The Monk Chooses Sonnet Fusion DX800RAID

Sonnet Technologies, Inc. announced that THE MONK, an independent video post-production company based in
Cape Town, South Africa, has chosen Sonnet’s Fusion DX800RAID eight-drive RAID SATA storage system to support on-location
editing and provide storage for production of high-end retail commercials and
other television productions. 

The owner of THE MONK, video producer/online artist Grant
Aerts, performs post-production finishing work for a wide range of commercials,
long-form TV programs, and local features using Autodesk Smoke for Mac,
running on a dual (2 x 2.26 GHz) quad-core Intel Xeon Mac Pro. Aerts chose
the Fusion DX800RAID for its performance and its reliability resulting
from data protection in case of a drive failure. 

"I’ve been very pleased with the Fusion DX800RAID; in
fact, it’s the most stable unit in my small arsenal of hardware," said
Aerts. "Since most of my projects are finished in HD using 4K source
material, I have very demanding requirements for storage and backup – and high
performance and fault tolerance are absolutely critical. The DX800RAID definitely
can handle these files and offers the reliability and easy expandability I
require for managing uncompressed HD while protecting the data at the same
time." 

Aerts selected the 8TB version of the Fusion DX800RAID,
which delivers performance and proven data safety in a direct-attached disk array for the desktop. With its eight drives
formatted as a RAID 5 group (data protection for a single-drive failure), a
Fusion DX800RAID yields read and write file transfer speeds of up to
870 MB/sec and 850 MB/sec, respectively – and its whisper-quiet operation makes
it suited for use in noise-sensitive environments. The reliability of the
Fusion DX800RAID is enhanced through SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) 2.0
compliance, a feature more commonly found on enterprise storage systems, as
well as enhanced S.M.A.R.T data reporting for each hard drive installed in the system. 

"With the SES functionality, I can monitor the status
of the drives, power supply, and temperature in real time through
easy-to-access utility screens, or by glancing at the conveniently placed LEDs
on the enclosure," added Aerts. "Plus, S.M.A.R.T. data can be used to
notify me of an impending drive failure, enabling me to minimize downtime as a
result."