Why IT Teams Love Jellyfish Servers

Video teams can take up a dangerous amount of an IT team’s time and resources. Not only does video use a lot of a company’s storage, but in order for editors to do their jobs, they require dedicated 10GbE pipelines to their server and enough processing power to be able to allow for multiple streams of high-resolution media for multiple editors. If an editor can’t access their media, the IT team will immediately need to drop what they are doing to help unblock them or else the company is just wasting money as the editors are waiting around unable to work.

Unfortunately, the server that the rest of the office works on is likely not going to cut it for a post-production team.

This is where the Jellyfish would help! Our server is completely optimized for video editing workflows and your editors will love how fast they are going to be able to access their media, allowing them to save time on all their projects.

In the past, a new toy for the video team meant a huge headache for IT. New camera means more storage. New computer means user permission issues and more tickets. New server? Forget it!

Luckily, this isn't the case with the Jellyfish. Sure, we’re editors designing hardware for other editors, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t listened to IT professionals along the way. We have worked with IT teams all over the spectrum, from incredibly challenging security issues and multi-site workflows to a single technical resource put in place to assist a budding creative agency. We’ve seen it all.

Here are the top reasons why IT teams around the world love working with us, as well as how the Jellyfish helps save both time and resources while soothing the relationships between techies and creatives.

1. Initial Setup

The Jellyfish is designed so that video teams can set it up all on their own. The server comes preconfigured with network shares and network configuration settings optimized for video editing. Of course, most settings are customizable, but you can count on a fast onboarding so that you’ll be able to start some baseline testing while learning the platform as quickly as possible.

2. Network Management and Connectivity

The Jellyfish is intended to be used with a direct connection to each client machine over 10Gb Ethernet without using a switch. While this is a great option for many teams, some environments won’t allow for this. Whether you need to bond a few of the Jellyfish ports into a switch or you need to set up a DNS or gateways, the Jellyfish Manager user interface (our server management platform) will let you do this in seconds.

3. Local User and Group Permissions

With Jellyfish Manager, you can set up user and group permissions for read and/or write all the way down to the share and folder level. Imagine that there is a freelance editor working on a specific project. You may want to give them read and write access only to the folder that their project is in. The Jellyfish accomplishes that through Access Control List (ACL) maps and uses a unique method for setting those up. This is optimized for reaching all files recursively quickly. To take it even further, you can download and backup your permissions map and upload it again in case of accidental deletion of your custom permissions.

4. Scheduled Snapshots

As much as we can try and prevent it, mistakes happen and there’s always a chance that someone could accidentally delete an important file that hasn’t been backed up yet. To prevent total data loss, we recommend enabling scheduled snapshots for your Jellyfish.

Snapshots are essentially copies of your share that take up an incredibly small amount of space on your Jellyfish until you delete a file from the share. For example, let’s say that you have 10TB of data on a share and you’ve made a snapshot of it. At this point, your snapshot is only a few kilobytes. If you then delete 2TB of data from your share, the snapshot will increase to 2TB because it is now an exact replica of your share at the time you made it.

The snapshot references the data that still exists on the share in addition to the data that was deleted. Of course, you can delete the snapshot if you don’t need that data and free up the space, but in many cases, it’s helpful to know that you can recover the data from the snapshot if needed.

Data safety is so important for video teams. Each minute of footage may have cost thousands of dollars to create. We always recommend having a disaster recovery plan and keeping your backups up to date. 

5. Active Directory (AD)

If your organization uses Active Directory, chances are that we can directly integrate your instance into our Jellyfish Manager interface. Simply enter your AD information into the Jellyfish Manager user interface and you will immediately have access to your AD users and groups in the Jellyfish Manager’s Users and Groups panel.

From here, you can control permissions for each share simultaneously for local and AD permissions. Keep in mind, AD permissions will only work on the share level and not for individual folders.

