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NAB 2004: Storage & Networking

Mar 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Dan Ochiva

Epochal Change at NAB '04
Graphics, Effects, and Animation
Editing
Storage and Networking
Sidebar: In Japan with Sony

Storage & Networking

Falling Prices and Advancing Technologies

RackSaver introduces the DAW64, one of the first 64-bit digital audio workstations. Built around dual 64-bit AMD Opteron CPUs, the DAW64 runs under Windows XP Pro, holds up to 16GB of DDR RAM, and includes both RAID and removable storage options.

Great changes continue to course through storage and networking as plunging hardware costs combine with technology advances such as increased areal densities (the amount of data that can be packed onto a storage medium) to deliver storage that nears an astonishing $1,000 per terabyte.

Earlier this year, Pinnacle Systems announced it had qualified Advanced Technology and Systems (ADTX) L Series RAID system for use with Pinnacle's CinéWave series cards for the Mac. ADTX's RAID system combines a 2Gb Fibre Channel interface with SATA drives to offer enough throughput for SD and HD editing, says the company, while keeping system prices below comparably speedy SCSI and Fibre Channel hard drive-based arrays.

The ADTX L Series also features hardware-based Instant Copy and Remote Mirroring, along with Path Cruise (a path failover firmware capability) — options that provide enhanced capability and reliability.

L Series RAID solutions include two models: a single RAID controller version and dual active/active RAID controller one. The L Series gains its high throughput, says the company, by using large amounts of high-speed memory and a design that incorporates a parity generating co-processor.

With the launch of Xserve RAID in 2003, Apple began an aggressive move into a market beyond its traditional one. The enthusiastic response for this easy-to-deploy and use storage array — Apple quickly exceeded sales estimates — demonstrated a convincing argument for networked OS X gear when it's so competitively priced.

This past January, Apple introduced a reconfigured Xserve RAID storage system. Fitting into 3RU, the array holds up to 3.5TB and performs with up to 210MBs throughput, claims the product manager. Offering the industry's most “aggressive price for storage,” the array prices at just over $3 per gigabyte.

ATTO's Celerity FC-22XH dual-channel Fibre Channel adapter features the company's unique, integrated onboard hub design, which can eliminate the need for additional FC fabric hubs or switches.

Besides a lower price point, the upgraded Xserve RAID improves support for workstations running Windows and Linux, and includes the new industry standard Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) connectors, which are hot-swappable input/output devices that plug into a Gigabit Ethernet port or slot. Meanwhile, third-party products now come from 11 companies including Microsoft, Veritas, Red Hat, Brocade, and QLogic.

Pricing, interoperability, and ease of use will set the new storage apart from the competition, says Dean Rally, senior director of Apple's Information Systems and Technology Group. In his keynote talk during the annual Macworld Conference & Expo, Rally also cited Xserve RAID advantages: easy deployment and support, along with a stable, virtually virus-free OS. Xserve RAID connects to any Xserve or Power Mac using the dual-channel 2GB Apple Fibre Channel PCI card, which prices at a modest $499. The new array costs between $5,999 (720GB) and $10,999 (2.52TB).

Ciprico won a STAR “best-of-show” award at the IBC 2003 for its next generation DiMeda 1700 NAS (Network Attached Storage) array. Making its U.S. debut at NAB, the device combines Ciprico's high-performance NAS software with the latest SATA (serial ATA) drive technology to create compact, affordable storage for use in video editing.

Another SATA-based product introduction at the show: FibreSTORE 2212A. Featuring Fibre Channel performance “at half the price,” Ciprico says the FibreSTORE 2212A is the first ATA product that's robust enough for online, mission-critical, 24/7/365 applications. As with a number of storage vendors who are now starting to deploy SATA-based systems, the technology enables manufacturers to offer gear that combines lower price points with high throughput that nearly rivals SCSI arrays.

Last fall, Ciprico announced that it would partner with Kodak Service & Support, a business unit of Eastman Kodak company, as its U.S. service provider for Ciprico's line of DiMeda storage solutions. While it's not as well known as the fact that the Rochester, N.Y.-based company is trying to reposition itself as a digital player, Kodak has moved into the potentially lucrative field of service offerings. Under the Advantage On-Site program, for example, Ciprico's North American customers will receive onsite service and replacement parts in four hours or less.

Doremi Labs' latest HD disk recorder, the V1-HD, allows recording of HD-SDI video in either compressed or uncompressed modes. Features include simultaneous record and play capability and dual-link HD-SDI recording. The dual-link HD-SDI inputs enable 12-bit 4:4:4 video recording from the new generation of higher-res HD video cameras, as well as 4:2:2:4 recording of video and key.

