StorageDNA
Industry trends
Storage capacity and management demands in the media
and entertainment industry are growing rapidly, driven
predominantly by the move to digital le-based workows
and the requirement for higher resolution formats such as
HD, 3D, 4K and 8K during the creation, editing, archiving
and distribution of digital content. For example, the
stereoscopic 3D digital production of lms such as Avatar
required several petabytes of storage.
The 2012 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report
from Coughlin Associates
1
forecasts that “Between 2012
and 2017, we expect a 5.6 times increase in the required
digital storage capacity used in the entertainment
industry and about a four-fold increase shipped per year,
from 22,425 PB to 87,152 PB.”
The Coughlin Associates report further states that archiving
digital content, and converting historical analog video
content to digital form for use and preservation, will remain
the single largest user of digital storage capacity in the media
and entertainment industry.
“What’s the industry going to do with 87 exabytes of
content?” asks Tridib Chakravarty, chief executive ocer and
president, StorageDNA. “Even if only ve percent are of value
at a future date, producers can’t throw it away. Storage Area
Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage disks, ash
and optical disk technologies are too expensive for long term
content retention, deduplication is inappropriate for audio
and video content, and removable drives are too unreliable.
LTO tape is therefore the only logical choice for archiving.”
The value of StorageDNA software
with HP LTO-5 and LTFS
Chakravarty explains how StorageDNA software enables
HP LTO-5 with LTFS to act as a tape based nearline as well
as o-line archive solution: “StorageDNA software enables
content stored on LTO-5 with LTFS tape to be easily accessed
throughout the production cycle, thus broadening LTO’s role
from a pure o-line archive to a searchable and low cost
nearline storage solution. The HP and StorageDNA LTO with
LTFS based storage solution thus resolves the ‘Big Data’ issue
faced by media and entertainment customers by delivering
a reliable, secure, scalable, low-cost and accessible platform
that acts like nearline disk. This is the driving force behind
the rapid adoption of StorageDNA software and HP LTO
technology with LTFS.”
LTO tape’s unique blend of cost-eective, scalable, durable
and removable storage has always delivered proven benets
when it comes to protecting and retaining digital content in
the media and entertainment industry. However, accessing
and sharing content on LTO tape had not been as easy as disk
until the introduction of the LTFS.
LTFS - making LTO tape easy to
access and share
LTFS is a tape-based le system that is a true game changer
when it comes to the usability and portability of LTO tape.
LTFS makes LTO-5 tape self-describing, le-based and
easy-to-use. Simply load a tape into the LTO-5 tape drive,
mount it into the le system, format the cartridge for LTFS
and it becomes visible just as a disk. Using standard le
operations like drag and drop, les can be accessed and
directories can be created just like a USB drive or memory
stick. In addition, LTFS allows the sharing of content across
Windows®, Mac and Linux platforms. With LTFS, user data
is no longer locked down in a proprietary format making it
accessible today and in the future.
Customer
solution at
a glance
Application
Backup and archiving
Hardware
• 1 x HP ProLiant DL120
server
• 1 x HP ProLiant DL320
server
• 4 x rack-mounted HP
LTO-5 Ultrium 3000
Tape Drives
• 1 x HP MSL 4048
Tape Library
• HP LTO-5 Ultrium
Tape Media
Software
• DNA Evolution™
X400-48
2