STORAGE

Pacific Title and Art Studio (PacTitle), a leading provider of digital and optical services, has selected SGI’s InfiniteStorage 6700 as the primary storage for their new digital intermediate service offering. The InfiniteStorage 6700, which is based on DataDirect Networks’ S2A (Silicon Storage Appliance) storage system solution, enables real-time processing in 2K and 4K application environments. The DataDirect Networks (DDN) S2A storage system solution helps transform high definition post production, digital intermediate, and HD broadcast applications, into all-digital, high-throughput, collaborative production environments streamlined for maximum efficiency and creativity. “Until recently, creating an open real-time storage system that could give producers and editors independent and simultaneous access to native HD, 2K (2048x1080) and 4K (4096x2160) high resolution content has been elusive,” explains Paul Bloch, President of DataDirect Networks. “Our S2A technology, with up to 3 GB/s of sustained real-time throughput and up to 500TB of storage capacity, can easily scale to handle the bandwidth and capacity intensive requirements needed in the digital intermediate space, empowering true real-time collaborative workflow in digital post-production.” “We researched the entire storage market and found the budget friendly SGI InfiniteStorage 6700, based on DDN’s S2A storage system, was the only storage solution that would allow us to utilize the many types of workstations and applications needed to create in real-time regardless of file format,” adds Andy Tran, Chief Technical Officer at Pacific Title. “Moreover, its ability to aggregate I/O to eliminate storage bottlenecks and its open solution elevates the performance of heterogeneous shared file systems with Fibre Channel and InfiniBand fabrics to provide real-time processing of up to six 2K and two 4K streams from multiple workstations with low latency and high Quality of Service.” Building a real-time, networked computing environment using generic storage devices results in a complex, expensive, hard to scale and hard to manage system. The SGI InfiniteStorage 6700 with DataDirect Networks S2A storage system inside eliminates this complexity and cost enabling the next innovation in real-time performance and scalability. The system supports Fibre Channel-4 and InfiniBand host connectivity simultaneously, Fibre Channel or SATA disks. The S2A storage system works with a wide range of shared and parallel file systems. With seven generations of deployment experience and an open solution architecture, DataDirect Networks’ S2A offers broad support for rich media applications, servers, networks, operating systems and cluster file systems making it easy to install, use and support. Whether the application needs are NAS or SAN storage, parallel or shared file system storage, production or nearline storage, the S2A storage system will enable real-time collaborative creation in broadcast or post production workflow process. “Our S2A storage system, integrated into high performance solutions like SGI’s InfiniteStorage 6700, makes storage networks transparent to open shared file systems. Studios like Pacific Title for the first time, can take advantage of the latest, most advanced and timesaving digital applications that require significant bandwidths and ultra-high throughput,” concludes Bloch. “The SGI 6700 storage system will help to accelerate the post production and digital intermediate markets into a completely digital environment, enabling true real-time collaboration that empowers production teams with multiple digital processes to accomplish more in less time with added time to explore greater creative potential.”