It’s also important to note that many AD instances are custom environments with different levels of priorities. While we do our best to apply our integration to most instances, we can always chat with your IT team prior to purchasing a Jellyfish to make sure your instance runs seamlessly with our hardware and software.

6. Jellyfish Remote Access

There are a million reasons why your video team is going to want remote access into any server solution that hosts their media. Luckily, the Jellyfish has an easy-to-use solution for remote access through a peer-to-peer VPN.

This remote access tool is integrated directly into our Jellyfish Connect application so that your end users can easily access their files and have a very similar experience as if they were at the office. Our P2P VPN solution is end-to-end encrypted and won’t require any additional software to be installed either on the Jellyfish or on your client machines.

You can learn more about this tool in our Jellyfish Remote Access - FAQ article.

7. Knowledgeable and Responsive Support Team

Adding a new piece of video production equipment on top of already maintaining the entire IT infrastructure for your company can be a stressful experience. It’s important to have someone to call in case of an emergency, but also to answer simple questions to save you from having to spend the time of reading an instruction manual or doing a ton of research on your own. The Jellyfish support team’s background varies from former Apple Geniuses to video workflow experts to high-level IT engineers. No matter what the question or request is, they will get you a thorough and helpful answer quickly.

8. Free Software Updates

The Jellyfish software team works hard on adding new functionality throughout the year. These software updates can make the hardware more powerful, add the ability for new software integrations, and most importantly, ensure that your system works seamlessly with the OS updates of your client machines.

These updates are included for every system that has an up-to-date support plan and can be upgraded on your schedule with the help of our support team.

9. Cross-Platform Compatibility

Jellyfish servers can work with macOS, Windows, and Linux workstations simultaneously. It is common for video teams to use a mix of different platforms for different parts of their workflow. Some editing applications are restricted to a specific OS, while some have native versions for all operating systems. The Jellyfish is agnostic and works equally well with all operating systems and all major video editing, coloring, and VFX applications.

10. Warranty and Advance Replacement of Parts

Realistically, IT professionals know that sometimes hardware will fail. Whether it’s a hard disk, a memory card, or a network card failure, we will get a new part shipped to you with a prepaid return label for the malfunctioning component. If you aren’t comfortable replacing the part on your own with our instructions, we can help you hire a local technician to complete the repair for you. Every Jellyfish Mobile, Tower, and Rack come standard with a 3-year limited hardware warranty with the option at the time of purchase to extend the limited hardware warranty to 5 years. The BFJ unit comes standard with a 5-year limited hardware warranty.

11. (Bonus) Other integrations

To save you the hassle of trying to figure out how the Jellyfish will work with all of the software your video team is already using, we offer direct integrations with some of their favorite tools.

• If the video team uses Davinci Resolve Studio, the collaboration PostgreSQL database can be stored right on the Jellyfish. That way, there isn’t a need for an additional client machine dedicated to handle the Resolve collaboration features.
• The Jellyfish has a built-in module for backing up files to a Backblaze B2 bucket. The backup jobs can be scheduled straight from the Jellyfish Manager.
• Archiware P5 is a recommended backup and archive software system that integrates with the Jellyfish to provide automatic - and searchable - backup and archives to 3rd party hardware, the cloud, or LTO libraries.
• Our integration with Iconik Storage Gateways turns the Jellyfish into a hybrid cloud and provides a Media Asset Management platform in the cloud so global teams can always be on the same page.
• Jellyfish also integrates with Postlab, a platform that allows video teams to collaborate in Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere remotely. Between Postlab and Jellyfish Remote Access, we’re able to provide a revolutionary way for collaboration with minimal setup from the IT team.

The team behind the Jellyfish has done an immense amount of research to find the most efficient ways for editors to collaborate, hoping to save IT teams some headaches by offering a complete robust solution. If you’d like to learn more or if there’s something you think we’re missing, please reach out to our workflow consultation team and we’d be happy to chat!