IBC 2017: Quantum's StorNext 6 to Make Its IBC Debut
Quantum will showcase StorNext 6, a new release of the company’s workflow storage platform. Quantum also will highlight its Xcellis solutions, recently enhanced with lab-validated 4K reference architectures for facilities of all sizes and including all-flash storage configurations that maximize performance for high-quality 4K streams.
Features and capabilities within StorNext 6 and Xcellis give users greater control over storage performance across the entire facility, enable efficiency and productivity for 4K workflows, as well as facilitate access to content for geographically distributed creative teams and simplify use across operating systems.
StorNext 6 Release: New at IBC
A series of substantive updates within the StorNext 6 platform demonstrates Quantum’s consistency in workflow storage — with a particular focus on enabling high-resolution workflows. StorNext 6 highlights include:
Quality of Service
A new quality of service (QoS) feature that empowers facilities to tune and optimize performance across all client workstations, and on a machine-by-machine basis, in turn guaranteeing that more demanding tasks, such as 4K playback or color correction, get the bandwidth they need to maintain ideal video quality.
FlexSpace Shared Archive
Addressing the challenges of global “always-on” production workflows, the new FlexSpace feature allows multiple instances of StorNext, located anywhere in the world, to share a common content repository. As a result, any user within a StorNext environment can access, browse and pull files from a shared workspace.
With this new capability, a creative team member working in one city can create content that is automatically stored to the common repository and available for further work by team members working elsewhere without it being shipped or explicitly transported to them.
FlexSync Multisite Synchronization
FlexSync is a new capability that provides a fast, flexible and simple way to synchronize content between multiple StorNext systems in a highly manageable and automated fashion. FlexSync supports one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-one file-replication scenarios and can be configured to operate at almost any level: specific files, specific folders or entire file systems. By leveraging enhancements in file-system metadata monitoring, FlexSync recognizes changes instantly and can begin reflecting those changes on another system.
FlexTier Public and Private Cloud Access
Quantum will highlight its FlexTier cloud-access feature, which makes it easy to integrate existing public-cloud storage accounts and third-party object storage (private cloud) into a StorNext environment and into familiar media workflows. FlexTier currently supports Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, NetApp StorageGRID, IBM Cleversafe and Scality RING as archive tiers.
As a result, content owners can get all the content access and visibility benefits provided by StorNext, protect their investments in private-cloud object storage systems and public-cloud storage services, and reduce the cost and complexity of cloud storage administration.
New Xcellis 4K Reference Architectures
Quantum will highlight its new 4K reference architectures, created from real-world 4K testing and scaled for facilities from small to large. In the testing, all Xcellis solutions were validated under intense 4K workloads, reflecting the capabilities for streaming 4K to collaborative teams of content creators.
The testing included characterization of large- and small-form-factor disk drives and all-flash arrays in different configurations of compressed and uncompressed 4K formats. The resulting reference architectures have been tuned to deliver predictable-stream-count workloads for the full range of 4K formats.
Veritone Artificial Intelligence Platform in the StorNext Environment
During IBC2017, Quantum will showcase Veritone’s multi-engine artificial intelligence (AI) platform in a Quantum StorNext-managed environment. Veritone aiWARE — a hybrid on-premise and cloud version of Veritone’s cloud-based AI platform ― will be offered as an integrated solution with StorNext workflow storage.
This combination will allow users to leverage the power of Veritone’s cognitive analytics ― along with top cognitive engines in areas such as object recognition, optical character recognition and transcription ― to extract new value from their on-premise video and audio content without moving it to the cloud.
Live Multistream 4K and 8K Color Correction, Editorial and Virtual Reality Workflows
Within the presentation theater on Quantum’s stand, the company will provide demonstrations of live multistream 4K and 8K color correction and editorial workflows. Showcasing the performance of Xcellis and other Quantum storage systems, these demonstrations will give attendees a firsthand look at the levels that can be achieved with the optimal hardware configuration, supported by the StorNext platform.
During demonstrations throughout IBC2017, expert creatives will use Quantum’s Xcellis high-performance workflow storage with SGO’s Mistika Ultima for grading and finishing for UHD, HDR, HFR, 8K and VR workflows. Demonstrations also will highlight the new performance and collaboration features of StorNext 6.