Infortrend solutions in the media and entertainment industry

In recent years, the media and entertainment industry has undergone a rapid revolution driven by 4K and even higher video resolutions. It therefore requires high-performance and reliable storage solutions capable of processing, as well as archiving and saving backup copies of such large volumes of data.

Infortrend provides comprehensive solutions for the industry to meet the requirements of diverse network environments, accommodating different workloads. These include shared media storage to simplify networking for collaborative data editing, and a high-speed SAN that integrates with Apple Xsan and the StorNext file system to share block storage between workstations.

Shared media storage solutions to simplify teamwork

Infortrend offers superior shared storage solutions for today's media and entertainment industry using ultra-high resolution UHD 4K and higher content:

• EonStor CS horizontally scalable, shared storage system - for large scale workgroups and post-production studios with more than 10 workstations.
• EonStor GS and GSe - for small workgroups and post-production studios up to 10 workstations.

The above enterprise storage systems use EonOne, Infortrend's proprietary graphical management software. They also support the EonView tool for Windows and macOS workstations to help the video editing team connect the workstations to the storage system and mount the network storage as a local drive.

All major media editing packages for collaborative editing are supported: Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve. The pre-installed DaVinci Resolve project server allows for easy parallel media editing.

For larger scale workgroups and growing businesses 

As business grows, storage capacity and throughput may not keep up with increasing demands. The CS series, however, knocks back users' ability to add nodes to a cluster to increase capacity and performance without interrupting system operation. Providing a read/write throughput of more than 100 GB/s and a capacity of more than 100 PB, CS can easily meet the processing requirements of a huge media stream.

Dedicated solutions for small workgroups

The EonStor GS and GSe are ideal NAS storage solutions for collaborative work with high-quality video files allowing easy deployment of applications that play and stream multimedia data. They are fully compatible with the widely used CIFS/SMB, NFS and AFP protocols.

GSe is a shared storage solution, with a single controller and high-capacity nearline drives or flash SSDs. The GS series, on the other hand, can have as few as 2 controllers and is designed for use in high availability solutions that mitigate downtime for critical projects.

Infortrend offers 3 types of GS/GSe family solutions: 2000T, 3000 Gen2 and 4000 Gen2. The 2000T is the most cost-effective solution supporting 13 video streams at 4K resolution. The 3000 Gen2 series has the best price/performance ratio. It supports 18 4K video streams. The 4000 Gen2 series, on the other hand, is an ultra-high performance solution and supports up to 26 streams.

Best performance from Infortrend

Maximum performance for the CIFS file protocol can reach 6600/3100 MB/s configuring the GS/GSe 4000 Gen2 with 32 SDDs. And with 48 HDDs, up to 26 simultaneous 4K video streams can be supported.

Outstanding SAN performance with Apple Xsan/StorNext

Apple Xsan/StorNext is a SAN (storage area network) and cluster file system solution developed for macOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux. The aforementioned file system allows multiple customers to share blocks of memory over a high-speed Fibre Channel interface or iSCSI network. Using the Xsan/StorNext file system, workstations can simultaneously read and write data to the same storage. Larger corporations can take full advantage of the potential of the shared storage file system allowing large file transfers, mounting multiple file systems and using multiple operating systems.

The EonStor DS and GS families support SANs with Xsan/StorNext, using solutions with 2 active/active controllers. This allows Xsan/StorNext to be configured for more stable and balanced performance. The achievable high-definition video throughputs are validated by tools such as AJA, FrameTest, Blackmagic and others. The EonStor DS and GS families are enterprise-class storage solutions supporting Apple Xsan/StorNext environments for editing workloads in multi-client environments.

High SAN transfers between Enterprise workstations

Media industry customers such as studios and video processing agencies require high-quality video and audio. Such companies need to have reliable storage systems for editing, recording or playing back high-definition video/audio. The EonStor DS 4000 SAN is one enterprise-class RAID system that successfully meets these requirements. The EonStor DS 4000 offers AV stream optimization and file processing functions, when streaming data, and provides performance of up to 11,000MB/s. This is equivalent to stable, simultaneous playback of 6 video streams in uncompressed 4K format. The EonStor DS 4000 allows full control over file editing or playback. The use of a 4U densely packed expansion shelf with drives allows for a capacity of more than 6 PB, successfully meeting the storage and streaming requirements of video and audio files, even in very large companies.