Whenever you hear people talk about shared storage options for audio and video, you immediately think of expensive fibre channel systems. However, the AVFS (Ardis Virtual File System) protocol brings a more cost effective solution to users of Pro Tools, Avid, Final Cut Pro, Media100, Pyramix, Sadie and many others. 

The Dynamic Drive Pool provides a cost effective solution when 

• Superior speed and functionality - SAN speed with NAS functionality
• Unique project and file level sharing - All video, film and audio post production applications can share and exchange project and media data
• Easy to install, maintain and operate - One single box using standard Ethernet does it all
• Cost-saving solution - Standard Ethernet instead of fibre channel means lower storage server costs due to very effective bandwidth usage

The Technology behind the DDP

The backbone of the Dynamic Drive pool is Ardis Technologies' AVFS/iSCSI (SCSI over Ethernet) system, which combines the performance benefits of the iSCSI SAN protocol with the NAS intelligence using a single Ethernet network.

Benefits of the AVFS

• 3 times faster than traditional NFS and SMB/CIFS
•  runs over existing Ethernet infrastructure
•  transparent to users and applications
•  project and File Level based Sharing
•  Windows, Mac OSX and Linux client support
•  clients can use either NFS, SMB/CIFS or AVFS access
•  Storage servers support more clients, users and applications than with NFS or SMB/CIFS
• Typical SAN setup
• 

Dynamic Drive Pool setup

Because iSCSI exclusively uses Ethernet there suddenly is only one network infrastructure to consider; standard Ethernet with standard Ethernet switches:

So there it is: the DDP, a storage server which connects to standard Ethernet and provides high bandwidth project and file level based sharing for applications such as those from Avid, Apple, Adobe, Matrox, Digidesign, and others all out of one box. 

DDP Interface

The DDP graphical user interface is fast and intuitive. Creating, resizing, renaming and deleting a drive could not be easier. Administrative privileges dictate the level of the configuration of your system. 

• Total Capacity:  4TB (8 x 500GB SATA Hard Drives)
• 4 Users*

* A user is defined as an audio postproduction user working with 25 tracks of 48 KHz, 24 bit audio and one stream of DV25 or similar video. For audio applications it is always best to select a system with as many drives as possible since drive seek time is the limiting factor.