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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

GROUP BUY: Tolis Group ArGest Asset, (+.- Edit) and Archive Bundles!

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Nick Fury

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TOLIS Group, that provides their leading ArGest® asset archiving solutions for the M&E space, has been a REDUSER.net supporter for years by providing excellent information and a flat $250 discount on their solution bundles for forum members. I have proposed a bulk-buy initiative to TOLIS and they have responded, in great spirit.

Their lowest cost bundled archive solution, that includes everything except the actual computer system and based on LTO-5 technology, is priced at $3,629.

I asked them to profile the bundles that are the most popular and they responded with the following packages. The discounts related below apply, not only to the following popular bundles, but to all TOLIS bundles shown on their www.productionbackup.com Website.

ArGest® Edit Bay Desktop Doubler Cube LTO-6 SAS - $7,979 ..... (supports BRU PE's Doubler Mode)
Contains 1 SAS Desktop Cube Chassis, quantity 2 integrated SAS LTO-6
internal Drives, 2 pieces LTO-6 media, 1 LTO cleaning cartridge, 1 ATTO
ExpressSAS H680 HBA (PCI-E x8 Slot Required), 3M 1-4 fanout SAS cable, 1 PE license and 1 PE support for 12 months. 1 year hardware warranty.
This is an ArGest Ingest-to-Archive solution.

http://ww2.productionbackup.com/hardware-bundles/desktop-bundle-packages

ArGest® Archival Station LTO-6 SAS - $7,179
Contains 1 single drive, 24 tape 2U rackmount library with LTO-6 SAS
drive, 2 pieces LTO-6 media, 1 LTO cleaning cartridge, 1 ATTO ExpressSAS
H680 HBA (PCI-E x8 Slot Required), 4M 1-4 fanout SAS cable, 1 PE license and 1 PE support for 12 months. 1 year hardware warranty . Expandable to 2 drives.
This is an ArGest Ingest-to-Archive solution.

http://ww2.productionbackup.com/hardware-bundles/rackmount-bundle-packages

ArGest® HDD 30 Rack LTO-6 - $6,099
Contains 1 ArGest Rack with, 1 integrated LTO-6 drive, 4 x 750 GB
7200RPM
drives (3TB), 1 piece LTO-6 media, 1 LTO cleaning cartridge, 1 ATTO
ExpressSAS H680 HBA (PCI-E x8 Slot Required), 2 1.2 M SAS cables, 1 rail kit, 1 PE license and 1 PE support for 3 years. 3 year hardware
warranty.
This is an Ingest-to-Edit-to-Archive solution.

http://ww2.productionbackup.com/hardware-bundles/ArGest-Solutions

LTO-6 is the preferred variant, based on their solution-delivery experience. These bundles are available implementing LTO-5 technology as well and the price differential between LTO-5 and LTO-6 is $850: all other bundle component pricing remains the same. (the LTO-5 bundle pricing is included in the links provided above for more price-sensitive users)

Also, there is about a 2X price differential between HDD and SSD in the ArGest Ingest-to-Edit-to-Archive bundles for the same capacity points.

And, Thunderbolt connectivity starts at $399:

http://ww2.productionbackup.com/hardware-bundles/thunderbolt-solutions

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Here's the proposed, volume quantity/discount program plan TOLIS is offering that applies to any ArGest solution variant, again, not just the ones profiled above.

Quantity Discount

5 10%
10 12%
25 15%

Note: these are discounts based on quantity volume in contrast to the flat $250 consideration per bundle currently available to REDUSER.net participants. A key deliverable is TOLIS Group represents one number to call for support: they manage the whole process. TOLIS Group Support @ 480.505.1814, or, via email @ http://support.bru.com.

Media is available, with Q pricing (+ shipping), but is not included in the bundle bulk-buy discount offering:

LTO-5 HP Brand barcodes included (for use with loaders/libraries, standalone drives ignore them)
1-9 each $36.50
10-24 each $34.50
25-99 each $33.50
100-249 each $31.50
250+ each $30.00

LTO-6 HP Brand barcodes included (for use with loaders/libraries, standalone drives ignore them)
1-9 each $70.50
10-24 each $68.50
25-99 each $67.50
100-249 each $65.50
250+ each $64

If anyone is doing a loader, the supplied HP tapes are barcoded, but if they want to specify an alphanumeric 6 digit start/stop sequence they can do that in quantities of 20 (~1-week lead time) at no additional cost.

Please post your thoughts and proposed, purchase interest, so that the community might benefit, from such an opportunity. The interest level shall dictate the timeline. Gotta get Dragon ready…

Thank you very much

Fury
 
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Nicely done Fury, but I would ask them what numbers does this Group buy to get to in order to get a 25%... ;)

You cab be surprise of what numbers can be reached here on Reduser when the deal is right, Reduser is a community full of camera Owners operators that actually have money to spend and the do spend it.

Just a tough.
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
Nicely done Fury, but I would ask them what numbers does this Group buy to get to in order to get a 25%... ;)

You cab be surprise of what numbers can be reached here on Reduser when the deal is right, Reduser is a community full of camera Owners operators that actually have money to spend and the do spend it.

Just a tough.
Click to expand...

Count me in on a 25% discount. I'd be down.
 
David Kellermann said:
Sounds really good. But given how much I invest in the next weeks, I might have to skip the offer this time. When is the deadline?
Click to expand...

Hi David,

The Close date is scheduled to fall on Sept. 28, 2013.

It would be very helpful, for those Buyer's who are desirous of their, likely, updated discount, that we have a rough gauge of the Buyer interest level here. Posting Interest level, at the posted (#1), proffered rates, is therefore quite helpful. OTOH, prospective and actual Buyers, who contact Tolis Group, as referenced in Post #1, without posting here, will count toward the ultimate discount rate.

