ngenea2 is the new version of pixitmedia’s open data management and orchestration platform for data-centric applications. ngenea2 addresses the growing challenges faced by M&E content creators and custodians to access, store and control their own unstructured data, without fees, and to run complex distributed workflows efficiently and securely.
ngenea2 is available in conjunction with pixstor, pixitmedia’s software-defined data storage platform. It introduces new features that are accessed through a GUI and API interfaces that have also been redesigned. Although earlier versions of ngenea focused exclusively on data management, this new version consolidates data and storage infrastructure management into a single point of orchestrated control.
When data resides in different storage pools – globally distributed cloud, object storage, traditional NAS files or tape resources – trying to organise it into storage tiers in terms of cost effectiveness becomes challenging. ngenea helps by wrapping existing file, cloud and object storage in a global namespace with a single view of the data, keeping the full, original path and filename. Automation then eases the task of securely transporting data to and from the storage locations – automatically moving data into the resource at the right cost level, according to value and usage.
Integrated with pixstor’s Search capabilities, users and applications can find, read and access migrated data directly across distinct storage tiers, within one unified workflow.
New Data-centric Workflows
M&E content creators can now use the new controls in ngenea 2 to quickly launch new, globally accessible data-centric workflows across multiple on-premises, public and private cloud endpoints simultaneously and securely through each phase of the M&E production lifecycle. This capability ensures that data gets as close as possible – and at just the right time – to the users and applications that depend on it, without intervention from pipeline managers, systems administrators or the users themselves.
pixitmedia’s combination of pixstor with ngenea2 results in open data management, giving companies choices by integrating with hardware, tools and applications, and by eliminating vendor lock-in and data charges. The introduction of ngenea2 also allows integration of third-party storage systems into the ngenea namespace, to give a unified view and instant global access to real-time data through simplified paths to cloud-scale workflows.
Furthermore, ngenea2 is also designed to give content owners AI-assisted insight into unstructured content assets and to facilitate data-centric management through in-storage processing from the Kalray DPU (data processing unit) infrastructure inside pixstor NVMe tiers. The processors are specialised for intelligent data processing and are natively capable of managing multiple workloads in parallel.
pixitmedia at NAB 2023
At the 2023 NAB Show in April, pixitmedia demonstrated use cases that highlighted how ngenea2 manages and orchestrates global M&E workflows in mixed environments, on-premises and in clouds from AWS and Seagate. The workflows included products and services from several different creative software developers such as Adobe, Autodesk, Avid, Blackmagic Design and Projective.
Cloud Workflow on AWS
At the AWS Create Innovation Zone, pixitmedia displayed a mixed editorial environment in AWS, mirroring a solution that is currently in production with the Media & Entertainment Distribution team of a motion picture studio. It includes an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) workstation in a pixstor cloud, using Projective’s Strawberry as project management of a shared storage environment. This set-up enabled Adobe, Avid and DaVinci Resolve to participate in the workflow – all using the same core assets.
Automating Media Migration with Seagate and Autodesk
Also, as a technology partner, Seagate hosted pixitmedia to display a joint hyperconverged system with three professional workstations running Autodesk Flame, Flame Assist and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve. The demonstrated system supplies high-performance finishing suites, using high-speed, native access to media data on pixstor, boosted by Kalray hardware DPU accelerator cards and with ngenea2 automating the movement of media between a customer NAS, Avid NEXIS and Tier0 storage.
Director of Engineering at Autodesk Steve McNeill noted, “pixstor has a scalable approach that can meet Autodesk Flame’s bandwidth requirements for real-time, high-resolution playback. pixstor and ngenea are Autodesk Flame Qualified, so we were pleased that pixitmedia displayed a system with our tools at NAB as, like pixitmedia, Autodesk is committed to delivering integrated solutions.”
pixitmedia is certified by Autodesk as a storage solution provider for workflows that utilise Autodesk Flame software. Pixstor users can work with Flame on the platform for their workflows, with the technical support of both Autodesk and pixitmedia. pixitmedia.com
