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More Space!
Storage Solutions for That Ever-Increasing Digital Data
by Michael Kunkes

The race is on. As both production and post-production complete moves into digital intermediates, digital cinematography and tapeless production, the need for reliable storage becomes ever more important. The demands of this rapidly evolving media technology are changing at such a fast rate that editors need to be more sure than ever that lost data does not become an issue––whether on a shared network or a simple NAS (network attached storage). As production and post continue to merge, and storage needs move from terabytes to the potential of petabytes, can the storage and archiving industry keep up with that kind of productivity?

With the approach of NAB 2007 in Las Vegas, Editors Guild Magazine polled some leading-edge companies to find out what trends are driving this train that never seems to stop.

Isilon's IQ 200. Courtesy of Isilon

Isilon Systems (www.isilon.com)
The Industry Picture: “With the proliferation of new media distribution networks and multiple media formats, the media and entertainment industry is at a fundamental inflection point at which new, digital IT infrastructures are needed to capitalize on the industry’s enormous opportunity, while also reducing costs. Media and entertainment content is increasingly being created, managed and delivered digitally––requiring easy to use, high performance, highly scalable and cost-effective storage across the entire digital content lifecycle.”
- Brett Goodwin, vice president of marketing and business development

The Product: Isilon IQ, built from the ground up to work with unstructured data and digital content, provides a solution for media asset storage at every point of the digital media workflow. Powered by the company’s OneFS 4.5 operating software, Isilon IQ lays claim to being the industry’s first single file system that unifies and provides an unprecedented level of access to the exploding stores of unstructured and file-based information. According to Goodwin, IQ will eradicate cost and complexity barriers of today’s traditional storage architectures.

Expanding the range of clustered storage to the broadest spectrum of businesses, Isilon recently announced the release of the Isilon IQ 200, which it will be showing at NAB 2007. Leveraging Isilon’s operating system, the IQ 200 is the industry’s first product to pack the revolutionary benefits of high-end enterprise clustered storage––including unmatched ease of use, performance and “pay as you grow” scalability.

Goodwin says that this new class of clustered storage enables businesses of all sizes to speed access to critical stores of digital content while dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of storing and managing it. The IQ 200 will especially benefit smaller post-pr

oduction houses, remote offices of media conglomerates, local affiliates of major networks and other entertainment and media-oriented businesses with smaller budgets but the same challenges of digital content storage.

Pricing: $39,750 for the minimum configuration, a three-node cluster, with OneFS and all required components.

Verari's BladeRack 2 Storage Brick. Courtesy of Verari

Verari Systems (www.verari.com)
The Industry Picture: “Post-production digital cinema content playback and management is an area that is driving the requirements for high performance and highly reliable storage that is cost effective and easy to use. To accommodate the large file sizes and the content movement requirement, these storage systems are utilized in two primary modes. One is live streaming, where the auditorium playback device streams the content from the central storage system to the local storage, while simultaneously playing the content. The other is file distribution; the movement of content from the central storage system to the auditorium playback device. This method is less bandwidth sensitive than live streaming and therefore is less demanding on the storage system. This is generally the primary method of content distribution and playback and it may have as many concurrent streams as there are auditoriums in the complex.”
- Eric Seidman, manager, storage systems

The Product: Verari Systems has two primary storage system solutions: VS SAN attached storage system, and VB NAS attached storage systems. In 2006, Verari completed the rollout of full end-to-end 4GB Fibre Channel solutions in its VS family of products. The VS4200, VS4400 and VS7000 all utilize 4GB FC host connectivity as well as a 4GB FC architecture for the storage capacity, which can be either 4GB Fibre Channel HDDs or SATA HDDs. These drive types can be intermixed within a single storage array.

The VB NAS is a high-density blade storage system. The first product in the family is the VB5150, which consists of an NAS head blade and four ten-drive disk blades supporting a capacity of up to 30TBs per VB5150 storage subsystem. The subsystems are housed in Verari’s BladeRack 2 platform, which can support up to 12 VB5150 storage subsystems for a total capacity of 360TB in the nominal space of two computer room floor tiles.

The Price: Pricing for the VS series starts at $20,000 and the VB5150 starts at $12,500.

