"Fast access to and efficient management of data, and hardware, and particularly software innovations, such as Tiger Technology’s metaSAN, are the catalysts for success in today’s collaborative, heavy-bandwidth work environments."

 

Robi Roncarelli, Market Analyst, PIXEL Inc.

"I am giving metaSAN five stars! If I ever end up working in another facility that needs to implement a SAN, I will definitely recommend it. I’d also recommend it to anyone involved in video that needs a file-level sharing SAN."

 

Joe Kirby, Assistant Chief Engineer, FOX 54 – WZDX TV

"With metaSAN/metaLAN in place, every artist has instant access to data by simply clicking on the local hard drive in “My Computer” – and all this without having to perform sophisticated network administration."

 

Alex Rizov, FX Supervisor, Topform Studio

"I recommend metaSAN to anyone investigating a shared storage solution, especially to anyone Final Cut Pro based production house wanting to maximize their multi-station editing workflow."

 

Graeme Nattress, President of Nattress Productions Inc.

"metaSAN is the ideal SAN management solution for Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and Gigabit Ethernet networks. So far, we have tested metaSAN with Huge Media-Vault and Fibrenetix Storage systems, Qlogic SANBox switches, and Atto Celerity host bus adapters and have never experienced any compatibility issues."

 

Jörg Hoffman, PSIBER GmbH

"I’m using an HP xw9300 with 4 x SATA2 drives and a Bluefish444 HD Lust board. Whenever trying to capture DPX files, the system would run for 100-250 frames and then drops frames. After installing metaSAN and using DDO and FSO the system can now capture DPX files without any problem!"

 

Gerbrand De Ridder, Trans Tec bv

"Our customers have been clamouring for tools that will help them add intelligence to their workgroups. We are very pleased to be working with Tiger Technology to address this demand."

 

Howard Solomon, President, Integrity Data Systems

"By turning off-the shelf storage and networking components into versatile, easy to support, and highly scalable shared storage workgroups, metaSAN is ideally suited to solve a wide range of workflow configurations at a great price."

 

John Connolly, Midwest Media Group President

"metaSAN’s unique ability to allow multiple cross-platform users to share content and collaborate efficiently while maintaining very high bandwidth will afford us a highly efficient, reliable, centralized and secure storage solution."

 

Michio Fujii, CEO and President, MIC Assosciates, Inc.

metaLAN

Improve LAN connectivity with a cluster of servers

Improve LAN connectivity with metaLAN, a companion software that leverages your metaLAN Server, metaSAN, or metaSAN iSCSI servers to deliver substantial benefits over a regular LAN share.

metaLAN represents an affordable and efficient way to connect LAN clients to a centralized shared storage while providing them with block-level access, automatic load balancing, transparent failover, client bandwidth usage control, and easy cross-platform integration between Mac, Windows, and Linux clients.

With metaLAN, the shared storage mounts as a local drive instead of a network connection. You benefit from block-level access over popular TCP/IP networking technology such as Gigabit Ethernet or InfiniBand. metaLAN also provides the cross-platform file-system translation technology required to enable Mac, Windows, and Linux clients to connect to a standard NTFS or HFS+ volume.

Any number of metaLAN clients can connect to a cluster of servers. By virtualizing the shared storage, you can eliminate hotspots and I/O bottlenecks in addition to aggregating the total bandwidth of the individual servers for increased LAN performances.

The individual metaLAN clients establish a dynamic, yet persistent connection with one of the available servers. Overall efficiency of the network is improved as load from multiple clients is equally and dynamically distributed among the servers that are participating in the cluster. If a server fails, its connections are automatically and transparently re-distributed among remaining servers. You can therefore easily add/or remove servers, or clients without disrupting applications or service.

