YoYottaID Automation Backup Software for Mac OSX
Do you have lots of LTO tapes? Do you need to create large archives and restore media efficiently? Put the tapes into an HPE, IBM, MagStor, Oracle SAS, Overland-Tandberg, Qualstar, Quantum, Spectra, StorageTek, or Tandberg Library and let YoYotta Automation take control. YoYotta Automation can control one library and up to 4 LTO drives, these can be any mix of library or standalone
YoYotta runs well on the new Apple Silicon M1 Macs and macOS 11 Big Sur. Any Mac running Big Sur will need new software drivers for SAS and FibreChannel interface cards and Thunderbolt LTO drives. MagStor has released new drivers for their Thunderbolt 3 LTO drives and we have tested them with M1 Macs.
LTFS Archiving
Linear Tape File System is a standard format for writing files to tape. It's ideal for storing production and post media as the LTO tapes can be mounted and read on Linux, macOS, and Windows. You aren't locked into a proprietary archive.
YoYotta LTFS
YoYotta LTFS includes all the features of YoYotta and adds the ability to create archives in parallel to two standalone LTO drives using LTFS. Quickly create industry-standard archives on LTO-8, LTO-7, LTO-6, or LTO-5 tapes. YoYotta names, formats, mounts, and repairs tape archives. During the archive YoYotta calculates both MD5 and xxHash checksums and then automatically uses these to read back and verify every file.
YoYotta remembers the contents of every tape created so later on you can search to find the location of shots.
Automation tapes and drives
YoYotta Automation monitors the library for changes and shows all the loaded tapes on the left, the empty slots on the right. The tape drives are shown at the bottom. There are buttons to manually move, format, mount, and eject tapes, but YoYotta will do all this automatically.
YoYotta Automation supports up to 4 drives and 160 tape slots. Both mail slots and ordinary slots can be used for tapes, so no spaces are wasted. However, it can be quicker to open just the mail slot on a library so the Export button will automatically move a tape into a mail slot.
Make sure that the full 6+2 barcode label is shown for each tape in the table. For example, here Slot 2 has a tape barcode YY8021 with L8 indicating LTO-8.
If only 6 characters are shown then adjust the barcode settings using the LTO library webpage.
For all libraries set left alignment for barcode labels and 8 character label length.
HPE Barcode Length Reported to Host : 8
IBM Barcode Length returned to Host : 8
Quantum Set Media Barcode Format : Plus Six
Why a limit of 4 drives? With the faster speed of LTO-7 and LTO-8, it’s hard for a single computer to provide enough bus bandwidth to keep 6 restores or 3 jobs writing to dual tape sets. This is a typical workflow for a 6 drive library and is before looking at NAS/SAN speed. There are YoYotta customers with larger libraries and by partitioning the library you can use two or more YoYotta systems. The recent Mac mini is ideal as an Automation Mac. Splitting up the workflow like this maintains high performance. Use YoYotta Server to sync the metadata from each Mac.
All tapes must have barcode labels
The labels have a unique 6 character code with either L5, L6, L7, M8, or L8 on the end for LTO-5, LTO-6, LTO-7, or LTO-8 tapes.For example 123456L5, ABCDEFL6, YO1234L6, 17376AL5.
YoYotta will use the barcode to format the tape. No need to manually enter the barcode. This is an LTO standard, using more than 6 characters means that the tapes will be difficult to use.
We can supply LTO tapes in Europe at great prices with custom YoYotta labels printed on durable plastic. They have a standard barcode, plus you can add unique text labels on the left as shown opposite. So you can clearly label Main and Safety, or add a project ident. Unlike other labels each tape can have a different code, you are not limited to a set sequence.
- Select Media Source
- Select Backup Destination
- Start Backup
LTO + Asset Metadata
After the archive completes the archived assets' metadata will be stored in the database. Then Restore files using the Project Browser or use the Conform option to restore clips from the archive using editorial timeline AAF, ALE, CSV, EDL, or FCPXML files.
Search for Assets
YoYottaID stores full media metadata including codec, resolution, duration. It's quick to locate media and you can see where it's stored. Open a virtual folder showing all the media from your search in one place. Make PDF reports from searches, handy to give the producer a list of shoot durations for all media types.