Quantum Xcellis shared workflow storage combines performance
similar to a SAN with the lower-cost connectivity of network-attached
storage, in one continuously scalable system.
Quantum Xcellis Manages Workflow Storage inside Converged Architecture |
| Quantum Xcellisis new high-performance shared workflow storage that manages media and metadata together. It has a number of connectivity options for system clients on bothFibre ChannelandEthernet, and supports hosted applications. To support media groups working collaboratively, the workflow storage components are integrated into a single, scalable4RU hardwaresystem. This approach was developed to facilitate online work in processing, ingest and delivery, and archiving through Quantum's Lattus object storage, LTO tape and Q-Cloud services, all of which run on theStorNext 5media workflow platform. |
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Xcellis also integratesreal-time elementsandnon-real-time production supportin the same system. The Xcellis Workflow Director controls shared client access privileges and establishes simultaneous client connectivity across network types, including Fibre Channel and IP for SMB, CIFS, NFS sharing protocols and Quantum's Distributed LAN Client — and also supports hosted applications. By putting the functionality of your environment’s distinct components into a compact hardware system, the Xcellis Workflow Director simplifies the overall storage architecture and also operation and management. Xcellis also recognizes which operations do not require high-speed Fibre Channel and can be moved over to cheaper IP NAS connectivity. Xcellis avoids the need for separate islands of storage and allows all clients and workflow automation operations such as transcode, QA and delivery – that is, the‘non-real-timesupport’elements - to share storage with complete, transparent access to all assets and content, regardless of interface type or operating system. About theDistributed LAN Clients, because StorNext was developed for sharing among servers and low cost data retention, these Clients were added to allow LAN-based access to StorNext volumes through clustered gateway systems, essentially making StorNext File Systems similar to clustered NAS systems. Consequently, the Distributed LAN Clients can lower the connectivity costs of applications that do not need direct Fibre Channel SAN access to StorNext managed storage. |
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This may especially help customers with High Performance Computing and rendering projects, when a large data set is broken into segments and processed by multiple servers. The Clients also overcome limitations of NFS and CIFS data sharing, owing to their resiliency, load balancing and per-stream performance. Again, Xcellis’ production, distribution and archive performance is powered throughQuantum StorNext 5. This platform is characterized by fast streaming for ingest, transcoding and delivery, useful in high-resolution, HDR workflows, and Fibre Channel SAN connectivity balanced by lower-cost LAN, SMB and NFS sharing options, with IP connectivity for compatibility in broadcast and post environments. Intelligent, policy-driven file movement can be designed across LTO tape, LTFS, object storage and cloud archive systems balancing the cost of media access and storage on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Xcellis users can start with the smallest system andscale continuouslyto the largest system available without replacing the original hardware or interrupting processing, almost doubling the number of files the workflow storage can handle. Scaling functionality allows scaling capacity and bandwidth independently in order to customise performance characteristics to match operations and individuals’ tasks within the workflow - now up to 10 billion unmanaged files, or 1.4 billion managed files in up to 64 file system volumes, according to Quantum. At any time the user only pays for what they need as their system grows. Xcellis also uses theStorNext Connect management application to support configuring, deploying and scaling the entire storage system and clients, and to help identify and resolve performance issues. Quantum continually updates StorNext Connect, for example, Xcellis users will have an updated customer self-install function and an IP client NAS configuration located within the StorNext Connect UI. www.quantum.com |
