Pinnacle Systems Unity MediaNet - 1.1 Administrator’s Guide
Avid Unity™ MediaNet
Administration Guide
Release 1.1
a
tools for storytellers™
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Matador, MCXpress, MEDIArray, MediaDock, MediaDock Shuttle, Media Fusion, Media Illusion, MediaLog, Media Reader, MediaShare, Meridien, NaturalMatch, OMM, QuietDrive, Recti-Fi, rS9, rS18, Sci-Fi, Sound Designer II, Symphony, tools for storytellers,
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Avid Unity MediaNet Administration Guide • Part 0130-04386-01 Rev. A • Dec. 1999
3
Contents
Using This Guide
Who Should Use This Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
About This Guide
Symbols and Conventions
If You Need Help
Related Information
If You Have Documentation Comments
How to Order Documentation
Chapter 1 Introduction
Avid Unity MediaNet Environment Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
MediaNet Storage
MediaNet from the User’s Perspective
Avid Unity MediaNet Configuration
Overall Considerations
Setting Up and Managing Your Drive Hardware
Assigning Drives to Allocation Groups
Creating and Sizing Workspaces
Access Control (Users and Access Privileges)
Data Protection
Tasks and Tools
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Ta sk s
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Tools
The MediaNet Setup Manager
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
. . . . . . . . . . . . 19
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4
The Administration Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
The Monitor Tool
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 2 MediaNet Setup Manager
MediaNet Setup Manager Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Starting the MediaNet Setup Manager
Creating a New Drive Set
Using the Configuration Assistant to Create a Drive Set
Creating an Administration Drive Manually
Creating an
Identifying the Administration Drive
Creating the Data Drive Set
Creating a Data Drive Set from an Existing
MediaShare F/C File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Adding Spare Data Drives to the Data Drive Set
Adding New MEDIArray Drives to Your
MediaNet Environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Adding Active Data Drives to an Existing Drive Set
Adding Drives That Were Previously Used as
Data Drives in Another Drive Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Adding Drives That Are Not Raw or That Were Used
Previously as Data Drives in Another Drive Set. . . . . . . . . . . 38
Adding Raw Drives
Managing Drive Problems
Identifying Bad Drives
Repairing t
Recovering from an Administration Drive Failure
Replacing Bad Drives
Setting Drive Mode Pages
Deleting an Existing Data Drive Set
Rebuilding an Existing Data Drive Set
he Drive Set by Swapping Out Bad Data Drives. . 40
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Administration Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
. . . . . 32
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
from Raw Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
. . . . . . . . . . . . 36
. . . . . . . . . . . . 37
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
. . . . . . . . . . 42
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5
Bringing the Drive Set Online and Taking It Offline. . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Bringing the Drive Set Online
Taking the Drive Set Offline
Starting and Stopping the MediaNet File Manager
Reestablishing MediaNet Setup Manager’s Connection to the
MediaNet File Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Chapter 3 Using the Administration Tool
Administration Tool User Interface Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
User Interface Component Descriptions
User Interface Tab Descriptions
Getting Help with the Administration Tool
Starting the Administration Tool
Logging In
Setting Administration
Setting the Administration Password
Setting
Changing Your User
Changing Your Workspace Tab
Changing Your Monitor Tab Preferences
Exporting and Importing Preferences
Exporting a Preference Set
Importing a Preference Set
Reestablishing Administration Tool’s Connection to the
MediaNet File Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Tool Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Workspace and Monitor Graph Bar Colors . . . . . . . . . . 59
Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
. . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Chapter 4 Managing Allocation Groups
Overview of the Allocation Groups Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Allocation Group Usage Guidelines
Creating a New Allocation Group
Assigning an Allocation Group to a Single User for
Uncompressed Finishing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Adding Drives to an Existing Allocation Group
6
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Removing Drives from an Existing Allocation Group . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Renaming an Allocation Group
Deleting an Allocation Group
Chapter 5 Managing Workspaces
Overview of the Workspace Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Reading the Workspace List
Changing the Workspace List
Selecting Linear or Logarithmic Graph Display
Scaling the Graph
Saving Your Workspace List Graph Settings
Creating New Workspaces
Duplicating Existing Workspaces
Changing Workspace Size
Increasing Workspace Size
Decreasing Workspace Size
Renaming Workspaces
Deleting Workspaces
Protecting Workspaces
Enabling Protection of New Files Only
Disabling Protection of
Protecting All Files
Unprotecting All Files
Optimizing Workspace Protection and Efficiency
When Should I Optimize a Workspace?
