Entertainment
Extreme Storage for Gaming, Post-Production and Broadcast
XBOX LIVE, Warner Bros., Technicolor, Hualong Digital, Universal Studios, Imagica, Pacific Title, MTV, CNN, Time Warner, and CCTV rely on S2A Extreme Storage for the scalability, performance, density, and power efficiency they need to store and manage vast amounts of unstructured data used to power the all new digital entertainment world of video gaming, HD movies and TV programs, production and distribution through the Internet.
The entertainment industry is undergoing a fundamental shift to an all digital world in which not only content is created and stored digitally but is also geared for high-bandwidth distribution via the Internet while consumers demand HD quality content. This shift is taking place all across the industry from TV stations to film studios, to production houses and digital intermediate facilities. The resulting rapid growth in very large media files--digital images, video, and audio--is such that today 85% of total storage capacity consists of unstructured data in contrast to transaction-based data that previously dominated most organizations.
Traditional storage architectures, optimized for transactional data, are not suited for this new all-digital world. DataDirect Networks' innovative S2A technology can handle very large files in real time, expedite workflows, stay ahead of unpredictable capacity growth to support millions of users, store billions of images, videos, and music files and serve them up with sub-millisecond response times, and stream massive HD content without missing a frame.
With the only storage platforms capable of delivering full write performance equaling system read performance, with guaranteed quality-of-service, DDN enables broadcasters, post-production facilities and video-on-demand providers to obtain consistently predictable performance for large content files and the ingest of multiple data streams--critical for their success in the all-digital era. All of these vast capabilities were recently recognized by the leading analysts at Frost & Sullivan, which awarded DDN with the Digital Media Storage Innovation of the Year.
Video Gaming
Driven by ever more powerful consoles and multi-media PCs, video games continue to increase in creative content, and life likeness. In an intensely competitive environment, game makers are faced with the challenges of coming up with the next blockbusters, shorter release cycles and the heightened sophistication and expectations of gamers. At the same time, the growth of online multi-user games provides another revenue stream for video game companies.
Storage systems are a crucial part of the computing infrastructure in game development and online gaming environments. For both, traditional storage architectures optimized for database transactions cannot handle the large multimedia files and high-performance required for the collaborative workflow of game developers nor the sub-millisecond response times, multiple streams, and unpredictable millions of users accessing multi-user games over the internet.
In contrast, DataDirect Networks' eighth generation S2A platform can power both environments, enabling multiple applications to run simultaneously in parallel and providing extreme performance and capacity, managing 2.4 petabytes in only two floor tiles and delivering sustained throughput of up to 6 gigabytes per second for both writes and reads, per appliance.
The S2A storage platform greatly simplifies the workflow, providing a single instance of digital content that can be accessed by many users. This streamlined production pipeline can significantly reduce errors, shorten production time, and promote creativity needed for game developers while reducing complexity and administrative overhead. At the same time, as the only storage platform that writes data as fast as it reads it, the S2A scales in capacity with guaranteed QoS and consistent performance to support the millions of consumers who will access your interactive games over the Internet.
Highlights
- Delivers extreme performance beyond 240 GB/s
- Scales in capacity with guaranteed QoS
- Enables collaborative file sharing
- Saves space and reduces power for online archives
Post-Production
Whether creating visual effects, 2D and 3D animation, main titles, trailers, or mixing sound for feature films, television, advertising, interactive visual media and the video games, post-production houses feature end-to-end digital capabilities. To meet deadlines, real-time collaborative workflow is critical to successful post production operations. System downtime, unavailable data, or hindered processes affect a company's success. Supporting increasingly complex and distributed environments with HD, 2K, 4K and 8K formats, many organizations are challenged to support real-time workflow, concurrent multi-user editing and ingest capability with conventional storage systems.
In contrast, DataDirect Networks' eighth generation S2A platform enables multiple applications to run simultaneously in parallel and provides extreme performance and capacity, managing 2.4 petabytes in only two floor tiles and delivering sustained throughput of up to 6 gigabytes per second for both writes and reads, per appliance.
Additionally, the S2A9900 is the only storage system that can support more than 30 Apple Final Cut Pro workstations running uncompressed HD video in real-time from a single platform and can stream four uncompressed 4K content streams from a single platform to edit a feature film. The S2A storage platform greatly simplifies the workflow, providing a single instance of digital content that can be accessed by multiple editors and colorists. This streamlined production pipeline can drastically reduce errors, shorten production time, and promote creativity while reducing complexity and administrative overhead.
Highlights
- Delivers extreme performance beyond 240 GB/s and scalable capacity
- Supports open systems CPU, OS, and file systems
- Enables collaborative file sharing
- Saves space and reduces power for online archives
Broadcast
Today consumers demand content on the air, online through phones and mp3 players. To survive in an environment where competition is coming from over 500 cable channels, satellite TV, YouTube, Netflix, video-on-demand, traditional movie houses, and hundreds of startups, media broadcast companies have to deliver compelling content whenever and by whatever method the consumer wants it. Developing content, preparing content in multiple formats, and then distributing multiple streams requires high-throughput and scalable storage systems that can not only enable real-time collaborative workflows and store billions of images, videos, and music files but also distribute them on demand with sub-millisecond response times, and stream massive HD content without missing a frame.
Conventional storage systems optimized for transaction-based processing cannot handle the stress of real-time collaborative workflows and multi-stream distribution of large files that are typical of the new HD digital world. DataDirect Networks' eighth generation S2A platform enables multiple applications to run simultaneously in parallel and provides extreme performance and capacity, managing 2.4 petabytes in only two floor tiles and delivering sustained throughput of up to 6 gigabytes per second for both writes and reads, per appliance.
The S2A storage system is an ideal storage solution for broadcast companies because it was architected specifically to handle extremely large files at very high throughput. New content can easily exceed multiple terabytes daily, and the S2A enables the digitization of that content using multiple ingest stations. At the same time the S2A can concurrently deliver multiple terabytes of data to remote editing stations or playout servers, so organizations can effectively centralize their operations. For video playout, where flawless streaming video is mandatory, the S2A delivers real-time performance and uncompromising reliability.
Customers in news editing environments, where historically people have been doing things sequentially rather than in parallel, benefit greatly from DataDirect Networks parallel storage solutions.
The S2A's exceptional performance, centralized data repository, and rock solid reliability saves systems administration time and allows organizations to invest capital into the business rather than on more infrastructure. With the S2A platform you can expedite workflow and production and get to broadcast faster while reducing overall costs and increasing consumer satisfaction. In fact, clients have gone from zero to on-the-air with DDN S2A solutions in less than 2 weeks.
Highlights
- Delivers extreme performance beyond 240 GB/s and massively scalable capacity
- Supports multiple HD, 2K and 4K streams
- Enables collaborative file sharing
- Lowers cost of online archives, backup and recovery
