SAN JOSE, Calif.—Quantum has unveiled StorNext 6.4 software with support for self-describing objects to make cloud content more easily accessible, thereby enabling new hybrid-cloud workflows.  

The new version allows clients to write files into the StorNext file system and then, based on policy, the file system copies files to public or private cloud storage and offers the option of including additional object metadata. Doing so enables non-StorNext software clients and cloud processes to access objects directly by leveraging the new extended metadata, the company said.

"Quantum's StorNext file system has been widely adopted by the media and entertainment industry because of the way it maximizes performance for flash-based drives, high-resolution workflows and multiple workstreams," said Tom Coughlin, president, Coughlin Associates. "By making hybrid and multicloud storage environments more accessible, the StorNext file system continues to evolve as a tool for enabling media and entertainment workflows."

StorNext 6.4 also offers improved retrieval speed from large object stores, the company said. Users can expect to see a 5x to 7x performance increase depending on the size of their objects and other factors.

Other StorNext 6.4 features include StorNext Dynamic Library Pooling, which improves resiliency of large tape archives, enabling multiple libraries to be used for performance and redundancy enhancements, and AWS Glacier archive service support.

“This latest version of StorNext software adds new ways to archive content and access it in the cloud and is another step toward providing a seamless bridge between on-premise and the cloud," said Ed Fiore, vice president and general manager, Primary Storage at Quantum.

More information is available online. 

AMSTERDAM—Quantum is featuring the latest developments in its StorNext file system, F-Series NVMe storage arrays for video editing and rendering and R-Series removable, ruggedized storage systems for remote and mobile video during the ongoing IBC 2019 convention at the RAI Amsterdam.

The company is also making its executives available to discuss Quantum’s new line of Distributed Cloud Services and Cloud-Based Analytics Software, which allows users or Quantum’s own support team to manage and monitor environments around the world from one location.

“As the media industry produces more high-resolution, high frame-rate content, significant demands are being placed on the underlying storage infrastructure supporting these workflows,” said Quantum President and CEO Jamie Lerner.

“At IBC, visitors will see a more product- and technology-focused Quantum building on our leadership in both high-speed processing and long-term archiving of video and image content.”

Making its European debut is the Quantum F-Series ultra-fast, highly available NVMe storage array, which uses NVMe flash drives for reads and writes up to five times faster than traditional flash storage and networking systems. This performance supports the demands of real-time editing and rendering of 4K and 8K video, the company said.

The latest versions of the StorNext file system and appliances feature redesigned appliance hardware with two-times faster performance and other benefits, including editing and coloring of 8K content in real time, new predictive data movement and analytics capabilities, new cloud integration approaches and a simpler user experience, the company said.

More information is available on the Quantum website.

See Quantum at IBC 2019 stand 7.B07

Quantum has launched the F-Series, a new line of NVMe storage arrays “designed for performance, availability and reliability.”

Non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash drives allow for massive parallel processing, while the latest Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networking technology provides direct access between workstations and the NVMe storage devices.

[Webinar: Improving Post-Production By Better Utilization Of NVMe Enhanced Storage Resources]

These hardware features are combined with the new Quantum Cloud Storage Platform and the StorNext file system, resulting in powerful end-to-end storage capabilities for post production houses, broadcasters and other rich media environments.

The F2000 is a 2U, dual node server with two hot-swappable compute canisters and up to 24 dual-ported NVMe drives. Each compute canister can access all 24 NVMe drives.

Quantum’s Cloud Storage Platform is integrated with StorNext, allowing customers to reduce total cost of ownership in areas including post production, sport video and rendering/simulation.

Quantum F-Series will enable customers to:

• Ingest, edit and finish content with lightning fast performance – the F-Series is up to five times faster than traditional flash storage/networking, delivering extremely low-latency and hundreds of thousands of IOPs per chassis
• Gain predictable, low-latency access via fibre channel or ethernet – users can reduce infrastructure costs by moving from fibre channel to ethernet IP-based infrastructures
• Meet performance requirements with less rack space – customers who use a large number of HDDs or SSDs to meet their performance requirements can gain back racks of data centre space

Jamie Lerner, Quantum president and CEO, said: “This is the most significant product launch we’ve done in years, not only because our F-Series product line will enable our customers in media to produce more great hi-def content faster over IP networks, but because the F-Series is the first product line based on the Quantum Cloud Storage Platform.

“This platform is a stepping stone for us, and for our customers, to move to a more software-defined, hyperconverged architecture, and is at the core of additional products we will be introducing later this year.”

Quantum will showcase the F2000 at its booth SL4409 at the 2019 NAB Show, April 8-11.

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Quantum has upgraded its Xcellis appliances powered by the company’s StorNext file system.

The new appliances are based on a next-generation server architecture that includes dual 8-core Intel Xeon CPUs, 64 GB memory, SSD boot drives, and dual 100Gb Ethernet or 32 Gb Fibre Channel ports. The significantly enhanced CPU and 50 percent increase in RAM over the previous generation greatly improve StorNext metadata performance, according to the company, making file auditing less time intensive, provide support for an even greater number of clients per node, and enable the management of billions of files per node. Customers operating in a dynamic application environment on storage nodes will also see performance improvements, the company said.

Quantum says that the 100 Gb Ethernet and 32 Gb Fibre Channel connectivity option allows customers to utilize the latest generation networking infrastructure between their clients and storage arrays, thereby accelerating workflows and improving productivity. Combined with StorNext’s capability to provide the most comprehensive and coordinated file accessibility over NAS, SAN, and DLC architectures, the new platform offers industry-leading architectural flexibility, Quantum said.