Optimizing a Workspace
Moving a Workspace to Another Allocation Group
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Graph Display. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
. . . . . . . . . 78
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
. . . . . . . . . . . . 79
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
New Files Only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
. . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Chapter 6 Managing User Accounts
The User Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
The Guest User Account
Creating User Accounts
Duplicating Existing User Accounts
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Renaming User Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Changing User Passwords
Deleting User Accounts
Workspace Access Privileges
Access Privilege
Changing Workspace
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Access Privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Chapter 7 Monitoring System Usage and Messages
The Monitor Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Changing the Monitor List Graph Display
Selecting Linear or Logarithmic Graph Display
Scaling the Graph
Saving Your Monitor List Graph Settings
The Log Tab
Viewing and Managing the Log File
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Index
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
. . . . . . . . 103
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
8
Using This Guide
Congratulations on your purchase of Avid Unity™ MediaNet
Release 1.1, a high-performance distributed file system that provides
high-capacity shared media storage for a workgroup of connected
®
systems.
Avi d
Who Should Use This Guide
This reference guide is intended for MediaNet administrators
responsible for the setup and day-to-day running of a MediaNet
workgroup.
About This Guide
The Contents lists all topics included in the book. They are presented
with the following overall structure:
•The Introduction in Chapter 1
beginning concepts, general administration concepts, tasks and
tools, and configuration strategies. Chapter 2
the MediaNet Setup Manager. Chapter 3
helps you get oriented with
describes how to use
describes how to use the
9
Avid Unity Administration Tool. You should read all of these
chapters.
• The main body of the guide (Chapter 4
Chapter 7
administration tasks, with clear and comprehensive step-by-step
procedures.
• A detailed Index helps you quickly locate specific topics.
) follows the natural flow of your day-to-day
Symbols and Conventions
The MediaNet documentation uses the following special symbols and
conventions:
1. Numbered lists, when order is important.
a. Alphabetical lists, when the order of secondary items is
important.
• Bulleted lists, when the order of the items is unimportant.
- Indented dashed lists, when the order of subtopics is
unimportant.
Look here in the margin
for tips.
In the margin you will find tips that help you perform tasks more
easily and efficiently.
, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, and
n
c
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.
10
If You Need Help
If you are having trouble using MediaNet, you should:
1. Retry the action, carefully following the instructions given for that
task in this guide.
2. Check the documentation that came with your hardware for
maintenance or hardware-related issues.
3. Check the Customer Service and News and Publications sections
of the Avid Web site at http://www.avid.com for the latest FAQs,
Tips & Techniques, Film + Television Update, and other Avid
online offerings.
4. Check the Avid Bulletin Board, “Avid Online,” for information on
product and user conferences. If you do not find the solution to
your problem, you can exchange information with other Avid
customers and Avid Customer Support representatives.
5. Contact your local Avid Reseller; in North America, you may
contact Avid Customer Support at 800-800-AVID (2843).
n
For general information, call your local Avid Reseller; in North America, call
the Avid Customer Relations Desk at 800-894-5654.
Related Information
The following documents provide more information about MediaNet:
• Avid Unity MediaNet for Windows NT Clients Quick Start Card
• Avid Unity MediaNet for Macintosh Clients Quick Start Card
• Avid Unity MediaNet Site Preparation Guide
11
• Avid Unity MediaNet Setup Guide
• Avid Unity MediaNet Release Notes
• Avid Products Collaboration Guide
The most recent update of the Avid Products Collaboration Guide is
available in the Documentation section of the Avid Customer
Service Knowledge Center. To access the Avid Customer Service
Knowledge Center, click the Avid Customer Service link at
www.avid.com and select Knowledge Center.
MediaNet also provides Help systems that provide complete
information about using the Setup Manager, the Administration Tool,
and the Monitor Tool.
