 |
 |
 |
|---|
EMC Isilon Takes On HD Production NAS at AP
Published on Tuesday, 31 January 2012
The Associated Press independent news agency has deployed EMC Isilon scale-out network-attached 
storage and software to support its HD video production and archiving facilities.
 |
|
| AP made this investment to raise the performance of copy and transfer rates and storage management, and to improve the reliability and lower the cost of its video archive storage without compromising the level or quality of their activity. Although initially installed specifically for video editorial, AP has begun using the Isilon storage system to archive content as well, to save on costs as part of a video infrastructure revamp to support the HD video upgrade from camcorders to servers to storage. | |
 |
|
| Among the main aspects of the NAS is simplified IT management. AP deployed EMC Isilon NL-Series and X-Series platform nodes in its New Jersey and London data centres to support its video production and archival system. The Isilon OneFS operating system, and SmartPools and SmartConnect software enable AP to aggregate all storage assets into one pool, assign appropriate levels of service to individual users, and perform other storage management tasks. EMC Isilon will also allow AP to transition from four storage tiers to two, object-level and block-level. EMC Isilon says they have accelerated content access and can deliver a 6-times video copy and transfer rate performance increase over AP’s tape-based archival system, combined with increased reliability close to 100 per cent. The scale-out architecture and management software are expected to enable AP to scale from about 800 terabytes today to about 2.5 petabytes by mid-2013 and add the associated capacity and performance improvements as required. Furthermore, AP has found the system and software easy enough to adopt without training to be able to deploy and configure the NAS. Some challenges that AP faced before deploying EMC Isilon other newsgathering organizations continued to transition to HD video in 2011, AP needed to upgrade its standard-definition video content. However, the tape-based video archival system AP had used for SD video was not capable of handling HD content. The tape system had a high per-terabyte cost, relatively slow access and transfer rates, and failed 10 to 15 per cent of the time. Also tape technology changed periodically which meant organizations had to convert existing tapes to make them compatible with new standards. www.isilon.com www.EMC.com www.ap.org |
|
Add comment
