Inflight’s tiered content storage optimise production and archiving processes, and includes EditShare EFS production storage, EFS nearline storage, and long-term archival systems.
Inflight Dublin supplies content for Inflight Entertainment (IFE) and has been major player in that field for 40 years. They deliver packages of movies, television shows and games to airlines around the world, tailored to suit their passengers. "We curate and package everything that is needed for IFE - video, audio, subtitles and metadata," said Pat Nolan, Director of IT and Information Security for Inflight Dublin.
"To meet each customer’s requirements, we need an agile system to accurately combine content with the right audio and subtitle languages, in the right formats for the IFE equipment on the client's planes, quickly and securely."
Tiered Storage Strategy
To run these services, Inflight uses a tiered content storage strategy to optimise its production and archiving processes. The system includes EditShare EFS production storage, EFS nearline storage, and long-term archival systems. Inflight has been working with EditShare on its content library and management facilities since 2011, and has recently expanded its storage capacity with further EFS nodes. The new appliances, supplied through EditShare's channel partner Tyrrell, extend the company's infrastructure by an extra half petabyte of production capacity.
EFS production nodes deliver high-performance storage for fast content creation. EFS nearline storage, however, serves as less costly intermediate capacity for parking storage. The parked media can still be accessed almost instantly and the system has the same robustness and reliability, but not the extreme speed needed in online production workflows. It frees up Inflight’s online storage and also takes advantage of the EFS Storage Node Group facility used to assign media spaces to a specific set of nodes and define how the files in the media space are protected.
Pat Nolan, Director of IT and Information Security, Inflight Dublin
EFS nearline uses the same namespace as EFS Production Storage, and involves no imports, exports or special procedures or routines to move content between systems. All data is present in the same virtual place. Also, for disaster recovery, an independent storage cluster could be created by combining an EFS Metadata server with EFS 40NL storage nodes. Each cluster then supports a single namespace that will remain unaffected in case of disaster.
Managing and Protecting Content Flows
Upon project completion and delivery, Inflight archives all content using EditShare ARK. The various content flows and access are managed through EditShare FLOW asset management software. FLOW also serves as the integration point for Inflight Dublin's own software tools for automatically creating deliverables, which they have developed in-house. Embedded in FLOW is EditShare Guardian, for comprehensive analytics and audit trailing. Combined with EditShare's inherent security, Guardian is a way of assuring Inflight's suppliers, which include major movie and television studios, that they maintain very high security standards.
The Guardian analytics system gives real-time visibility into the ongoing operations of the system, and comprises a set of dashboards and analytics tools that include custom search capabilities. Users can also set up searches and use these as the basis for custom dashboards and reports. In active post-production environments, editing workflows can produce large volumes of events to monitor that analysis and reporting tools like Guardian help to interpret. It records user activities such as media space mounts and unmounts, file opens, reads, writes and deletes.
Security Best Practices
EditShare Guardian
Groups concerned with improved content security in Media & Entertainment, including the MPAA and the Content Delivery and Security Association, have published best practice security documents for production, post and recording studios and recommend a multi-layer approach including a file auditing layer. So, through Guardian, EditShare EFS now opens a path towards compliance with emerging content security practices.
"As Infight's long-term partner, we understand the role workflow and security plays in its business and the demanding needs of the airlines it serves," said Stephen Murnane, Account Manager, Tyrell. "By increasing its storage capacity, Inflight Dublin can ensure a smooth IFE experience for passengers worldwide."
"Content is the foundation of Inflight Dublin's operations," said Tara Montford, Co-Founder and EVP Sales at EditShare. "Its suppliers need to be certain that their intellectual property is protected, and its customers need to know that the passengers on their planes will be pleased about the IFE experience, not disappointed or frustrated.
"Taking a central position, EditShare serves as much more than reliable storage – the FLOW software has the functionality Inflight Dublin needs, the interconnectivity for its workflow and the security and traceability to completely protect the media." www.editshare.com
