Tolis Group Delivers ArGest Solutions

Tolis Group, Inc. announces the availability of complete solutions for the media and entertainment industry that provide a single source solution for the ingest, storage, management, and archival of media assets.

Combining connectivity from Sonnet Technologies, Inc. and ATTO Technology, Inc., storage from Seagate Technology LLC and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, CatDV asset management from Square Box Systems Ltd., tape technologies from Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP, and archival from DAX Archiving Solutions, BV and Tolis Group, Tolis Group’s ArGest solutions provide a single source for all components required to manage and archive assets – from standalone videographers to large studios supporting multiple projects and long-term archival.

“We’ve been getting requests for a complete data management and archival package for more than a year,” said Tim Jones, Tolis Group president and CTO. “We were sending customers to multiple vendors for the missing software pieces with varying success. As a result, we were constantly hearing the same question – ‘Why can’t we just buy all of this from you guys?’ – that was all it took. Our next step was to connect with the best of breed vendors to build a complete solution.”

By combining Tolis Group’s existing ArGest disk and tape storage technologies with CatDV and DAX Broadcast Archive, Tolis Group is able to provide HDD and SSD storage, LTO standalone and library tape solutions and all of the software required to manage and archive an organization’s deluge of digital content.

“DAX is excited by the effort that Tolis Group are putting into the delivery of a robust and reliable asset management and archival solution,” said Kees Machielsen, CEO, DAX. “Tolis Group have brought a single point of sales and support to the asset management world with their ArGest bundles. By integrating disk and tape hardware with DAX Broadcast Archive, CatDV and BRU Server software into a complete solution, they have simplified the purchase and support required for users both small and large.”

“Our goal is to provide solutions that our customers truly need – the key word here being ‘solutions’. With an average movie requiring 100’s of TB of storage and associated backup and archival,” Jones continued, “we recognized that simple disk to tape products were not the answer. We recognized Square Box’s CatDV family as the most advanced, yet useable Digital Asset Management solution available. By adding DAX’s Broadcast Archive layer to our BRU Server environment, we are able to provide a single interface – the CatDV Desktop – for complete management and archival of assets without requiring IT staff to manage those operations. Once configured, management is a simple mouse click from within the CatDV Desktop interface.”

Solutions range from a single LTO-5 or LTO-6 standalone tape drive to 500TB of RAID disk and multi-LTO library configurations ranging to 144 tape slots.

Pricing for a standalone LTO-5 drive starts at $5,387 including a single CatDV Pro Desktop license, DAX Broadcast Archive Lite/20, BRU Server M&E Edition, ArGest LTO-5 Desktop Cube, ATTO ExpressSAS H680 HBA, LTO-5 tape, Cleaning Cartridge, and SAS cable. The Sonnet Echo Express SE Thunderbolt to PCIe bridge chassis is available for $399 more and includes the Thunderbolt cable. Other Thunderbolt solutions are also available.

A midrange solution providing 32TB of rack mounted disk, a 24 slot LTO-6 library, xMac Mini Server 1U Chassis, a 5 seat license for CatDV Desktop Pro and CatDV Server, DAX Broadcast Archive Pro, and BRU Server M&E Edition is $33,946.

Packages including desktop and 1U rackmount HD or SSD drive capacities of 2TB to 4TB, multiple LTO tape drives, and larger slot capacities are available.