Q&A: Doug Hynes, product marketing manager of Avid’s storage and infrastructure product lines

Basically, we like to think of our storage solutions as part of an overall solution. Though we offer point products that can be sold outside of an Avid environment, we primarily focus on workflows and improving efficiency. Our solutions range from direct attached storage that a customer would connect directly to their workstation all the way up to enterprise class solutions, such as the Unity ISIS shared storage solution, which allows for over 300 simultaneous users and 192 Terabytes capacity. All of our storage is integrated with our own applications and Avid Interplay, a production asset management system. One of the biggest advantages of using Avid shared storage is the real-time access by multiple users ‘ this improves overall workflow efficiency and customers can save hours (and money) in the editing room. One editor isn’t sitting around waiting for another to close out a bin. On another note, flexibility is also a deciding factor when choosing storage, because broadcast and post production teams need to be able to easily manage their storage allocation for various projects on a daily basis, in addition to being able to accommodate increased capacity requirements ‘ for example, many of our customers are expanding to add HD editing suites. Avid Unity ISIS can expand from 8TB to 192TB. Avid’s storage solutions are designed to support the ongoing success of our customers. There’s no cap on growth and facilities don’t have to turn away work for lack of storage capabilities.

All of our products are tested and created to support real-time access of media. They're not designed to be push-pull. You can capture directly to the disc, whether locally attached or through a network and be able to work with that material in real time in a multi-user environment. So when you graduate from a local attached storage, the next level is Unity MediaNetwork, the family name for our shared storage solutions that addresses high bandwidth in a small workgroup environment. The next level up from MediaNetwork is our Unity ISIS product, which serves hundreds of users, once again, all in real time. So, depending on the application and number of users, Avid offers a solution that fits the need. Unity MediaNetwork is ideal for small workgroups and mid- to large-sized post and broadcast facilities where teams are editing, finishing, and doing audio and graphics work at the same time with the same media files and projects. ISIS fits the larger scale needs of broadcast and media production environments, up to 1,000 user accounts and 330 real-time clients. ISIS is also a fit for collaborative projects like reality TV that require SD and Avid DNxHD editing and finishing and any setting, like education institutions, that need to expand for additional users. In each of these cases, the Unity systems can also be used as centralized storage systems for any other assets an organization may be looking to host.

The big question is: how much redundancy and resistance to failure do you want to deal with? If you don’t have any threshold, then ISIS is your choice. Some customers will say that MediaNetwork is fine. It’s a mirrored solution. It does have redundancy built in, but there are single points of failure. In some environments, that’s not as big a deal, it just depends what the customer is really looking for. Consider those customers in the broadcast and media production environments, which can involve hundreds of end-users. A break in access to shared content would dramatically impact the productivity of the entire team ‘ potentially missing deliverable deadlines. Same goes for customers working in post environment like editing reality TV. Editors can be confident that they’re accessing material that reflects the edits other team members have already executed.

Capacity is less a factor than single point of failure, number of users, and resolution. At this point with Media Network at 128 TB of raw storage and ISIS at a 192 TB, it’s not that much of a difference.

What differentiates ISIS from anything on the market at all is that we’ve taken a completely different tact in terms of its architecture and we’re able to deliver not only the real-time capability for all users, at all times, but we’re also able to maintain that performance during any kind of failure of hardware. So a drive could be lost and all 300 users could basically have no idea that it happened, because their access to shared content continues uninterrupted – which means their editing capabilities are not compromised. This is a big difference from a typical RAID redundant array of independent discs. When everything’s on what we call “the happy path.” meaning there’s no failure, nothing bad going on, performance is probably going to be fine. But, as soon as you introduce an anomaly, meaning either a drive failure or any kind of error conditions that cause the file systems to have problems, all of those users would be impacted.
There’s the difference. This system is built for the worst-case scenario, because in a high-pressure, time-sensitive broadcast environment, for example, you can’t go down.

We have several ways of doing this. We have workflow analysis services that can be added to any order that involves ISIS , MediaNetwork or Interplay. In addition, all engagements go through a multi-staged pre-sales process, where the suggested configuration is double-checked to assure that the requirements of the customer are being met and that the solutions we’re proposing make sense. We also have a formalized review team that puts a final rubber stamp of approval and informs the sales team and the system engineers who architected it.

[For a quick estimate of your storage needs, check out Avid’s storage calculator]

In general, the market is looking for more and more capacity. File-based workflows have developed the concept of no limitations. Media management products will become increasingly important, like Interplay, that allow all these files to be brought into a system to be searched, found, categorized and edited, and then ultimately delivered.

This brings up another important issue: does all storage have to be online? We already offer archiving solutions, which is storage, just not the traditional view of spinning disc storage. Multiple tiers of storage are going to become more and more important as well because not everyone’s going to need to have all their material in a place where hundreds of editors are working on it in real-time. They may want a big pool of less-expensive storage that can be accessed in a push-pull manner rather than real-time.

Our philosophy at Avid is that storage is part of the editing system, whether directly attached or network-attached and shouldn't be something that an editor or creative person has to think about. For me, good storage is always there, and it always works. You should be free to focus on making creative decisions, rather than worrying about technical issues.