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Storage Supplement 2015

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2 STORAGE SOLUTIONS MARCH 2015 STORAGE SOLUTIONS mote interoperability between vendors. "The industry is also using standards-based technol- ogies such as Thunderbolt for high performance Direct Attached Storage at a lower cost," Dr. Coughlin reports. Overall, "the raw cost of digital storage is going down: hard disk drives, Flash memory and tape. A new generation of optical storage is being developed. Optical storage still offers low cost, fast access and longevity. A partnership between Panasonic and Sony is working on 300GB optical storage for archiving to replace 100-150GB disks; there's even talk of a 500GB disk in the future." The cloud is poised to grow in importance through the development of private clouds with extensive Inter- net content or the use of the public cloud, he notes. Still, the industry needs "new ways to protect data and offer higher levels of redundancy. We need some new models with greater resiliency if an individual device fails." Format obsolescence is perhaps the issue that most needs addressing. "Will digital content be accessible 100 years from now? Will we still be able to read the data?" Dr. Coughlin asks. "We need to be able to retain and bring forward in a usable way all digital content. We need new digital tools capable of long-term viability and usefulness." SCALE LOGIC At NAB 2015, Scale Logic Inc. (www.scalelogicinc.com) will unveil a new version of its SAN with Scale Out NAS in a Box called Genesis Unlimited. It combines the media-optimized, RX RAID protection engine with user selectable SAN and/or Scale Out NAS connectivity, all in a single, cost-effective enclosure. The product meets "a desire in the smaller creative marketplace for high-performance, high-capacity shared storage for multiple platforms," says Robert Herzan, Scale Logic president. "It simplifies complex workflows — it takes the complexity out of running a shared SAN or choosing between SAN or NAS, as users can now deploy both simultaneously." The product is expected to attract both broadcast operations and post houses with two to eight edit- ing seats. "It gives them collaborative editing abilities without a lot of cost and equipment infrastructure as no fiber switch is needed," Herzan says. The system can scale as needs grow, however. "Just add another chassis to increase bandwidth and capacity. Or scale into high availability with dual metadata controllers." Genesis Unlimited comes in three configurations: 2U 12-drive, 3U 24-drive, and 3U 36-drive supporting 2-, 3-, 4- and 6TB drives, so capacity ranges from 24TBs to 216TBs in a single enclosure. The system comes with a built-in metadata controller with two SDD drives and a new version of Hyper FS that allows unlimited client access. "There's no per-seat licensing," Herzan explains. "You can hook up three or 30 Mac, Windows or Linux workstations and share via 8/16Gb fiber channel or 1/10GbE Ethernet. Therefore, customers don't have to choose: They can use both file and block level access using both fiber channel and Ethernet with the same storage file system" — one of the few systems to offer users this choice. When customers need more bandwidth or capacity they can order an additional chassis that expands the original Genesis in a single, global name space. "By adding on our SONG (Scale Out Network Gateway), customers can also aggregate their 1/10Gb connectivity as well as failover of the chassis," says Herzan. An optional archive module is available for long- term archiving; an optional project management layer handles Avid, Adobe and Apple Final Cut project workflows. Genesis Unlimited offers ease of integration, Herzan reports, and Scale Logic can provide remote installation and support. The system will be shipping at NAB, and TV stations and post houses in the US and Europe are already jumping on board as early adopters. ATTO ATTO's 16Gb family of Fiber Channel products, which includes Celerity Host Bus Adapters (HBA), Thunder- bolt Desklink devices, FibreConnnect Switches and FiberBridge Storage Controllers, marks the storage and network connectivity company's fifth generation of fiber channel products. The previous 8Gb product from ATTO (www.atto tech.com) played a prominent role in the media and entertainment sector, notes Wayne Arvidson, vice pres- ident of marketing and channels. "At NAB 2010, about a dozen companies in this industry built solutions around our technology," he says. "Last NAB, there were over 70 companies. Their ability to sell storage into the produc- tion and post production environment has a lot to do with Celerity and the unique technologies in it." Scale Logic's Genesis Unlimited allows for future expansion.

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