If You Have Documentation Comments
Avid Technology continuously seeks to improve its documentation.
We value your comments about this manual or other Avid-supplied
documentation.
Simply e-mail your documentation comments to Avid Technology at
TechPubs@avid.com
Please include the title of the document, its part number, revision, and
the specific section you’re commenting on in all correspondence.
How to Order Documentation
To order additional copies of this documentation from within the
United States, call Avid Telesales at 800-949-AVID (2843). If you are
placing an order from outside the United States, contact your local
Avid representative.
12
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Avid Unity MediaNet is a high-performance distributed file system
that provides high-capacity shared media storage for a number of
connected Avid systems.
This chapter describes:
• Avid Unity MediaNet Environment Overview
• Avid Unity MediaNet Configuration Overview
• Tasks and Tools
• The MediaNet Setup Manager
• The Administration Tool
• The Monitor Tool
13
Avid Unity MediaNet Environment Overview
The MediaNet environment consists of:
• MediaNet clients — Avid systems enabled to use the MediaNet
file system.
• Fibre Channel network — High-bandwidth network technology
that supports the high throughput required to allow multiple
users to share video and audio simultaneously. A Fibre Channel
switch provides the backbone of the network.
• Shared Fibre Channel drives — A collection of fibre channel
™
drives enclosed in one or more rack-mountable MEDIArray
enclosures and managed as a single virtual unit by the MediaNet
File Manager service on the MediaNet Server.
®
• MediaNet Server — A Windows NT
server on which the
MediaNet File Manager that controls the MediaNet file system
runs.
Together, these components enable up to nine client workstations to
simultaneously connect to the shared drives and to record, play, and
edit video and audio media in real time.
Client
Client
Client
.
.
(Up to nine clients total)
.
Fibre Channel
network connections
MediaNet
Server
Switch
Fibre Channel
drives
Figure 1-1 MediaNet Environment Architectural Overview
14
MediaNet Storage Architecture
MediaNet simplifies the management of your storage hardware by
combining all of your physical data drives into a drive set that provides
a single, large file system. To use the MediaNet file system, you must
first assign all data drives in the drive set into allocation groups that are
individually managed file system partitions that span multiple
physical drives. Although you can assign all of your data drives to a
single allocation group, performance considerations might require you
to divide your drives into multiple allocation groups.
Allocation groups can be divided, according to your particular needs
at any given time, into one or more dynamically resizable virtual
volumes, or workspaces. These workspaces are the MediaNet elements
that are made available for mounting on client workstations (the drive
set and allocation groups are transparent to client users).
Physical (Hardware) Perspective
Allocation group 1
Data drives
(& optional
spares)
Allocation group 2
Drive Set
Administration drive
The drive set is partitioned into
one or more allocation groups.
These are transparent to the
user who sees only one or more
workspaces available to them.
15
Logical (User’s) Perspective
Workspaces
of various sizes
MediaNet Workspaces
Access to MediaNet is controlled by allocating user accounts with read
access, write access, or both to each workspace. Data integrity can be
ensured by optionally protecting workspaces. Protection involves a
redundant configuration in which files written to protected
workspaces are duplicated on more than one drive. This allows a
protected workspace to be quickly repaired with no data loss after a
drive fails.
A summary of the MediaNet storage architecture follows:
• The MediaNet storage hardware is managed as a drive set that
forms the core of the MediaNet file system. Physically, the drive
set comprises a number of different types of drives:
- Administration drive — A special drive that facilitates
communication about the MediaNet file system between
client workstations and the MediaNet File Manager.
- Data drives — Contain the media data that client
workstations store and access on the drive set.
- Spare drives — Spare drives can be quickly swapped for bad
data drives in the event of failure.
• The data drives in the drive set are assigned into one or more file
system partitions called allocation groups.
• Each allocation group is subdivided and managed as an unlimited
number of virtual workspaces. Each workspace has a set of
characteristics that you can change at any time:
- Size — Each workspace can be set to any size such that the
sum of the sizes of all the workspaces does not exceed the total
size of the allocation group.
- Protection — If active, media files written to the workspace
are duplicated on different physical drives to avoid data loss
in the event of drive failure. A protected workspace uses twice
as much storage space as an unprotected workspace.
