Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/7700
O ur company was in need of an all- in-one solution to safely back up our data using a method that any- one could access from within our facility. One of the biggest criteria in our decision was ease of use by all our staff. Our solution also had to have staying power and many years of shelf life, unlike that of backing up to removable hard drives. We had always known about LTO tech- nology and its robustness in the datacentric workflow and we have tried many different back-up systems and software over the years. Working in television these days means mountains of data. Between Red camera files, digital deliver y and versioning of commercials, a Terabyte, which used to mean a lot, now isn't uncommon. When we were offered the oppor tunity to review Cache-A's Pro-Cache we jumped at the chance and are here to repor t that we finally found a great way to back-up all our data, safely and easily. S E T U P Once we opened the box it was obvious that this was one mean machine, packing a lot in a small space. It fits in a 3U rack space on a mounted shelf or can be directly mounted with a rack, which is available sepa- rately.The Cache-A Pro-Cache is a self-con- tained LTO4A back-up appliance. At its core is a Linux-based computer driven by a Core 2 Duo, so it is definitely no slouch. After get- ting it in the rack, we plugged in an Ethernet cable and turned the machine on. Once we typed the supplied default address into a Web browser we were ready to go. It was that simple! F L E X I B I L I T Y W I T H C O N N E C TA B I L I T Y The Pro-Cache back-up appliance is meant to be used via LAN (Local Area Network) so that multiple computers can have simultaneous access to it at any given time. The basic idea is that you can hook it up on your LAN and from any Windows (SMB), Mac (AFP) or Linux (NFS) system, send files over to an internal 2TB (or 1TB mirrored) NAS (network attached stor- age) volume called a "vtape" volume. From there your data can be automatically copied over to an LTO4A tape. Alterna- tively, you can use the NAS as a place for organization by putting your data in a sepa- rate folder that is not your vtape, this is like prepping for a back-up. This provided for better organization before going to tape. LTO4A tapes come in a capacity of 800GB uncompressed and 1.6TB compressed. In the first scenario, this workflow is simply "set it and forget it" back-ups made easy. For more fine-tuned control when working with your back-ups you have ac- cess to Cache-A's main GUI by way of a Web browser, such as Safari or Firefox. Within this interface there's a file manager used for copying to and from your LTO4A tape. Addi- tionally, there are monitoring tools to get info on your tape, see your back-up in progress, erase your tape, rename your tape and a few other useful functions. It is also from this Web interface that you have the option of hook- ing up and accessing an external hard drive over USB or eSata. There is even a P2 card slot. After a shoot you can inser t your P2 card into the unit and begin to back up your digital camera master straight to your LTO4A tape. Any- one who has ever lost the data of a shoot day knows this is a huge advancement in technology. Suppor t for both P2 and SxS cards is coming in a future release. For a more advanced and robust configu- ration, you can configure your client-shared volumes to broadcast themselves via Samba or NFS and then directly mount them via the mount manager.This method will require a bit more administration because you need the know-how to set up SMB sharing on a Mac or PC and then tell Cache-A what "shares" and how you want it to mount or unmount. In the end, this is the most streamlined process for having one back-up interface to work from — ie, only a Web browser. Other connectability options are via FTP, SSH, or over a WAN (Wide Area Network), via the Internet. B O N U S N E T WO R K A few features that really help round out this product are spanned tape back-ups (this was an added feature as we were testing), automated timed back-ups, and finally a built-in searchable database that is always accessible. The spanned tape back-ups work as expected. If you have more data than what is available on your tape you can pop in another tape and your data continues with the same director y/file structure you had on the previous tape. Timed automatic back ups, which we didn't tr y out (we have another system in place) are automated back-ups based on a schedule. This involves using the mount manager utility to auto-mount shares and then setting up a back-up schedule. Finally, the built-in searchable database is helpful because you can easily find folders or files even when your tape is not mounted. The units can be firmware updated via the Web, which allows for new features to be imple- mented on existing machines. This equates to not being out of date after the purchase date — typically the case on many devices we buy these days. 42 Post www.postmagazine.com By FRED RUCKEL Creative Director fred@stitch.net And SCOTT DOMINICK Technical Operations Stitch New York www.stitch.net V I T A L S T AT S R E V I E W Cache-A's Pro-Cache PRODUCT: Cache-A Pro-Cache WEBSITE: www.cache-a.com PRICE: $9,495 · Easy facility-wide integration · Robust back-up solution · Tape spanning so no project is too big to be backed up The Pro-Cache's use of L TO4A tapes gives users access to up to 1.6TB of storage.