Setup guide

5 Type Y to confirm the operation. Invalid entries are removed from the Stone and Wire database.
6 Restart Stone and Wire: /etc/init.d/stone+wire start
Control fragmentation
Filesystem fragmentation is directly related to the amount of mixing and interleaving of blocks of data of
different sizes, and is aggravated by multiple I/O clients concurrently writing data to the partition.
Although some standard filesystems (such as XFS) feature advanced space allocation techniques, which make
them more resistant to fragmentation, this problem still occurs as the filesystem's free space decreases and
frequent file deletion, creation, and resizing operations take place.
Here are some steps you can take to counter filesystem fragmentation:
■ Avoid storing mixed resolution projects on a standard filesystem partition. Workflows where many
different media formats are used simultaneously tend to become fragmented more rapidly than if a single
resolution media format is used consistently.
■ Separate your media and metadata partitions. The worst contributors to fragmentation on a media storage
device are the files used to store metadata. These include clip libraries, setup files, and databases. It is
recommended to keep all metadata on a separate partition.
NOTE You may keep the audio data on the same partition as the frames. This has no significant impact on
performance or filesystem fragmentation.
■ Use the defragmentation tools provided by your filesystem vendor on a regular basis.
NOTE Defragmentation tools are often unable to realign files based on their locality of reference. Therefore,
it is advisable to reinitialise your partition periodically, by archiving your projects, formatting the partition, and
restoring the archives.
Limit concurrent usage
A filesystem performs best when only one process is accessing it. In some workflows this is not always
possible, which leads to a temporary decrease in performance. Furthermore, mixing read and write operations
can have a detrimental effect on throughput.
Autodesk strongly advises against allowing any third-party application to access the storage at the same time
as your Creative Finishing applications. The I/O operations from such applications may drastically decrease
the bandwidth available to your Creative Finishing application and also contribute to filesystem fragmentation.
NOTE Unlike direct attached storage (DAS), a Storage Area Network (SAN) is typically designed to handle concurrent
usage and will perform better under such situations.
Configure bandwidth reservation
This section provides guidelines for configuring the standard filesystem Bandwidth Manager on the Flame
or Inferno workstation to have storage bandwidth adequately distributed between the local application and
the remote Flare workstations.
Stone and Wire provides a mechanism to reserve storage bandwidth for Creative Finishing applications and
tools that use a local mount point to a standard filesystem (DAS or SAN) as their media storage. This ensures
that the local application gets the bandwidth it requires and that real-time playback on the local system is
Software configuration | 45