Bandwidth control lets you ensure a fair utilization of the available network resources so you can reserve or limit how much bandwidth each client gets. metaLAN is compatible with standard applications, including Adobe Production Studio and Apple Final Cut Pro. In addition, the unique virtualization for Avid® feature enables sharing of media files among multiple users of Avid® software on Windows platforms for efficient workgroup collaboration.

metaLAN is easy to setup and does not require complex network protocols such as AFP, SMB, or CIFS to be installed and configured. Software licenses are attached to the servers, not the individual clients. This greatly simplifies the management of large facilities as there is no need to track licensing for the individual computers or OS platforms.

metaLAN is ideal for render farms, and enterprises looking for cost-effective ways to centralize their assets without the performance bottlenecks and lack of scalability associated with conventional NAS. The shared storage can be based on industry standard storage and networking components, such as Fibre Channel, SAS, or iSCSI. metaLAN also supports link aggregation (IEEE 802.3ad) to further increase the throughput available to LAN clients.

While metaSAN and metaSAN iSCSI can participate in the SAN as client or server workstations, metaLAN Server software can only be used as server gateways for metaLAN clients (i.e. the metaLAN Server host do not have direct access to the storage). metaLAN represents a better alternative to traditional network shares. metaSAN, metaSAN iSCSI, metaLAN Server and metaLAN software are sold through a worldwide network of authorized Tiger Technology Resellers. These value-added Resellers can provide pre-sales consultancy, integration services as well as post-sales support.

Contact us today to find out how you can benefit from Tiger Technology.

Heterogeneous operating system support
Windows, Mac OS X Tiger, and Linux users can share content and collaborate efficiently.

Combine throughput of individual SAN servers into cluster/sec
Automatic load balancing between individual servers and metaLAN clients eliminates hotspots and I/O bottlenecks.

Transparent and easy to use
Mounts remote volumes as logical drives (as opposed to network shares) with direct block-level disk access to ensure efficient use of LAN bandwidth.

Complete integration with standard IT management tools
Native NTFS or HFS+ file system simplifies maintenance and troubleshooting. Supports volumes up to 18 exabytes in size. Native Active Directory or Open Directory OS access rights management means there is no need to manage additional accounts and passwords.

Centralized licensing scheme
metaLAN licenses are not tied to any specific machine or OS. This greatly simplifies deployment and maintenance in larger facilities.

Save on Microsoft Client Access Licenses (CALs)
metaLAN is a client software that uses TCPI/IP socket connections and does not require Microsoft Windows 2003 Server nor CALs as it doesn't use standard network file protocol such as NFS, SMB and CIFS.

Save on dedicated metadata controller
No need to purchase extra licences, dedicated computers, HBA, etc.

Per-node bandwidth usage control
Bandwidth reservation and bandwidth quota for each client computer allows for a fair and optimal distribution of the available network bandwidth.

Soft zoning
Enables the shared storage to be partitioned in a number of zones that permit the compartmentalization of data for increased security.

Virtualization for Avid®
Enables sharing of media files among multiple users of Avid® software on Windows platforms for efficient workgroup collaboration.

24/7 mission-critical ready
Innovative multi-point gateway technology eliminates single-point server dependencies by providing persistent shared storage connection and transparent failover.

Affordable, time-tested, field proven technology
Tiger Technology software is priced per connected seat to the shared storage. Thousands of users worldwide are already relying on Tiger Technology for their daily operations.

Tiger Technology recommends using multi-port NIC with link aggregation on the server(s).

Check metaSAN System Requirements for other recommendations.

There are many ways to integrate metaLAN clients using either metaLAN Server or metaSAN servers. Here are some of the most popular setups. Click on the link below to see various SAN configurations:

Microsoft Windows centric LAN cluster

This setup offers transparent failover and load balancing.

Mac OS centric LAN cluster

This setup offers transparent failover and load balancing.

Mixed SAN/LAN workgroup

Use Fibre Channel where you need high performance. Use Ethernet everywhere else.

Virtualization for media sharing in Avid workgroups (Windows)

This setup allows multiple Avid workstations to simultaneously share access to the same media files.