Rorke Data adds to its cost-effective Galaxyi Serial ATA (SATA) RAID line with Java-based RAIDWatch management firmware. The Eden Prairie, Minn.-based company garnered a good response for RAIDWatch’s Media Scan component, which examines the drives on the RAID to detect the presence of damaged sectors and bad blocks. That’s important, since the less expensive ATA and SATA drive arrays might simultaneously develop bad blocks on two of the drives in a single array, says Thomas Bayens, director of marketing for Infortrend, a component supplier partner for Rorke Data.

The V1-HD's simultaneous record and play function provides time savings, Doremi says; by allowing playback for color grading work, for example, users can simultaneously record a video feed. A Gigabit Ethernet option allows for fast transfers of movie and still image formats such as QuickTime, TIFF, and YUV.

The V1-HD can use either internal storage or external RAID5 storage. Features include HD and SD serial digital video I/O with embedded audio, and up to eight channels of AES/EBU or six channels of analog audio.

Fast Forward Video debuts its DigiDeck digital video recorder. Based on the company's Recon DVR, the DigiDeck keeps its price down by recording to standard IDE hard drives. Features include composite and Y/C I/O, two channels of unbalanced audio, genlock, timecode I/O, and an RS-422 interface. The DVR can record up to nine hours on a single drive. Options include RGB/Component out and Windows control software. The DigiDeck DVR can be ordered as a single- or dual-channel system.

If you haven't seen it, also check out FFV's Recon, an ultra-compact digital video recorder board. Based on the same feature set as the company's Omega Deck, Recon offers MJPEG image resolution in a compact form that's only 2.8'× 3.9'. Recon's small size, low DC power consumption, ability to record hours of video and audio on fixed or removable IDE hard drives, and solid state memory make it ideal for use as a field portable, on-body, or in-vehicle recorder.

FFV's top-of-the-line Omega Deck DVR now offers a chase lock feature enabling synchronized playback from multiple Omega Decks.

As drive prices continue to plummet, more companies enter the DDR market with competitive deals. That includes For-A, which introduces the LDR-4 multi-channel digital disk recorder, which records up to four streams of video. When used with a 120GB hard drive, that's enough capacity to record 30 hours of DV-quality material per channel, greatly simplifying the recording of multi-camera live events, says the company.

For-A moves into the DDR market with its LDR-4.

Fitting into 3RU, the MPEG-2 DDR offers simultaneous record and playback, so that up to four channels can record a live event while any one of them can be played back simultaneously. Any of the video feeds can be viewed and monitored onsite or remotely with a PC. The number of input channels can be selected from one to four, with the addition of one encoder board per channel. There's also time-lapse recording, automatic detection of video loss, onscreen titling generation/display, RS-422 protocol support, and (optional) Ethernet 10/100baseT networking support.

While not a “big” name, Huge Systems sports talent that lays claim to innovative engineering helping to usher in highly cost-competitive drive arrays.

At the show, the Huge MediaVault U320-R Max disk array offers an example of that. While its footprint is small (6'×11'×12'), this latest Huge MediaVault (HMV) offers capacities of up to 1,250GB in four different configurations.

Huge Systems MediaVault U320-R

With its “true” SCSI Ultra320 I/O, the HMV U320-R Max delivers a 10-bit, 1080i HD stream using five drives in a single channel configuration, or choose six SD streams instead.Most other such arrays, says the company, require 10 drives in a dual channel setup to achieve the same result. Besides cutting hard drive costs in half, this single channel configuration doesn't need disk striping, which in turn cuts down on the potential for record errors — one of the typical problem areas of disk arrays.

While the HMV delivers a maximum burst data rate of 320MBs, its sustained data rate is 200MBs in High Definition Turbo mode. As with all Huge Systems arrays, the HMV handles multiple OS compatibility — Macintosh, Windows, Linux, UNIX, and SGI — right out of the box.

Maximum Throughput not only does NAS for post — it claims to offer the speediest networked attached storage available — but it also does it over a Gigabit Ethernet network via TCP/IP. Using Internet protocol enables the company to combine off-the-shelf hardware and Internet-based management in products such as Sledgehammer NAS. Still under development is InfinARRAY, which will scale to multiple petabytes of storage (explain that one to the CFO) with multiple gigabytes per second I/O, according to the Montreal-based company.

Medéa delivers its first FireWire-based array, the G-RAID.

Expect to see more integrated applications for Sledgehammer NAS, which, the company says, delivers some 180MBs throughput in the real world. Main features include affordability (via use of industry standard components); scalability (move from 2TB to 32TB of commodity storage); and concurrent support for multiple protocols, clients, and multiple operating systems. Since EDLs can be batch captured and the system can also be accessed just like a DDR, supporting operations such as uncompressed telecine transfers any resolution.

Besides software updates to Sledgehammer (including product versions that handle SD and HD video), Max Throughput will also demo with partners Discreet and Xstoner. The latter provides a browser to view and manage partitions, libraries, and the clips database on the Discreet stones arrays, as well as an intuitive interface to program import and export tasks.

