IMS3000 NAS support

[Antti Näyhä]

When adding an NAS to a IMS3000 as "additional storage" (as opposed to "main storage"), can you use pretty much any NAS as long as it has NFS, or does it really only work with specific Dolby-supported models?

The configuration screen forces you to choose a NAS model, out of only 5 or so options:

Screenshot 2023-11-14 at 9.25.07.png

[James Gardiner]

I was under impression you need to use the specific models listed as it depends on SNMP mib processing as part of how it integrates with the NAS.

Annoying to a degree as it should also work with a generic NFS or SMB share. Maybe it needs to monitor selective mibs to do with IO. You would need to ask Dolby.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Dolby's NAS selection is extremely limited and they essentially blocked general NFS support by coupling it to some SNMP health monitoring. You may be able to run a generic SNMP and NFS server and try to reverse-engineer what they're monitoring, but this setup will obviously not be officially supported by Dolby.

I guess Dolby wanted to limit service calls by only supporting what's known to work, which is somewhat understandable. Unfortunately, though, that list isn't really expanding and in the current itteration it remains a bit useless, especially since the exact models they're listing are often hard to come by.

[Antti Näyhä]

OK, thanks guys. That’s what I was afraid of…

[Pete Naples]

I have some installs where the IMS3000 replaced a dead Christie S2 IMB.

The Christie badged NAS works with the IMS, BUT you don't get all the SNMP monitoring.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

GDC's TMS works with the IMS-3000, but not sure about the SNMP aspect. You can get a copy for free that will run for 30 days before it has to be licensed. So, if you have not tried it... you can before spending any money.

[Antti Näyhä]

I stumbled upon this in a 2022 topic:

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.

...and saw some QNAP documentation which seemed to say that all QNAP NASes use the same default SNMP OID.

So, just for fun, I decided to give it a go with a spare consumer QNAP (TS-251D) that I had laying around. I set up NFS and SNMP in the NAS, and added it in the IMS3000 as one of the supported QNAP models. The NAS then showed up as a location in the Export dialog, and I can even initiate an export with a promising message:

Screenshot 2024-01-16 at 14.23.26.png

But alas, the Export Monitor keeps complaining about a read-only file system:

Screenshot 2024-01-16 at 14.23.44.png

I checked that the NFS mount is accessible from other computer as read+write, and so this must be something else. Or does this error message somehow just result from the IMS3000 not being able to talk to the NAS properly via SNMP, since it's an unsupported model?

[Ioannis Syrogiannis]

I am not sure what you want to do with the DCP you want to export.
Yet, you should probably already know that exporting a DCP on a NAS is not the same as using that NAS (and DCP) as an external storage to play DCPs out of it.
If you want to ingest to that NAS and play whatever you ingested from the server, you need to add that NAS from the NAS Manager of the Control Panel and then, after the server will create a folder hierarchy similar to that in the internal RAID, you will be able to ingest either to the internal library or the NAS you configured.
Unless properly ingested, a DCP won't be able to be played, even if you copy the DCP folder or its assets to that NAS.

Therefore, I wonder, what is that you want to achieve by exporting a DCP to the NAS?

Edit: If I don't get it right, and you weren't trying to do something that was not meant to work either way, I would propose to contact Dolby.
They were kind enough to help me and I am pretty confident that they will be as kind if you were to explain what you are up to and ask for their consult.