You can run FFAStrans as a portable application instead of installing it as Windows Service as described here: installation. It is recommended to use service mode in production critical environments.

You can run FFAStrans on a standalone PC without the need for further Hard- and Software. In this case the installation files and Media files are on the local drives of your PC.

In case your C:\ Drive is not very large to handle Media Files, make sure to configure the FFAStrans cache location to reside on D:\ or any other drive, as described in installation

If you have one or multiple NAS Servers where your Media files come from and go to but still only one Server that runs FFAStrans, make sure that:

• The FFAStrans cache location is located on one of the NAS drives.
• The FFAStrans installation Files are on the local drive of your PC (C:\)

If you need more than one server/host to take care about your workflows, you can utilize FFAStrans farming abilities. FFAStrans runs in an Active-Active Pattern. This means that there is no “Main Server” as it would be the case in a typical “Master-Slave” pattern which is the case for most other workflow managing software.

How it works is that you just place the FFAStrans installation directory on the SMB Server - let us call it Quorum - with the highest availability possible.

As described above, the Quorum is a SMB (AKA Samba) location that contains the FFAStrans installation Files when running a transcoding farm (or better processing Farm). The Quorum will only contain minimal amounts of data, e.g. control files and log files. In difference to the cache location that contains temporary per job working files. You can see the Quorum as the database.

Large enterprises typically have many different storages like different kinds of Netapp, EMC and such in place. If you are in a position to choose from one of many storages it is recommended to choose the one that has the highest up time. Often this might be the storage that is also used by the central email location.

Private persons and small companies are recommended to elect one of the servers in the farm to the “Master” and create a shared location where they share the FFAStrans installation files with all members of the farm. Why?

There are 2 things to consider about the Quorum location:

1) Functionality: compatibility to Microsoft SMB Protocol, file locking mechanisms etc…

• FFAStrans uses files as a replacement for a database. It relies on the Storage to be able to handle parallel access to files in perfect manner
• There are many SMB Servers out there, e.g. Samba. As a perfect example, Samba is a working SMB server but when it comes to little details like especially concurrent file access, Samba is not a very good way to go. Lots of small storage vendors use Samba server for serving SMB shares. Big vendors drive their own SMB server implementation.

2) Availability: the central Quorum should have higher availability than all servers of the farm

• Be aware that Functionality always goes over availability

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