The new version of Xcellis gives customers the ability to provide cross-protocol locking for shared files across SAN, NFS, and SMB, optimizing performance for collaborative workflows and the ability to share content across both Fibre Channel and Ethernet. This will allow StorNext to provide even higher levels of streaming performance for video playback, with even greater reliability, according to Quantum.

Xcellis appliances provide a high-performance gateway for StorNext advanced data management software to integrate tiers of massively scalable on-premise and cloud-based storage. This end-to-end capability provides a cost-effective solution to retain massive amounts of data according to Quantum. In addition, StorNext offers a variety of important features that ensure data-protection of valuable content over its entire life-cycle. Customers can easily copy files to off-site tiers and take advantage of versioning to roll back to an earlier point in time (prior to a malware attack, for example) as well as set up automated replication for disaster recovery purposes, all designed to protect valuable digital assets.

Quantum’s latest Xcellis appliances are available now.

RIO DE JANEIRO—Launched in 2012, Fox Sports Brasil has taken the lead in bringing world-class sports to as many viewers as possible, and has quickly become a top sports broadcaster in Brazil. We own rights to several exclusive sporting events, including the 2018 FIFA World Cup—which set new viewership records for the channel.

With such a massive amount of content to broadcast, and viewers wanting to access this content across a variety of platforms, we needed a sophisticated archiving technology solution that could help meet this demand—one that would be easy to manage and have enough capacity to hold our increasing collection of sports footage. Beyond that, we also needed to improve our ability to find content in our archives. Given the growing demand, generating new content through archive footage had become just as important as delivering live sports.

However, in looking to deliver this footage, finding the right content proved to be nearly impossible. Luckily, a good portion of our archive content was on YouTube, and we found that the ability to search historical video footage on YouTube was good enough to yield adequate results. Unfortunately, the quality of this footage was rather poor since it had been formatted multiple times for different platforms. It didn’t take long to realize we needed to find a better way.

THREE CRITERIA

We determined three criteria our ideal solution would meet. First, it had to be able to not only enrich the metadata of our numerous ingest streams, but also scan and enrich the archives. Next, it needed to be appropriately automated and simple to manage. Finally, the entire workflow had to remain on-premise, due to security concerns about moving our archive into the cloud, and cost considerations of frequently retrieving data. We settled on an artificial intelligence (AI) solution, since AI can be used to enrich volumes of metadata through cognitive engine processing.

After an extensive review, it became clear that Quantum provided the only option that met all of our criteria, including leveraging AI. The Quantum team—working with Seal Broadcast & Content—built a hybrid-cloud AI platform based on Quantum’s Xcellis storage appliance. This AI solution connects transparently to StorNext, Quantum’s file system for protecting, preserving and accessing rich media content.

We can now easily index and access 60,000 hours of archived content and live programming, and the AI-enabled workflow allows us to search content more rapidly to meet aggressive production deadlines.

A BETTER BROADCAST BUSINESS

The business impacts of the new solution have been immense. We can more quickly find the archived footage we need. And now that the entire archive is searchable, we’re constantly finding more relevant and compelling footage. And last but not least, the end product is of much higher quality. Ultimately, Quantum’s StorNext-based Xcellis on-premise solution has enabled us to be more agile, cost-effective and productive, and has gotten viewers across Brasil even more engaged with their sports content.

Luis Santos, vice president of Engineering & Operations for Fox Sports Brasil has worked in the sports and entertainment industry since 1995. He moved to the Fox Network Group in 2011 to launch Fox Sports Brazil Channels. He can be reached atLuis.Santos@Fox.com.

For more information, please visitwww.quantum.comor call 800-667-6268.

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—Quantum recently announced that its StorNext-powered Xcellis Scale-out NAS is now certified to operate with the Dalet Galaxy media asset management (MAM) platform. With this certification, Quantum and Dalet extend their 10-year partnership, which began with the integration of Quantum’s StorNext shared file system and data management with Dalet’s MAM software.

[Read: Dalet Qualifies Quantum's StorNext Storage Manager For Production Storage]

The resulting integration enables data and metadata to move seamlessly and automatically between Dalet media workflows and Xcellis storage media systems for more efficient and collaborative content production, management, and distribution. By leveraging the Xcellis Scale-out NAS and its integrated rights-managed workflow engine, users can immediately access and share data across the workflow to produce stories and packages faster.

An Xcellis cluster can scale to reach hundreds of petabytes in capacity and more than a terabyte per second in performance. It can also be deployed as part of a multitier infrastructure, including object-, tape- and cloud-based storage—more cost-effectively than an enterprise NAS-only solution with the same capacity, according to Quantum.

SAN JOSE, CALIF. – Quantum’s StorNext 5 shared storage workflow will be the focal point of the company’s presentation at the upcoming IBC 2015 show in Amsterdam. The company will also highlight StorNext Connect, a management and monitoring console that provides a dashboard for the entire StorNext environment.

StorNext 5 supports content production, distribution and archiving. It automatically moves data across different storage technologies while maintaining full control of the data for fast file-streaming performance.

StorNext Pro Foundation

Extending the StorNext 5 workflow is the Q-Cloud Archive, which allows end-to-end StorNext environments to leverage cloud storage fully with no additional hardware, separate applications or programming while maintaining full compatibility with existing software applications.

Also on display will be the StorNext Pro Foundation, an integrate shared storage system for new users in post, broadcast, corporate and government video to manage assets from ingest to delivery to archive. The Lattus object storage system, which creates parallel workflows for non-real-time operations, will also be on hand; as will the recently released Artico intelligent NAS archive.

Quantum is also preparing a demonstration on how StorNext connects to MAMs, NLEs and other tools for work with higher resolutions and greater volumes of content.

IBC 2015 takes place from Sept. 11-15 in Amsterdam. Quantum will be located at booth 7.B26.