Evolphin Zoom supports two different asset storage models:
- Indexed/External Asset Model
- Direct Ingest/Managed Asset Model
Indexed/External Asset Model
This requires Zoom VideoFX or VideoLX license with the base Zoom Server. It is used to index raw camera footage, large-format videos, read-only files that need to be represented in the Zoom Database via a proxy or a placeholder object. Primarily used by Video editing tools such as Adobe Premiere Pro to link to native high-res video files as checking out large read-only footage would be too slow and would consume too much local storage on the workstation.
This model supports indexing multiple “Third-Party Mount points” (TPM). This could be used to support multiple brands with their separate SAN/NAS volumes to store native high-res footage/videos. Indexed assets are treated as read-only files by Zoom and are not iterated/edited and versioned with Zoom.
Direct Ingest/Managed Asset Model
This is the default storage model for all assets that are either edited/iterated upon in a creative workflow or are small enough to not require a proxy workflow, for instance, project files, images or graphics. This model uses the Zoom de-duplication feature to efficiently manage the storage associated with the versioned assets such as an Adobe Photoshop or InDesign file.
The direct ingested assets are stored in the Zoom unified database. The database itself is stored as a collection of files underneath a parent folder that is configured when the Zoom Server is installed. The database folder can be mapped to a single physical disk device or a virtual spanned disk (a virtual folder that spans multiple disks) or using a storage management solution such as a distributed file system (DFS).
Database Storage
Evolphin does not do LUN management for the database as customers prefer to do that outside Zoom and present the database with a single logical volume that potentially can span multiple physical disks. Windows & Linux OS offer tools for creating spanned volumes.
An even better solution is to keep the current projects being worked upon online in the Zoom unified database and archive the rest of the project files to an archive. The Zoom archive solution supports multiple Zoom brand/project destination folders. This can enable a per-brand strategy of moving assets offline from the primary database location over to multiple LUNs if desired. This is the preferred approach most customers take with high volumes of data.
Auto-Checkout (ACO) Volumes
The direct ingest model also supports Auto-Checkout (ACO), which can be used to create a network share that can be synced with changes to direct ingested assets automatically. Most customers use ACO to create a global library of assets that can be linked without checking out the files, such as regularly used logos or product images. Customers often use a DFS to map Zoom project/brands to different storage volumes.