ACADEMIA

Storage Visions -- Active Storage, the leader in high-performance storage solutions for media and creative professionals, today announced mRAID, the high-capacity, high-performance and high-availability RAID storage solution. mRAID provides key high-capacity on-line production storage for the new mMedia platform which delivers an end-to-end workflow storage solution for post and broadcast production.

"The mRAID is unlike any storage you have used in a creative workflow," explained Alex Grossman, founder and president of Active Storage, Inc. "It's fast, smart, scalable and easy. As heterogeneous workstation environments are becoming the norm, and increased resolutions and more distribution formats make ad-hoc approaches unworkable, the mRAID changes the game, making it easy to host powerful applications and support multiple Petabytes of connected storage."

The new mRAID starts by offering 48TB of storage capacity in three rack-units (3RU) with the unmatched throughput and low latency to power high-bandwidth post and broadcast production environments with the same ease of deployment and management for which ActiveRAID is known. In addition, mRAID is engineered to handle the current and next generation of Intel-based storage processors, with an entirely new, superior CrossFlow(TM) cooling system, a new high-speed bus interconnect between RAID controllers, new multi-core aware software, and a new, next-generation Environmental Processing Engine.

The mRAID's remarkable new, CrossFlow cooling design provides equal airflow and cooling to hard drives, RAID controllers, backup batteries, and I/O systems to eliminate hot spots and component failure, even in mobile, temporary production environments. The CrossFlow cooling design is highly efficient, not only using less power under normal conditions, but also providing ample cooling headroom when used in less than ideal conditions.

The new high-speed bus between RAID controllers maintains cache coherency, with a parallel data path that allows the system to saturate the 8x 8Gb Fibre Channel ports, and move data at full speed between Fibre Channel and the multiple 6Gb SAS ports to hard drives in the expansion enclosures. The mRAID's new next-generation, multi-core aware software design works with the new Intel processing engine to take advantage of additional power, providing more memory for cache and applications.

The new, hot-swappable Environmental Processing Engine (ENV) manages UPS communication, and allows mRAID and connected expansion systems to be remotely powered up and down, and managed securely through the Active Admin management suite.

Current ActiveRAID users can seamlessly integrate their ActiveRAID systems under the management of mRAID. A simple upgrade allows ActiveRAID installations to take full advantage of the improved processing power and added capabilities of mRAID with no reconfiguration.