Apple Pro Training Series. Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System. A Technical Guide to Real-World Post-Production

Lesson 15. Xsan Implementation

Apple's Xsan Shared Storage System solves an industry-wide problem: how to share large digital media files among many users, allowing simultaneous access to any particular file, while providing data security and integrity. And you get breathtaking performance to boot!

At this point, you may have decided to implement an Xsan system at your facility, or you're weighing the complexity and costs involved. In either case, this chapter provides an overview of the necessary planning, a detailed implementation section that yields an actual six-seat Xsan system, and instructions on how to set up FCP for real-world production work with Xsan.

Xsan software allows tremendous flexibility in the way its components are implemented and configured, and this chapter is by no means intended to be a standard by which to set up Xsan systems. Instead, it's a digest of some complex concepts and techniques, and it offers insight into Xsan's functionality. As you will see, there is an intimate association among the operation of Xsan, OS X Server, and Fibre Channel and Ethernet networking. Knowing all these concepts is essential to successfully implementing Xsan systems. It is highly recommended that you use an integrator with Xsan Medallion status to help integrate your Xsan system.

Before you read the information and try the exercises in this chapter, make sure that you understand the terminology and concepts in Lesson 9, especially the information on RAIDs, RAID levels, SAN concepts, and Xsan itself.