IMS1000 and unsupported drives and Supply Chain developments for EOL cinema kit.

[James Gardiner]

I have a friend cinema with a bunch of IMS1000 (IMS1000 and IMS2000 being EOL), and they would really like to get more than 3x 1TB drives on it. I understand there are super expensive 2tb drives on the support list but they are super hard to get and... still spinning rust.
Samsung 870 SSD SATA disks are super cheap now. And FAR more reliable/faster than any spinning disk. The 870 SSD work fine in an IMS2000. I swapped one out today. I have been using non-supported Seagate 2TB spinning disks for 5 years in IMS2000 and never had a problem. They may fail slightly more but are 1/4 the price of enterprise equivalents. Likely faster, use less power and have a smaller heat output due to being newer technology than the original disks supported for IMS1000 and IMS2000 use.

However, the IMS1000 appear to refuse to accept any unsupported drives. I do remember hearing that Dolby was opening up this issue as so many people are using unsupported drives now and the units are EOL.
Does anyone know if it's possible to get an IMS1000 to also accept non-supported drives, or is it a hardware implementation issue and not possible? Would updating to the latest software help?

This is likely a big issue going forward as supply chain issues are hurting older hardware much worse as money is not being invested into the older FABS with bigger resister sizes. So, it's next to impossible to get some older kit as the chips they are engineered around are not available. They are too busy making chips for washing machines to fit in a small run of some unique chip for 1000 units used to keep OLD custom tech running. Better to certify newer tech that does the same thing. But there is no money in that so why would the vendor bother.. This could become a major issue for equipment in cinema, on such small runs. It could get very difficult to fix EOL kit going forward.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

James, to the best of my knowledge there are no 2TB drives on the support list for IMS1000. I wish there were.
Last time I checked there were only two 1TB drives compatible. There were reports in this forum, yet, that suggested 1TB drives that were not in that list, working.
The RAID controller on IMS1000 is hardware. That is most probably where the inability to host drives of a larger capacity resides.

Edit:
I don't know if there could be a hack to use another controller and/or the mdadm (Software RAID that the DCP2K and ShowVault are using) for such a storage upgrade.

[James Gardiner]

To close this off, Yes IMS1000, there is no way to upgrade beyond 1TB hard drives. Dolby confirmed with me that a NAS dedicated to the IMS1000 is the only way to expand its capability.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I would prefer a good NAS to what's in the IMS-1000 anyway. The only decent software raid I have worked with is in the SA and SX GDC servers. The PDP-3000 drive box that's used with the SX-3000 and SR-1000 is hardware raid.

[Leo Enticknap]

Can you play straight from an external NAS on an IMS1000? You can with a 3000, but my understanding is that this isn't possible on a 2000 or 1000.

[Elia Orselli]

It IS possible on a 2000 (just yesterday I've sold and installed a qnap nas with 4x4TB HDD for this puropse).

[Leo Enticknap]

Interesting. About six months ago I asked Dolby about that, because we had a place with a 2000 doing a festival for the first time, and they needed way more space than the 3 x 1 TB then installed. I was told that the recommended NAS model for the 2000 only enabled you to transfer content to and from local storage; not to play out directly, and that if direct playback from a NAS was required, we needed to swap out the 2000 for a 3000. As there was a 3-4 month wait time for a 3000, we ended up putting 3 x 2TB WD Red SSDs in it - the unit was out of warranty, so no issues there. That just about gave them the storage they needed.

[Elia Orselli]

According to section 13.22 of IMS2000 user manual "NAS Manager":

The IMS2000 supports NAS. This provides extra HD space on the network, increasing storage capacity. It allows you to ingest to and play from the NAS device.

There's a list of certified nas models, but it's even possible to use other NASes models if they met requirements (sufficiently fast, NFS, SNMP).
Probably they answered what you say thinking that you want to remove completely the internal RAID disks: that is possible with IMS3000, but not with IMS2000.

[James Gardiner]

Just so you know. Dolby indicated to me that yes, you can play off a dedicated NAS with an IMS1000. (I don't see why it wouldn't work on a 1000 if it worked on a 2000, they are very similar in this area.)
You MUST use the NAS units that are certified as listed in the NAS setup screen on the IMS. You cannot set up your own NFS share and point it at that as...
The system uses the SNMP OIDs that those units expose for monitoring the NAS status. So no option. Must use a certified unit as its custom programmed against each of them.

On this. With the experience in the room, have many people utilised playing of a NAS, and if so, seen any issues in doing so?

