24 TECHFEED Storage
IT’S SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO SOLVE THE MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY’SWORKFLOW CHALLENGES Films at 59 to take advantage of the technology and commercial benefits, and the ability to choose where, when and on what platform the software is run.” The tailored PixStor system at the Bristol site currently has six workstations attached to it: two Autodesk Flames, two FilmLight Baselights and two Assist systems. It connects together the company’s Avid network, Storage DNA archive system and Object Matrix nearline storage. It also has a parallel file system that can manage petabytes of data and billions of files, all under a single global namespace. The data architecture foundation relies on a scatter algorithm to distribute writes across a spinning disk, removing the impact of fragmentation on performance so that there is no bandwidth degradation as the system fills – as is common on some file systems. “Most other high-performing shared- access storage solutions require defragmentation to restore performance as they fill, causing downtime and loss of bandwidth,” Leaver points out. With its foundations leveraging standard-compute, flask and disk platforms, alongside low-cost commodity ethernet technology, PixStor is more cost effective than the traditional legacy LAN at Films at 59. AS NATURE NECESSITATES Since installing PixStor at the Bristol site, and with the introduction of modern flash technologies, the system now supports the latest in NVMeOF, creating a fast performance storage layer alongside the traditional spinning disk tiers, and a proven delivery of 16K workflows. In the future, Films at 59 will be able to make use of PixStor’s intelligent automated tools, including analytics, enhanced search using the AI and machine learning, and auto-tiering to collaborate remotely. As capacity and performance requirements inevitably increase, PixStor
MEN AT WORK Films at 59’s operations manager, Stuart Dyer (below right), and senior technical support engineer, Andrew Farmer (below left), have found their grading and finishing for wildlife documentaries made easier by Pixit Media’s PixStor
can be scaled up (or down) by additional commodity storage. Even now, Bristol-based Icon Films is working on an 8K feature documentary of Africa’s wildlife oasis, titled Okavango . Additionally, PixStor has the option to scale capacity into multiple cloud and object resources transparently through specifically designed to solve the media and entertainment industry’s workflow challenges. It binds changing technologies and business requirements in seamless fashion to help content creators and distributors remain competitive, without sacrificing the quality of their work.” Pixit Media’s Ngenea offering. “It’s the only storage platform
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