Thank you very much

Fury
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
Nicely done Fury, but I would ask them what numbers does this Group buy to get to in order to get a 25%... ;)

You cab be surprise of what numbers can be reached here on Reduser when the deal is right, Reduser is a community full of camera Owners operators that actually have money to spend and the do spend it.

Just a tough.
Click to expand...

True. If you could even get to 20% with a certain number of buyers then I think many would jump in.
 
Here is a portion of an email I got back from TOLIS:

"You can purchase now, and what we are doing is having the regular $-250 Red discount applied immediately to the order, then when the final count is known (and reached), the additional discount "rebate" will be sent back to you"

I need this now so am jumping on the band wagon. Pretty good of them to give back a rebate based on how many buyers they get over the next month or so. Obviously I'm hoping others of you out there need reliable archiving too :-)
 
Margins and the group buy

Margins and the group buy

Hi Folks,

While we would love to be able to dig deeper than the 15% offer, we really don't have the margin embedded into the products to support that level of discount. Our goal with our normal pricing is to provide the best quality products with the level of service and support that they require at an already aggressive price point. Unlike many other organizations, we don't artificially inflate our MSRP to allow us to play pricing games. I guess that we could jack the MSRP's up to allow us to offer a deeper discount, but that would be rather ingenious from our point of view.

Please compare our pricing against other, bargain options, and when you add up everything in the bundle with our provision of a single point of support, I believe that you will see that we really are offering a great deal across the board. Also, if you already have an ATTO H680 or R680 with an available port, we will be happy to remove the HBA from the kit. But, as I've mentioned many times, the ATTO ExpressSAS family are the only SAS adapters that will work properly with tape on a Mac system.

Tim
 
Tim, each company has it's way of doing business, which when comes to discounts, it is dictated by how much money they have and can afford to spend for Marketing, not just because of mark up, and it is very understandable that smaller companies, do not posses the margins to go that high in Group Discounts.

I wrote what I did in suggestion for a larger number of sold units, yet not knowing your spending budget, I only made the suggestion, but as you are saying the above, I am sure people interested in your great product, will understand and be happy with the offered discounts.

Best of luck with this group buy!
 
Tim Jones said:
But, as I've mentioned many times, the ATTO ExpressSAS family are the only SAS adapters that will work properly with tape on a Mac system.

Tim
Click to expand...

I didn't know about it. We're currently looking for a "cheap" solution to plug our LTO drive to our new MacBook Air via Thunderbolt. Will an ATTO ExpressSAS in a MLogic Mlink chassis work with a HP LTO-5 3000 external drive and allow us to use LTFS with the HP StoreOpen ?

Thanks Tim for you insights ;-)

Kristin
 
I inquired, regarding the use of a, current, Retina MBP and the Cube, as a field option. Tim, graciously shared the following very impressive data. This is particularly on point, as related to Dragon, etc..


Retina Mac Book Pro with the i7 and 16GB, flies with both FCP X and Premiere CS6/CC. The Tolis Group also has a local shop using the 27" iMac fully loaded and that user is also roaring with After Effects on some big stuff.

In each case, the Echo Express Pro with the H680 in one slot and the Red Rocket in the second are really working well. You can drive the ArGest Cube (LTO-6 drive and 4 SSD drives) at over 750MB/sec meaning that it should be possible to handle 6K 4:2:2 in real time (not sure about 4:4:4). On a Mac Pro via native PCIe, those numbers hit 1.2GB/sec (that gigabytes, not gigabits). We should see similar via Thunderbolt when Thunderbolt 2 starts to ship.


Here's Tim's latest BM Disk Speed Test shot from his rMBP and the Sonnet setup, described above: Write 723.2 MB/s/Read 785.3 MB/s.

3wh3q1qktrlf.png
 
Tim Jones said:
Hi Kristin, that will definitely work. We prefer the Sonnet because we are uber-conscious of the cooling issues with the RAID and RED Rocket cards. But, have you compared the pricing on the separate items there with our bundle pricing?
Click to expand...

Thanks Tim for your kind answer. No, I haven't compared the prices, in fact I looked at your hardware bundles (Argest) and didn't find a "minimalistic" bundle like the one I described : a LTO-5 drive, a PCI chassis for Thunderbolt and a SAS card. Could you please PM me with a quote if you offer this kind of bundle ? We don't really need a standalone unit with a hard drive enclosed. Do you also offer this kind of bundle in Europe (because of the import taxes here) ? Thank you very much for your kindness.

Kristin
 
I got a minimal bundle, ArGest cube with 1 tape drive, Atto SAS PCI card, software, cable etc. just the basics, no fancy internal raids etc. TOLIS was really great to work with, they take the guess work out and demystify the whole process. My basic bundle was $4499 before discounts (I went with LTO 6)
 
Kristin Stewart said:
Thanks Tim for your kind answer. No, I haven't compared the prices, in fact I looked at your hardware bundles (Argest) and didn't find a "minimalistic" bundle like the one I described : a LTO-5 drive, a PCI chassis for Thunderbolt and a SAS card. Could you please PM me with a quote if you offer this kind of bundle ? We don't really need a standalone unit with a hard drive enclosed. Do you also offer this kind of bundle in Europe (because of the import taxes here) ? Thank you very much for your kindness.

Kristin
Click to expand...

According to the site what you want would be $3649 USD plus $399 for basic TB connectivity. I don't want to speak for the dealer, just going with the published prices. This includes the Atto PCI interface, software, cables etc.
 
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