[Steve Guttag]

Only on the IMS3000. I have two sites that use the Dolby supplied NAS as their main storage. So far, no particular complaints.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Just so you know. Dolby indicated to me that yes, you can play off a dedicated NAS with an IMS1000. (I don't see why it wouldn't work on a 1000 if it worked on a 2000, they are very similar in this area.)
You MUST use the NAS units that are certified as listed in the NAS setup screen on the IMS. You cannot set up your own NFS share and point it at that as...
The system uses the SNMP OIDs that those units expose for monitoring the NAS status. So no option. Must use a certified unit as its custom programmed against each of them.

On this. With the experience in the room, have many people utilised playing of a NAS, and if so, seen any issues in doing so?

And many NAS units only accept drives that are in a firmware .xls list. But you can go into the firmware, copy the .xls list and add what ever drive you want. Then replace the .xls list in the firmware with your updated list. Had to do this with my Netgear NAS, and it worked fine.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

The choices given on an IMS1000 menu are:
Netgear: ReadNas 2120 (HDD M/N: HUS724020ALA640)
Seagate: STDE100 (HDD M/N: WD2003FYYS)
Seagate: STDN200

I have asked before if anyone has implemented the idea, but I had no feedback.
The specific models of NAS seem to be out of circulation and, while the festival days render them necessary, I don't know if there is a straightforward way for someone to check, without going second hand.

In any case, Jamie, if you end up using one of them, your input would be most welcome.

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

Just so you know. Dolby indicated to me that yes, you can play off a dedicated NAS with an IMS1000. (I don't see why it wouldn't work on a 1000 if it worked on a 2000, they are very similar in this area.)
You MUST use the NAS units that are certified as listed in the NAS setup screen on the IMS. You cannot set up your own NFS share and point it at that as...
The system uses the SNMP OIDs that those units expose for monitoring the NAS status. So no option. Must use a certified unit as its custom programmed against each of them.

On this. With the experience in the room, have many people utilised playing of a NAS, and if so, seen any issues in doing so?

Following up to the matter, since it was something that was troubling me for a long time, I can say this:
I am in the midst of integrating a ReadyNas 2120 (v2) to an IMS1000 system.

Dolby responded that, from SWv.2.6.6 on, it's supported. The content ingested there through the server will seem the same as if it was on "local storage" on the CineLister and the TMS.
The model prerequisite has to do with NFS or NFS4, which is common these days, and the SNMP public profile to be similar. Meaning that a more recent, compatible model Netgear NAS may as well do the job.

I more or less followed intuition and the IMS2000 manual to set the NAS with an NFSv4 share, activate SNMP and then point IMS1000 to the /data/share-folder-name/
I am not sure if everything I set was optimal, like "UID/GID squashing" set to "No root squash", or "Enable async", but it worked and I ended up with 5.44 TBs of additional storage.

I did check playout, and I didn't find anything alarming on that.
I plan to check tomorrow with a high-bitrate DCP, to figure out if it makes any difference.

I haven't yet put the NAS in live action, because I need a switch, so I can have it through the Data/Theatre network, rather than the Control one.

The ingest is slower, when going directly to the NAS (you get a choice) and you can't have that choice by using the TMS.
Then, you can copy from "Local Storage" to the NAS, but it doesn't get any faster. Not significantly, from what I saw today.
Yet, the benefits of having the storage quadrupled, supersedes the NFS-write-speed limitations.
Especially when one has a festival, like Leo mentions, where each day they have different DCPs, one can accommodate and schedule much more days ahead.

I hope that answers your questions, I was looking forward to know about that myself.
IMS1000 gets obsolte more and more, but I suppose there is still a number of those around, huffing and puffing with more and more DCPs averaging 200GBs.
(300GB DCPs are no strangers any more.)

[Leo Enticknap]

Coincidentally, I was having this conversation with someone at Cinemacon only a couple of days ago!

I have installed WD Red SSDs in out-of-warranty Alchemies (all three variants: original, +, and -X), IMS2000s, and IMS3000s, and all have worked without problem or issue. The only slight annoyance is that on an IMS2000, the RAID will show as being in a warning state, because the software is looking for SMART parameters that don't exist in an SSD. But they've still worked very well for us, and in the sizes up to 2TB are now cost effective. The 4TB ones are still around $450: once you've bought three of those, you might as well buy a NAS (IMHO).

[Steve Guttag]

My personal, non-scientific, feeling is that 4TB total storage, for a "typical" cinema server is about optimal. More than that and you are just delaying the inevitable housekeeping while making it a larger chore and less than that you are forcing, particularly the larger complexes, to constantly make space for incoming titles. For our festival/screening room crowds, then yes, the NAS systems with significantly larger storage makes sense as a lot of titles that play 1-2 times may be on hand for any given day over a week or so.