- Access privileges — Determine whether users can mount,
read, or read and write to a workspace.
16
MediaNet from the User’s Perspective
MediaNet client users mount MediaNet workspaces on their
workstations (requiring a user account to do so). Once mounted,
workspaces behave like local media drives that can be accessed by
others working on the same project. If properly configured, this allows
several users to access the same media and to start using it
immediately after it has been created.
Avid Unity MediaNet Configuration Overview
The MediaNet environment allows you to centrally manage very large
amounts of storage that multiple MediaNet clients can access to share
video, audio, and effects media in an intuitive, collaborative
workgroup. As administrator, it is your job to make sure that
MediaNet is always configured to optimize workflow in what can be a
rapidly changing working environment.
Overall Considerations
The following strategic considerations will determine your priorities
when making configuration decisions and trade-offs (possibly
impacting more than one aspect of your configuration):
• What is your site type?
In-house and rental editing suites will probably require very
different administration requirements, particularly in terms of
workspace access restrictions and how often you need to
reconfigure workspaces and users.
• Does your workgroup include dual-stream uncompressed clients?
If so, you will need to set up special hardware and allocation
group configurations.
17
• How large is your drive set and what kinds of clients do you need
to support?
If your drive set is very large, or has different drive types, you will
probably need to assign your data drives to more than one
allocation group to optimize performance.
• Will your client users be working on individual projects with their
own media or will they be collaborating on team projects that use
the same source media?
These factors affect how you should allocate workspaces and user
accounts.
• Is security or ease of access more important at your site?
Individual password user accounts combined with tightly
controlled workspace access privileges provide the most security
at the cost of restricting user flexibility.
• Which is more important at your site: the integrity and speed at
which your media can be recovered in the event of hardware
failure or maximizing available storage space?
These factors determine whether you will want to protect your
workspaces.
The following sections provide a high-level overview of the
configuration implications of your answers to these questions.
18
Setting Up and Managing Your Drive Hardware
Setting up your hardware to create a drive set is very straightforward
and should only need to be done during the initial setup of your
MediaNet installation, unless you later want to add or remove drives.
The most important decisions you must make are which drive to
allocate an administration drive and whether you want to allocate
spare data drives so that they can be rapidly swapped in for faulty
data drives.
For more information, see Chapter 2
Assigning Drives to Allocation Groups
MediaNet requires you to assign the data drives in your drive set that
you want to be available as storage to one or more allocation groups.
Because MediaNet handles the drives in each allocation group as a
separate unit, creating multiple allocation groups allows you to:
• Support dual-stream uncompressed clients (also requires a special
hardware configuration).
• Break up very large drive sets into smaller units that reduce the
scope of data loss in the event of a drive failure in an unprotected
environment (see “Data Protection” on page 22
• Efficiently accommodate drives of different speeds and sizes.
For more information about creating and managing allocation groups,
see Chapter 4
.
.
).
19
Creating and Sizing Workspaces
Because workspaces are virtual rather than physical partitions, they
are very easy to create, resize dynamically, and delete to accommodate
your environment’s needs. This flexibility allows you to tailor your
workspace allocation to accurately meet the needs of your
environment now — reconfiguring your workspaces later to
accommodate future projects or users is not inconvenient or time
consuming.
First, you must consider how you want to allocate workspaces. Do you
want to allocate them to accommodate projects, teams, individual
users, or a combination of one or more of these?
Once you have determined how you plan to allocate workspaces,
you’ll need to determine how much storage each workspace will
require (a function of media duration and, for video, resolution) and
allocate space accordingly.
n
When sizing workspaces, you should consider reserving some space rather
than assigning all of it immediately. Once space is allocated, it tends to be
filled quickly and you might later need space to accommodate a new project or
user or to extend or protect an existing workspace. In such a situation, it
tends to be much easier to use space held in reserve than to take it away from
an existing workspace.
When allocating and sizing workspaces, you should also consider
whether access restrictions are required and whether protection for
data integrity is necessary for each workspace. For more information,
see “Access Control (Users and Access Privileges)” on page 21
“Data Protection” on page 22
For more information about allocating and sizing workspaces, see
Chapter 5
.
