In order to plan the right backup for studio environments, you usually need to include one or two machines for each editing room or each composer as well as common shared machines for office work and communication processes.
The setup described below can be adapted and easily scaled for 3 – 10 machines. It can be refined and expanded to a much larger studio setup. It is adjustable to the needs of composers, studio staff and expansions of the upcoming years.

I am a consultant and systems engineer specialized in audio, post production and broadcast domains. The setup I am about to describe is used in a similar way at several of my clients facilities.

The basic audio setup includes a dedicated Mac Pro machine running OS X Snow Leopard Server (not required for PresSTORE 4.x), which serves as a P5 server. The Mac Pro has about 6TB internal storage (4 x 1,5 TB SATA disks). It will soon be expanded with an external 6TB Promise Raid5, which will be connected via FireWire800 to the Mac Pro server.

The main backup strategy is a disk backup. Attaching LTO-4 tapes makes offsite backups possible, if the backup plans are adjusted accordingly.

Two Mac Pro machines are used as main production workstations, running a mixed suite of Apple LogicStudioPro, Ableton Live 8, VSL EnsemblePro, Native Instruments Komplete 6 and several other common used PlugIns/Instruments. A MacBook Pro is running Ableton Live 8, Propellerheads Reason, NI Machine and NI Traktor Pro.

The setup is complemented by an Intel Mac mini expanded with a 320 GB drive. It is used as a central media station mainly hosting a shared iTunes Library. A “StreamToMe” server (freeware) enables iPad and iPhone access to movie and audio files, even from remote locations in a smart way.

The right backup strategy for audio facilities is best laid out by differentiating between two different types of data. There is the more “static content” i.e. virtual sampler libraries, Apple Loops, LivePacks and custom sample libraries and maybe an iTunes library used for reference purpose.

Additionally, you have “changing content”, the day by day/hour by hour changing files like songs, project file versions, audio live recordings etc., but also office text documents, emails and so on.

The main static content is the largest portion of the backup but won’t change much. This can easily be taken care of with a scheduled backup plan running an incremental-backup once a day, set with a long retention time.

This backup plan will address the “static” directories on the two workstations. It takes care of the full NI Komplete 6 Sample Library, LogicStudioPro content, AppleLoops, Ableton LivePack Content (all located in “Application Support” directories) and the sampler custom sample Exs24/NI Kontakt 4 library. As a result, all those files are available for a quick restore.

My example backup case is currently backing up more than 320 GB per workstation. A prerequisite for this plan is that its content rarely changes; it only gets some additions a few times per month. It is working like an “archive” giving the ability to quickly restore parts in case a file gets corrupted or a total restore is required. Recycling policy is set to a large value which is usually not recommendable for critical data. A total loss of this data, however, is very unlikely, as there is an additional copy available on all those original sample library CDs/DVDs on the shelf. In case a restore is necessary, it is much faster and convenient to do it via P5 rather than flipping through all those DVDs and having to insert them one after another.

The purpose of this backup is to save the “work in progress files”. These files are often part of a longer editing process, upcoming sound design ideas or new additions to the custom sample library that still need some final work in sample editing tools like Redmatica’s KeymapPro 2.

The size of this backup varies. The content changes when being worked on and its final version will be moved to the other folders covered by the “static content” backup plan described above. For this purpose, the floating data backup plan runs incrementally every 4 hours and is set to a much shorter retention time.

Arguably the most important backup is the individual backup of every machine´s music projects and its related audio data and settings. I chose P5 Backup2Go for this purpose on each Mac Pro, MacBook Pro as well as the Mac mini media station. The key is the flexibility in using Backup2Go to individually set the schedules and backup paths directly from the easy to use client workstation browser.

This setup is ideal to incrementally back up changed and newly created LogicPro9 Projects, Ableton Live Projects and all newly recorded or created audio files and effect settings. On a few machines, the backup also includes user e-mails, documents, and pictures and in case of the Mac mini media station include its shared iTunes Library. In case some files get corrupted or lost, Backup2Go offers an easy restore. It can be initiated from the client workstation in the same way as downloading a file from a website and is ideal for a “musician’s mind”.

For larger or remotely administered audio facilities it is possible to pre-define group based rules for workstations and create fixed settings i.e. to fully backup all user folders from the client machine.

The center of the setup is the OS X Snow Leopard Server machine, which runs PresSTORE 4 services for the PresSTORE workstations and houses centralized storage for the backups. It also hosts a Mac OS X WebServer running a Wiki page, providing a VPN service for remote access ability directly to the facility, NetBoot and other system deployment tools for quick re-installation and system upgrades. All those OS X server settings and data are important and are backed up to an external FireWire drive. Although I have a PresSTORE backup plan which is started manually, I’ll also run at least one of these server backups by hand to keep my UNIX skills trained so I’ll use good old ‘rsync’ and some shell scripts started by launchd.

Thanks to the ease of PresSTORE 4 I don’t have to create such a setup for each workstation. This gives me time to concentrate on music and consulting clients on their setups.

PresSTORE P4 Studio Edition is the right bundle for the setup described above. An unlimited media and storage license lets you include all related project files, audio recordings and media files. Backing up ever growing high resolution sample libraries, important custom settings, as well as regular business documents can easily be done.

Henry Stamerjohann is a co-founder of *headmin – systems administrator network. He is part of consultancy and service team centered around Apple and Unix solutions. He has almost two decades of experience in professional audio productions worldwide. He has produced some off his own records, conducted prerelease testings and consulted for various audio equipment manufacturers. He enjoys experimenting with innovative production technologies. Henry is based out of Hamburg, Germany. http://www.headmin.com