only)

Changing the System IP Address (On-Premise Only)

Follow-Up

2 Working with the Management Console

Opening the Management Console

Understanding the Management Console Interface

Navigation Sidebar

Action Tools

Dashboards

Testing the Network Speed to the Cloud

Canceling an Operation or Ignoring Changes

Filtering, Sorting, and Searching

Displaying the System Monitor View

Updating the Display

Selecting Multiple Items

Guidelines for Names and Passwords

Customizing the System Settings

Configuring System Preferences

Configuring SNMP Monitoring

Downloading the MIB File

Enabling SNMP on the Avid NEXIS System

3 Managing Storage

Storage Group Considerations

Managing Storage Groups

Creating Storage Groups

Activating Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces

Renaming Storage Groups (On-Premise Only)

Increasing a Storage Group’s Capacity (On-Premise Only)

Displaying Storage Group Details

Deleting Storage Groups (On-Premise Only)

Managing Workspaces

Workspace Considerations

Media Pack Protection Methods (On-Premise Only)

Creating Workspaces

Workspaces List

Displaying Workspace Details

Resizing Workspaces

Duplicating Workspaces

Deleting Workspaces

Renaming Workspaces

Setting Event Triggers for a Workspace

Managing User Access Privileges for Workspaces

Moving a Workspace

Displaying Cloud Subscription Data

Workspace Redistribution (On-Premise Only)

Managing Engines

Engines Page

Displaying Engine Details

Understanding Engine and Storage Controller Status

Managing Controllers

Controllers Page

Displaying Controller Details

Understanding Network Status

Managing Media Packs

Media Packs Page