20
.
and
Access Control (Users and Access Privileges)
User accounts control access to MediaNet and its workspaces. Access
privileges associated with the user account determine whether a client
user can mount a given workspace and, if so, whether the user has full
access (read/write) or read-only access to it.
To determine how you want to set up user accounts and access
privileges for your environment, you first need to weigh the
importance of access control against user inconvenience and
administration effort (particularly in an environment where users and
projects frequently change).
Once you have decided the importance of security, you can decide
upon an access control strategy that best meets your needs.
Example strategies include:
• Create a user account for each user.
This strategy offers optimum security, allowing each user access to
the appropriate workspaces regardless of the MediaNet client at
which they are working.
• Create a user account with appropriate access privileges for each
project (multiple users can use the same account simultaneously).
This strategy offers moderate security and convenience, giving users
working on each project appropriate access and requiring far less
administrative effort than individual user accounts.
• Create a user account with appropriate access privileges for each
client.
This strategy offers moderate security and convenience, provided that
users work at clients that provide access to the workspaces they
need to use.
21
n
Passwords are optional. If you want to provide users with access to only
appropriate workspaces but security is not an issue (that is, you trust users
not to use other user’s accounts), you can use any of the previously described
strategies without assigning passwords for user accounts.
For more information, see Chapter 6
Data Protection
Protection is a technique that offers high levels of data integrity by
ensuring that two copies of media data are written onto different
physical drives to avoid data loss in the event of drive failure. This
allows workspaces that are protected to be repaired very quickly with
no data loss upon drive failure.
The disadvantage is that protected workspaces use twice as much
space as an unprotected workspace. However, because of the data
protection and recovery speed that protection offers, new workspaces
are protected by default unless you specify otherwise in your
preferences. Additionally, protection can be turned on and off at any
time.
For more information, see Chapter 5
.
.
22
Tasks and Tools
This section introduces the tasks that a MediaNet administrator is
responsible for and the tools that MediaNet provides to facilitate these
tasks.
Tasks
As administrator of an MediaNet workgroup, you are responsible for:
• Initial setup and configuration of the environment — You must
configure the drive set (comprising an administration drive and
data drives), one or more allocation groups, workspaces, and user
accounts before MediaNet can be used.
• Day-to-day administration — You will probably need to
frequently reconfigure MediaNet (by creating, deleting, and
resizing workspaces; by creating and deleting users; and by
changing access privileges) to accommodate new users and
evolving projects. For more information, see Chapter 4
and Chapter 6
MediaNet also provides comprehensive monitoring functionality
that allows you to check the total MediaNet activity as well as that
of each connected client. For more information, see Chapter 7
, Chapter 5,
.
.
• Troubleshooting — When problems occur with the storage
hardware, the MediaNet File Manager, or a client, you will need to
try and diagnose the problem and, if possible, fix it. MediaNet
provides easy-to-understand error messages that inform you of
problems in your MediaNet environment as well as mechanisms
to fix many of them.
23
Tools
MediaNet provides three tools for configuration and day-to-day
administration of your MediaNet environment:
• MediaNet Setup Manager — You use the MediaNet Setup
Manager, which runs locally on the MediaNet Server, to set up and
administer the storage in your drive set.
For more information, see “The MediaNet Setup Manager” on
page 25.
• Avid Unity Administration Tool — You use the Administration
Tool, which can run on the File Manager or any MediaNet client,
for day-to-day MediaNet administration. It allows you to easily
implement and dynamically alter your MediaNet configuration so
that it is always optimized to meet the rapidly changing needs of
your particular installation as well as to monitor MediaNet
activity.
For more information, see “The Administration Tool” on page 26
• Avid Unity Monitor Tool — The Monitor Tool, which runs locally
on the MediaNet Server, provides low-level MediaNet
performance-monitoring functions, and allows you to start and
stop the MediaNet File Manager process.
For more information, see “The Monitor Tool” on page 27
24
.
.
