Avid Rolls Out New Storage Solution

Building upon its Unity family of products, Avid Technology has introduced a new shared storage solution, the Avid Unity ISIS media network. ISIS, which stands for Infinitely Scalable Intelligent Storage, employs a distributed-intelligence architecture that enables 16 individual storage blades to process media while simultaneously sharing data and balancing the collective workflow between entire groups of connected storage drives.

The system relies on 16 individual storage blades that communicate with one another and are able to adapt instantly and redistribute data if a drive were to fail. The blades are housed within a single storage chassis. Version 1.0 can scale from 8TB to 64TB with storage available in 8TB increments. As data demands increase, users can connect additional ISIS engines, with each new engine boosting the overall system’s bandwidth. The system has no inherent storage or connectivity limitations and avoids bottlenecks that can occur in storage systems that used centralized intelligence. Users may hot swap any storage component – even during data transfer – for continual access to information. As well, ISIS can accommodate up to 100 dual-stream, 50Mbps clients in realtime, providing multiple clients with simultaneous read and write access
CBS News recently began using the Avid Unity ISIS in a continual effort to convert to digital. “When we first saw Avid Unity ISIS, we knew it would be an ideal storage solution that could more efficiently handle the massive amounts of media that we store, access, and share simultaneously between our major news operations in New York and London every day,” said Frank Governale, VP of Operations at CBS News. “It also fits well into our IT infrastructure, greatly expanding our client count and the amount of data we can share in real time,” he added.