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NYC - If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere
by James McKenna
(October 16, 2017) NAB NY is less than a week away, and when it comes to New York I start to get nostalgic. I truly believe that NYC is the real litmus test of an idea, an institution, or a product. For Facilis, the city was a proving ground in the early days of the company. Coming out of a chief-engineer’s role in NY myself, I knew that if we could satisfy clients there, we’d have a solution we could sell around the world. Now, there are more Facilis systems in Manhattan than anywhere else in the world. So yes, New York City is special to us as we prepare to set up camp for NAB NY 2017.
It’s a tough town to conquer, especially in a creative industry. Small-business dynamics can take their toll on technology vendors with long histories. There’s always a newer, shinier product ready to take the place of anything old and tarnished. We get that, which is why we build our storage products to last, and we revise them often to address the latest workflows. It’s why we invented a custom Shared File System, and didn’t just stick our name on off-the-shelf NAS and RAID configurations like so many others. We know that when we make a claim with regards to performance, ease-of-use, or reliability, it’s something our customers are banking on, and something that they can stake their very reputations on. We take that very seriously, and our customers tell us it’s a key reason they keep coming back.
We look forward to seeing our existing customers as well as those who’ve been staring at their older, slower storage systems wondering how they’ll meet the challenges of the next job. Visitors to our NAB NY booth (N.235) will get to see version 7 of our shared filed system which is available now. Available with Version 7.0 is the new Facilis Hub Server, a performance aggregator and Shared FS offload server that can be added to new and existing TerraBlock systems. We made a deliberate decision to protect our customers’ investments with this new product. Existing Facilis networks can double their existing bandwidth when adding a Hub Server, and increase ease-of use and resiliency with load-balancing and RAID51 cross-server data mirroring.
If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure and check out our new browser-based, mobile compatible Web Console which lets you maintain control over your facility, monitor users and volume usage and change volume access in real time. Now you can make all those administrative changes from your iPad! Web Console also includes connectivity failover, even from fibre-channel to Ethernet, and has a great implementation of LDAP user lookup.
A long-time feature request, our Open Storage Attachment feature promotes generic storage to Facilis Shared File System volumes. We understand that non-Facilis storage can be an important part of the facility infrastructure, so we’re opening up the ability to utilize it fully in your shared storage network.
One of the best things about the storage business is that companies that are growing and expanding can never have enough space. With the latest 4K+, HDR, HFR, VR/360 projects, it’s never been more important to shop wisely when investing in the critical infrastructure that keeps your facility humming. I hope you’ll drop by and see what we’ve been up to. I think you’ll be impressed.
