Can anyone point me in the direction of any documentation on what should be done for regular maintenance on Unity?  We are running Unity 4.2.1, with 5 Meridian MC rooms and 1 Meridian Symphony connected via 2GB Fiber and 3 MC Software rooms connected via ethernet.

My daily (and usually multiple times a day) maintenance consists of always checking the status of the drives on the monitor tool, checking for errors, making sure the workspaces have enough space in them, etc.  But that is really about it.  My knowledge of Unity has come from asking questions on these forums and doing my own research.  I want to make sure I'm doing everything I should be doing too keep our system in top condition.

http://community.avid.com/forums/p/29865/166048.aspx#166048

is a good post i found pretty quick.

I run ASM monthly, optimize when i delete large workspaces, keep track of my file counts daily, etc... 

Basically, search here for posts from Randall and Doc, i have to say that ive gotten a ton of tips from them.

Jay

I have never used ASM.  Should that be installed on Unity itself or run from an attached client?

It would be installed on your server. 

TO run it:

First you need to stop the file manager and make sure no clients access the server for the duration the testing runs. 

Then you start up ASM and select the drive you want to test.  In a Lanshare, its the controllers that have the drives connected to them.  With ALL 16 drives selected, you click test. 

I run a user selected test:

Test Type: Sequential Read / Random Read

Log FIle: Keep Log

Error Hault: none

Test Length: Full Surface + 60 Minutes

Number of passes 1

It takes my lanshare EX about 5 hours to complete a full test.  My ZX chassis takes about 3 hours. 

I run them at the same time, but seprate.  Each chassis has ASM installed on it, and i run them by themselves. 

I normally run them at night, and when i come in in the morning, i check them out.  If a drive fails, you preform and swap, and then call avid to get a replacement. 

You will see when a drive fails in the report ASM generates.  It will say FAIL next to it. 

Pretty simple, go through the readme on it and it has step by step instructions.

!!!!!!REMEMBER!!!!!! Never EVER preform a Sequential WRITE or Random WRITE to a chassis if you have data on it that you need, it WILL erase it!  Very important!!

Jay

So I don't know if it surprises me or shouldn't at this point, but it appears that ASM is NOT installed on our lanshare server.  It seems like a lot of things I inherited with this job are half done.

Assuming I can get my hands on a copy, is it a pretty straight forward install on the server?

Yes, very easy install.  Avid stopped installing it on the servers, why i have no idea!  You want to install it on the D:/ partition, where the unity software lives.  Here is the link to it in the dwld section of avid.com.

http://tinyurl.com/59qe77

Follow the readme and you will be fine.  Very simple.

Yep, join the club with having stuff done half ass!  I took over 4 years ago, and it took me nearly 2 years to fix all the screw ups from the last guy!

Jay

Awesome!  Thanks!

One more thing, you mentioned "keeping track of you file counts"  What did you mean by that?  What should I be looking for?

Again, sorry if this should be elementary, I learn as I go.  :)

With OS9 clients, it's 1,200 files/folder.  This is due to the reduced cache size.  With OSX and WinXP I try to keep it below 3,000 files/folder.

Also, you have to watch the file / folder counts on the LanShare also.  I know with my EX running 4.1.5, i am limited to 250,000 files, and 10,000 folders.  This is the max amount the file manager can handle. 

I havnt seen or played with an LP or the new media engine 5, so i dont know what the file/folder limit is for them. 

When you hit the max number though, thats it, your full!  So, basically i clean out renders, precomputes, and old shows.  As soon as a show is locked to time and is sent to online, the low res media on my lanshare gets deleted. A half hour show for us normally take about 3,500 to 4,000 files. 

You can view your limit and current status in the SETUP MANAGER.  Its on the left hand side.

Jay

Good points.  But to clarify, non-LANshare (regular Unity) is 500,000 files max.  Also, the 10,000 directory limit is dynamically applied.  You can get another 10,000, in exchange for 32,000 files.

Ahhhhhh, did not know this!  See, learning everyday!!:)

So with the files, you can only really just keep an eye on them and make sure that you don't max out right?  An if you are getting close, dump renders and pre-computes, etc.  And obvoiusly, delete old media when the project is done.  But other than keeping an eye on them, is there anything else to maintain about the files?

Also, I currently have a 5 hour 5 part series all editing at once.  They have been putting our little lanshare through the ringer.  As things went on, there were occasional problems like bins disappearing, clips that were digitized going offline and being unable to find the media to link to, etc.  Should I have been doing something to maintain order among the media files?

You make sure you don't max out files AND folders.   If you do,  things will simply disapear.

in a typical environment your biggest offender is folders.  People think that they can simply pile stuff on the Lanshare or Unity and there will be no problems.   Backed up projects, backed up Hard Drives (yes whole bloddy hard drives)  will push your folder count way up over the limit.   If your file counts happen to be high,  then things go missing.

Also a trip through the projects themselves can be helpful,  MC creates and leaves lots of worthless folders in it's travels (FIX THIS AVID,  It's ONLY been a problem since 3.0)   

Kill the junk that doesn't need to live there,  as this is media and active project storage,  not a spot for everyone's junk,  and things will generally be fine.

Cheers

JDS

Correct, you just keep an eye on them.  Its good practice to clean house once and a while and really go through your workspaces and clean out old media.  I just got done doing that today. 

As we said before, when you delete large quanties of media, or you have a large project like you have, its a good idea to optimize the workspaces.  Its basically like defragging a drive in windows. 

Bins disapearing and stuff going offline huh?  Well, like Randall said, watch the file count in the OMFI Media Files Folders.  When the databases gets too large, or your close to the limit that is recomended, you start ot have issues.  Id go through and clean out precomputes and orphaned medis files.  There is a great procedure for identifying them and blowing them out. 

http://tinyurl.com/6bybbs

As for bins, id look at how large the project is and the attic size.  Ive seen issues when the attic gets over 2 gigs.  I clean mine out every week. 

Jay

I see on the Setup Manager that it has Directories and Files.  Are Directories the same as folders?  I see:

Directories Max 10,000 curently 1625

Files Max 250,000 curently 62,395