ArGest® BRU Server™ or ArGest® Backup or Both for our M&E Customers

We are asked frequently if our M&E customers should use ArGest® BRU Server or ArGest® Backup, what's the difference between them, and in many cases, should you be using both?


ArGest® Backup is designed as a hands on, easy, but extremely powerful drag and drop product for use for client
     deliverables, archiving, and general single system drag and drop backup and restore tasks.


The Producer's Edition™ license also integrates industry-essential features such as automated asset gathering for
     applications such as FCP X, Adobe Premier Pro CS6/CC, and others, as well as providing drag and drop backup and
     restore using CMX3600 EDL files (with the EDL add on license), and exported XML project files.


Studio and production detail metadata is tracked on a per job basis and provides an easily scannable QR code for media


Doubler Mode™ provides simultaneous creation of both archives and client deliverables.


Tools for managing tar and LTFS are included with the Producer's Edition™ license.


All archives are restorable and sharable with your clients on Linux, Windows, or macOS regardless of the OS you used to
     create them, and client restore is always free.


A single task at one time is supported--so you are either backing up/archiving, or restoring files, or
     performing the Doubler Mode™ task.


So when should ArGest® BRU Server come into the mix for M&E use?


ArGest® BRU Server provides:


 • True client / server architecture

 • Complete backup and restore support for macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD/TruNAS, Solaris, A/IX, HP-UX and others

 • Multiple streams of tasks--if you have more than one tape device for example, you can backup/archive
        data to one drive while restoring from another drive

 • Multiple user, or class accounts, allows for data compartmentalization and access control

 • Multi-user, simultaneous access to catalogs and archival content from any connected system

 • Access to archive content catalogs and data restore to any supported client platform

 • Alternate platform restore regardless of original host platform (Mac to Windows, Windows to Linux, etc.)

 • A moderate server can support 25 simultaneous client systems (network-dependent)

 • Disk to Disk (D2D), Disk to Tape (D2T), and Disk to Disk to Tape (D2D2T) out of the box

 • Supports multiple, simultaneous client disk to disk client operations (network dependent)

 • Supports multiple tape drives and libraries for multiple, simultaneous backup and restore operations

 • Integration with CatDV for complete Digital Asset Management


Here's an example configuration used by one of the major studios here in their vaulting environment:


 • Xeon 8 Core / 16 Thread Server

 • CentOS Linux 7.3 64bit

 • 32GB RAM

 • 2TB mirrored system SSD

 • 64TB attached SAS DASD

 • BRU Server Network Edition

 • DAX Broadcast Archive

 • CatDV Enterprise Server

 • 2 standalone LTO-7 drives in our 1U QuietRACK assembly

 • TGL6800Flex expandable 80 slot tape library head with 2 LTO-7 drives

 • TGL6800Flex 80 slot expansion with 2 LTO-8 drives (160 slots total)


They use the CatDV Pegasus desktop app to ingest and log all media.  From there, they use our CatDV plugin to archive, purge, and restore the media.  Only 2 people on their team are IT level to manage the server and their systems, while everyone else is what you would find in any media team - editors, colorists, VFX people, producers, directors, etc.


Because all of the day-to-day archival is handled directly within CatDV, the CatDV users only have to learn one new set of menus to fully archive, check verification status, purge unnecessary media, and restore data.


Outside of "IT" things (unexpected server shutdown, hardware failure, etc.), the IT team only gets involved when they are shelving a project and moving the media into the physical vault.


The decision is based on your workflow and needs, and both ArGest® Backup and ArGest® BRU Server licenses can coexist on the same machine.


