❝ In an ideal world , media and entertainment storage will become one big repository where media data will remain accessible using a constant URL , no matter if the underlying hardware tier is Solid State , spinning disk or tape-based for deep archive .❞
March 2018 MANAGEMENT 17 archive approaches in
are also key considerations , in addition to storage capacities and speed , when it comes to managing 4K / UHD , high dynamic range ( HDR ), and high frame rate ( HFR ) files , says Mariano L Monteverde .
Monteverde is managing direct or at Asrun Media , a Hong Kong-headquartered company that offers media software technology designed to empower media and entertainment businesses to reach out to their potential audiences in the most effective way .
He elaborates : “ Users need to rely on the capacity of hard-disk drives to store high-quality video at an affordable price . However , on a shared storage with several concurrent users or client applications , random reads and writes lower the performance of the spinning disk .
“ On the other hand , Solid State Disks ( SSDs ) are able to meet the 4K / UHD demand under high workload scenarios ; but a shared storage based on all-flash may be cost-prohibitive , even for dozens of TBs .”
But as these technologies may have moved faster in development rather than adoption , Monteverde highlights that it is critical for media companies to evaluate the file formats that are most desirable to adapt to their needs , especially in 4K / UHD editing environments .
“ RAW DPX sequences at 16-bit may be excessive for some broadcasters in production environ-
Above : Designed for video editing and collaborative workflows , Asrun Media ’ s NESTO storage solution is equipped with a HTML Web user interface to provide management of the system .
Left : Mariano L Monteverde , managing director at Asrun Media , says that technologies such as 4K / UHD , HDR and HFR result in greater quality and larger files , thus impacting media companies ’ storage workflows as it requires higher capacities and speeds , as well as lower latencies and consistent bandwidth .
ments , and Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHR may be a good alternative . For distribution , either XAVC or HEVC / H . 265 seems a reasonable option , with the advantage that XAVC can be easily used in post production ,” he adds .
Asrun Media , offers NESTO , a NAS system that is able to support 4K / UHD video editing and collaborative workflows . The solution , according to the company , combines the flexibility of unified storage , the performance and efficiency of solid-state flash drives , as well as the capacity of hard disks , and is packed with the NESTO HTML Web user interface to provide management of the system .
Some features of NESTO include hybrid storage pools for increased performance and capacity scalability , snapshot and replication for backups or disaster recovery , as well as thin and thick provisioning that is able to define multiple datasets , and distribute free space dynamically using quotas for each dataset . Thin provisioning refers to the method of optimising the efficiency with which the available space is utilised in storage area networks ( SANs ), while thick provisioning is a type of storage allocation in which the amount of storage capacity on a disk is pre-allocated on physical storage at the time the disk is created .
Monteverde elaborates :
“ NESTO relies on higher amounts of cache , and write-boost cache . Using solid state technology to have extra cache capacities , data is first written into these SSDs , allowing extra time to write the media files into the hard diskbased RAID . By doing this , we can assure the hard disks of the RAID operates at full potential , achieving higher rates of sustained throughput that translates into more concurrent streams .”
In addition to managing multiple formats , media companies are also engaged in the race of getting their content distributed across multiple platforms and devices . This has brought forth three different approaches — tape , file and cloud — towards their storage workflows .
Due to technologies such as HDR and HFR , delivery platforms such as over-the-top ( OTT ) and video-on-demand ( VoD ), and the ever-increasing use of media in many different forms , storage demands in the media and entertainment market are continuously growing , declares Dirk Thometzek , product manager , storage solutions , Rohde & Schwarz ( R & S ).
Coming from a production point of view , Thometzek explains that it is not efficient for media companies to build islands of storage according to the specific needs of one application , as technical requirements and tools may change from one project to another . He continues : “ In an ideal world , media and entertainment storage will become one big repository where media data will remain accessible using a constant URL , no matter if the underlying hardware tier is solid-state , spinning disk , or tapebased for deep archive .
“ However , performance and different tiers will need to be different to support applications
Media companies are engaged in the race of getting their content distributed across multiple platforms and devices . This has brought forth three different approaches — tape , file and cloud — towards their storage workflows .
with changing requirements . For instance , mastering 4K / UHD for interoperable master format ( IMF ) requires very fast storage and moderate capacities , whereas editing for news in HD or SD requires large capacities to allow access to mid-tier archive material .”
The key will be to get a blend of performance and capacity that can fit and adapt to the needs of the workflows at any given moment , Thometzek adds . “ Redundancy and maintainability is also selfevident in order to ensure the ontime delivery of content , and the protection required for businesscritical media assets .”
As for cloud storage , it represents “ a big opportunity ” for media production facilities to embrace the change towards Opex models . He also adds that bandwidth limits , ingress and egress costs , misunderstandings regarding cybersecurity and variable pricing structures can make it difficult for operators to determine the efficiency of using a cloud-service provisioned by a service provider .
Thometzek concludes : “ Offpremise , private data centre approaches , depending on the technical design , currently seem to offer a more reliable overall concept , although high-bandwidth premium content preparation will require an efficient on-premise storage system for many years to come .”
As a provider of distributed file systems and object storage solutions , Dell EMC has been seeing many of its customers deploying the Isilon scale-out file storage for
❝ In an ideal world , media and entertainment storage will become one big repository where media data will remain accessible using a constant URL , no matter if the underlying hardware tier is Solid State , spinning disk or tape-based for deep archive .❞
— Dirk Thometzek , Product Manager , Storage Solutions , Rohde & Schwarz content creation , management and delivery to broadcast and OTT platforms , says Dell EMC ’ s Sevior . “ Increasingly , those customers want to move away from tape archives because of the problems associated with that format — slow and limited access , data security and costs .”
To empower media companies with both traditional and nextgeneration workflows , Dell EMC has introduced Elastic Cloud Storage ( ECS ) cloud-scale object storage as an alternative to the risks of tape storage and public cloud services . As a partner solution to the Isilon storage , ECS can be deployed as a turnkey storage appliance , as a software solution running on industry-standard hardware , through public cloud solutions via Virtustream , or as a Dell EMC-hosted ECS-as-a- Service .
“ Cloud storage offers flexible and ubiquitous access to content , allowing IT administrators to manage all aspects from a single plane of glass ,” Sevior adds . “ Considering costs , security and sustained high-bandwidth access to content , we find most largescale media customers prefer to build their own cloud storage . This provides a mix of low-cost , high-security and guaranteed data management with a solution that can be directly integrated into the high-bandwidth production and delivery workflows .”
While the key is still to enable the delivery of content across multi ple platforms , media companies can streamline their workflows in a sustainable way by combining tapes , disks and the cloud , Asrun Media ’ s Monteverde says .
“ Multi-format delivery to a broad range of devices may be provided as a service by the CDN or OVM provider , reducing the storage capacity needs . Even when distributing to several countries , the number of versions of the content may increase as dubbing or censoring may be necessary . Hence , the implementation of asset management systems enable media companies to manage these processes while having more efficient use of tape libraries ,” he concludes .