Buyers looking for low prices on fast storage know to keep an eye on Medéa, a long-time manufacturer of cost-effective RAID gear. The company probably won't disappoint those buyers as it introduces some five new drive systems at the show.

The VideoRaid FCR2 and FCR2X Fibre Channel arrays build in four- or eight-port FC hubs and employ speedy 2Gbs FC interfaces while keeping data safe with level three RAID. By lashing five drives together, the FCR2 supports up to seven streams of uncompressed SD video, while fitting neatly on a desktop. Meanwhile, the two-channel FCR2X employs 10 FC drives to enable realtime work with two streams of 10-bit 1080i HD. With the latter drive, Medéa challenges Apple's entry into the video storage market with lower cost FC-based arrays that begin well under $6,000 (for 640GB), according to the company.

Two other new Medéa offerings: the G-RAID starts at $399 (160GB) and delivers two streams of realtime uncompressed SD video via its FireWire 800 ports; the VideoRaid XTRM includes a four-port FC hub, 2Gbs FC interface, and holds up to 15 drives to support realtime 2K editing.

Omneon Video Networks introduces the Spectrum ES, which now includes an SDTI media interface adapter that enables the media server to support Panasonic's DVCPRO-100HD. The company claims this makes the Spectrum line the first servers capable of supporting all leading HD formats simultaneously, including MPEG, HDCAM, and DVCPRO-100.

At the show Snell & Wilcox releases MXF Express, a free-to-use set of software developer tools to help create MXF-compliant gear and software. MXF (Material eXchange Format) looks to be a new digital lingua franca for media content. S&W will also "freely release" MXF Desktop (above); the software player allows MXF-wrapped files to play on any Windows PC desktop.

Omneon will also introduce native support for MXF across its entire server line. Now, users can select either QuickTime or MXF as the media wrapper format for stored material.

S.two, the small, innovative provider of D.MAG on-location storage for camera systems like the Viper FilmStream, tackles workflow issues with the introduction of A.DOCK, an on-set archiving station. The device uses a large, internal disk cache to quickly clone the data on a D.MAG magazine. The company also spots it for use in digital film transfer.

That cloned data needs its own copy too, since the material is too important to leave on just that one copy. A robotic data tape backup library, attached to the A.DOCK, holds up to 4.8TB. At the studio or post facility, more automation for A.DOCK comes via bar codes and production database tools.

S.two will also show the latest version of its DFR digital field recorder.

With the graphics and processing power now available in off-the-shelf components, the content creation industry doesn't buy as much SGI gear as it once did, which is something company management acknowledges.

SGI is not out of the content creation workstation business, of course. There's its flagship Tezro workstation. Introduced last year, it delivers one of the company's best price/performance ratios ever, which keeps software from Discreet, Alias, da Vinci, and others competitive. But it's the storage and networking initiatives that are now gaining emphasis.

Adopting the moniker InfiniteStorage for its combined networking and storage play, it's actually a shared file system, CXFS, which sets the company's offerings apart from just being another SAN and NAS supplier. This proprietary file format wraps around data from a variety of operating systems, allowing Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, Irix, and others to coexist and interactively share files over a SAN.

SGI claims CXFS offers much greater I/O performance and bandwidth than any network data-sharing mechanism, since the SAN's simultaneous shared access means there's no need for time- and disk-consuming copying.

Its move to highlight storage and networking enables SGI to finally work with long-time competitor Quantel. Quantel certified its iQ DI and eQ HD editing system for use with InfiniteStorage. While the Quantel iQ employs the company's dedicated Dylan storage array, SGI storage and networking enables it to tie into the rest of post.

Following an increasingly popular two-tiered storage strategy, SGI introduced its own SATA option for economical secondary disk storage in its InfiniteStorage line. That's enabled the company to secure larger installs, including EFilm, which added 63TB of the Serial ATA storage as a nearline archive for its existing SGI SAN.

Studio Network Solutions (SNS) will announce new features for SANmp, its multi-platform volume management SAN app. The software enables multiple workstations with different operating systems — Mac and Windows for most users — to concurrently access and share information. Since SANmp doesn't require a server or Ethernet connection, it's easy to implement and maintain, says the St. Louis-based company.

Besides an updated user interface, this latest SANmp version offers performance boosts by optimizing the way the software interacts with shared disks. Meanwhile, the new Command Line Interface (CLI) helps automate SANmp by executing commands in script or batch modes from either Mac or Windows platforms.

Other new features include AutoSync (refreshes the array); the ability to select multiple volumes and then mount — or un-mount — them simultaneously; and an “Exclusive” mode, which enables a user to mount a disk/volume so that the user is the only person who has access to it at any given time. This ensures that the performance of that disk or volume is not negatively impacted by concurrent access from another user.
— D.O.

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