The SATAMAX-PMH from ProMax Systems. Courtesy of ProMax

ProMax (www.promax.com)
The Industry Picture: “Digital delivery is definitely a trend that is pushing the storage industry forward. Being able to move huge files without having to wait for overnight FedEx greatly enhances the speed of production. Editing teams can work together from across the globe without having to wait for days to receive packages. Beyond that, compressed HD workflow in combination with shared storage allows for fast and efficient collaboration and significantly lowers the cost of HD post-production by eliminating having to deal with huge disk arrays that are not only expensive but that also consume energy and space. Compressed HD workflows also minimize the need for ultra-fast and expensive pipelines such as fibre channel. Smaller file sizes mean lower data transfer rates, which allow you to work with more economical connectivity methods such as FireWire and Ethernet. Shared storage minimizes space usage and decreases project management issues that come from having multiple copies of the same project on different computers as well.”
- Dana Smith, director of sales

The Product: The company has recently shipped FireMAX Quad, which incorporates multiple interfaces (USB 2.0, FireWire 400 + 800, and eSATA) for maximum flexibility and compatibility on any kind of workstation platform.

The Price: Starting at under $200 for 12 hours of compressed HD material.

Avid Unity Version 3.5. Courtesy of and ©Avid

Avid Technology (www.avid.com) 
THE INDUSTRY PICTURE: “The primary market driver for storage continues to be the growth of HD content, particularly as new, affordable HD formats (and cameras) are introduced.  Lower capture costs allow productions to use multiple cameras and shoot more footage, increasing the amount of media to be stored and managed. In addition, as storage becomes more affordable, customers want to store more of their content either locally or on a shared network where it is immediately accessible by anyone at any time.  Despite the proliferation of HD, it remains fairly cumbersome to move around a shared network.  Avid is helping productions and editorial rooms address these challenges with scalable storage products and technology, such as the Avid DNxHD codec that eases HD’s storage requirements without compromising picture quality.”
- Lesley Glorioso, senior product marketing manager 

The Products: In the past year, Avid introduced several products to address the content creation market’s growing demands for storage.  The company tripled the capacity of its Unity ISIS system to 192TB, and also doubled the capacity in the Unity LANshare and Unity MediaNetwork systems. Avid’s second major storage-related rollout is the new Open Storage Initiative (OSI).  “Our shared storage systems provide the backbone for a tremendous number of facilities worldwide,” Glorioso explains.  “We recognize that facilities often use a number of different creative systems and applications as part of their workflow.  Avid OSI gives them a way to tie all their systems––non-Avid and Avid––into a shared network and makes it easier than ever for them to exchange material and maximize their Avid storage investment.”

The price: Avid Unity LANshare systems start at $24,995; Avid Unity MediaNetwork systems start at $48,765; Avid Unity ISIS systems start at $106,995.

Archion's Synergy HD 300. Courtesy of Archion

Archion (www.archion.com)
The Industry Picture: “The requirements of compressed HD will be a driving force in the storage for post market. Feature films and television will no longer do offline editing in SD format and Compressed HD will become the norm. The availability of large capacity shared storage systems is the enabling factor in the adoption of Compressed HD for offline.”
- Jim Tucci, chief technology officer

The Products: The past year has seen the widespread acceptance of Archion’s Synergy HD product. This is the first and only full hardware RAID storage that is compatible and operates transparently with Avid Unity, and is compatible with Unity version 3.3 through 4.2.2. Because it’s full hardware RAID, it is not necessary to mirror your workspaces in order to protect them. Synergy HD is a 3RU RAID storage unit that retains all of the Unity compatibility in a denser, cooler and higher performance package, and is available in 4, 6 and 8TB capacities. Synergy HD is easy to install and works for all Avid Unity systems from 1GB to 4GB FC, and is pre-configured so there is nothing for the user to set up. “Plug in one of the fibre channel ports to a storage port on the switch. Turn on the storage and the Unity as usual. The drives show up as raw, just like Avid drives. Create your data sets and go,” adds Tucci. “If a drive goes down, all drives are good and all media is still on line. The Synergy system, however, will automatically start rebuilding the drive onto the hot spare. No downtime, no media loss, no rebuilding headaches.”
At NAB 2007, Archion is announcing the next level of performance and capacity for the Synergy product line, Synergy HD4, a dual-port 4GB Hardware RAID storage for all digital video applications. With double the bandwidth over the Synergy HD product, HD4 allows for unheard-of performance in all shared storage environments, especially Unity. Archion is also increasing the capacity to 12TB of storage, double the bandwidth (800MB per second) and 50 percent more storage than Avid, allowing Unity systems to run more streams of uncompressed HD per chassis than traditional Avid storage. Synergy HD4 is also backward compatible with the company’s previous products.

The Price: $19,995 for 8TB Synergy HD.

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