The MediaNet Setup Manager
The MediaNet Setup Manager runs locally on the MediaNet server
where you use it to set up and manage your storage hardware. You use
it to create and manage a drive set, to assign drives to various tasks
(such as administration drive, data drive, or spare), and to start and
stop the MediaNet File Manager. You also use the Setup Manager to
add and remove drives and to perform drive maintenance and error
recovery operations.
Figure 1-2 MediaNet Setup Manager
For a detailed overview of the MediaNet Setup Manager, see
Chapter 2
.
25
The Administration Tool
The Administration Tool is the primary tool for initial setup and dayto-day administration of allocation groups, workspaces, and users. It
also allows you to monitor MediaNet activity.
The Administration Tool can run locally on the MediaNet server or on
any MediaNet client, in which case it communicates with the
MediaNet File Manager service on the MediaNet Server through Fibre
Channel.
Figure 1-3 Administration Tool
For a detailed overview of the Administration Tool, see Chapter 3
26
.
The Monitor Tool
The Monitor Tool also offers a wealth of technical information about
the status of the MediaNet environment and allows you to start and
stop the File Manager from its user interface.
You start the Monitor Tool from the MediaNet Server console by
clicking the Start button, pointing to Programs, pointing to Avid Unity
MediaNet, and clicking Monitor Tool. The Avid Unity Monitor Tool
opens, displaying MediaNet File Manager summary information and
the Start File Manager and Stop File Manager buttons.
Figure 1-4 Monitor Tool
For more information about the Avid Unity Monitor Tool, see the
tool’s Help system. To access the Help system, click the Help button.
27
CHAPTER 2
MediaNet Setup Manager
This chapter describes the MediaNet Setup Manager and tells you
how to use it to create, manage, and troubleshoot a drive set. It also
describes how to start and stop the MediaNet Server.
This chapter describes:
• MediaNet Setup Manager Overview
• Starting the MediaNet Setup Manager
• Creating a New Drive Set
• Adding New MEDIArray Drives to Your MediaNet
Environment
• Adding Active Data Drives to an Existing Drive Set
• Managing Drive Problems
• Setting Drive Mode Pages
• Deleting an Existing Data Drive Set
• Rebuilding an Existing Data Drive Set
• Bringing the Drive Set Online and Taking It Offline
• Starting and Stopping the MediaNet File Manager
• Reestablishing MediaNet Setup Manager’s Connection to the
MediaNet File Manager
28
MediaNet Setup Manager Overview
All drive operations are performed from the MediaNet Setup
Manager, from which you can create a drive set and administration
drive, allocate spares, and repair the drive set in the event of drive
problems. You can also start and stop the MediaNet server.
This section provides an overview of the MediaNet Setup Manager
and the operations that you can perform from it. The remainder of this
chapter contains detailed, task-oriented descriptions of all driverelated operations.
Drive group list (Click an entry to select a
group to display in the drive list.)
Information area
Menu bar
Drive list
Figure 2-1 MediaNet Setup Manager Example Display
29
The MediaNet Setup Manager divides all drives present in the
MediaNet environment into one of four groups, reflecting their
current usage allocations and state. The four drive groups are:
Drive Group Description
Administration
Drives
Data Drive Set Shows active data drives and spare drives in the drive set.
Other
FibreChannel
Drives
Raw Drives Shows raw drives that have not been allocated for any other
Shows the administration drive.
Shows drives that are not raw, but that have not been
appropriately initialized for use in the MediaNet
environment (for example, drives that were previously part
of a MediaShare™ F/C installation).
purpose. Raw drives cannot be used until allocated.
You select the drive group that you want to view by clicking its entry
in the drive group list. All the drives in that group then appear in the
drive list, which displays the name, size, status, unit number, and
other technical information about each drive. You might need to scroll
right to see all the information. The drive list supports multiple
selections by using standard Windows NT modifiers (Shift+click to
select a list of consecutive entries, Ctrl+click to add individual entries).
All MediaNet Setup Manager functions are accessed from the various
menus provided in the menu bar.
The information area provides information about the drive set and the
status of the File Manager.
To access a comprehensive Help system that provides step-by-step
procedures and reference information for all features of the MediaNet
Setup Tool, click the Help button (yellow Question Mark icon) or
choose Help Topics from the Help menu.
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