New Media Storage Products Raise Bar for Performance & Data Protection in Direct Attached & Collaborative Workflows

Archion Technologies introduced a range of new media storage solutions at this year's National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB 2010) that promise to raise the bar for performance, data protection and overall value in today's high throughput file-based workflows. The three new products showcased at NAB 2010 were EditSTOR for shared storage, EditDIRECT for direct-attached storage and Synergy UX8 for the popular Avid Unity storage area network (SAN).
“For more than decade, Archion has been setting the highest standards of RAID-
protected media storage and performance for those creating video, audio and graphical
content, and our high-performance storage technology has been critical to the success of
thousands of TV and feature film projects,” said Mark Bianchi, Chief Executive Officer
of Archion. “At this year’s NAB, we continue to push those standards by introducing
three key new products that are specifically designed for the way today’s leading creative
professionals work.

“As the leader in storage for content creation workflows, we are very excited to be
introducing our completely new Edit Duo with EditSTOR and EditDIRECT storage
solutions as well as Synergy UX8, our newest storage system certified for Avid Unity,”
he added.

EditSTOR: Collaborative File-Level Sharing for Post Houses & Creative Agencies

A simple multi-platform shared storage system, the new EditSTOR is specifically
designed to meet the budget of smaller post-production facilities and creative agencies.
Available in 8, 12, 16 and 32TB configurations, the turnkey, self-contained hardware
RAID-based system offers a streamlined workflow with the flexibility of multi-write
OSX, Windows and Linux across standard Ethernet networks.

At 300MB/second minimum in the standard configuration with an aggregate throughput
of up to 650MB in the larger port configuration, EditSTOR supports demanding ProRes
or DNX workflows. It is upgradeable to 10GigE for nearly double the performance of
the standard configuration. Designed for content creation applications, an unlimited
number of available volumes provide ease of organization, and volumes show up as
drives, not network volumes. Additional client ports can be added quite simply.
EditSTOR will be available in a self-contained, multi-platform Fibre Channel model by
Q3.

EditDIRECT for Final Cut Studio, Avid & Other Popular Editing Tools

EditDIRECT is Archion’s first product specifically targeted to direct-attached
applications. Based on proven architecture and its years of experience with Avid and
Apple workflows, EditDIRECT is certified as direct-attached storage across Avid’s
editing products, including DS(r), Final Cut Studio(r), Adobe, Autodesk and other popular
editing tools. It is also ideal for the Pro Tools(r) sound creation and production system.
Pre-configured, it is easy to set up for Mac, Windows and Linux editing systems.

Specifically designed to address this market at competitive prices, EditDIRECT enhances
today’s file-based workflows to deliver an impressive array of benefits through its
flexible, extremely high-speed serial-attached SCSI (SAS) storage technology. It offers
up to 700 MB/sec real-time performance, making EditDIRECT ideal for 2K, 4K and
RED workflows. Available in 4, 8, 12, 16 and 32TB configurations with enterprise class
SATA II drives as well full SAS configurations, in a 3RU 16-bay chassis, EditDIRECT
offers full hardware RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), failover hotspare
media protection and full performance during rebuild.

Synergy UX8 – Affordable Hardware RAID Storage for Avid Unity

Archion Synergy, powered by Vdisk, is a family of award-winning storage systems
that has been designed to enhance the asset protection of Avid Unity, simultaneously
work within its flexible storage and Avid NLE integrated workflow as well as provide the
benefits of affordable hardware RAID storage. It solves the problem of protecting the
media on Unity’s drives without having to mirror and, at the same time, takes away the
catastrophic nature of a single drive failure.

The new Synergy UX8 offers the highest performance RAID protected add-on storage for
Avid Unity MediaNetwork(tm) and Media Engine(tm) platforms. It expands Archion’s
popular Synergy UXE from 4 Gigabytes (GB) to 8GB and with 8GB infrastructure it
delivers nearly four times the “write” performance and twice the “read” performance as a
mirrored Avid XT chassis.

Synergy UX8 offers mammoth storage capacity with up to 32TB in a single 3RU chassis,
with 24TB of protected and usable storage – three times the amount of protected storage
as a 16TB Avid XT. Like the UXE, Unity can now scale to 128 TB of protected storage.
It features a built-in, highly intelligent hardware RAID (configured in level 5) to manage
storage more efficiently and ensure that all media is protected while eliminated the need
to mirror. Users no longer have to risk leaving their media unprotected because they felt
that they could not afford additional Avid XT storage. In addition, it automatically
rebuilds a faulty drive so the rest of the network is unaffected by the drive failure.

Synergy UX8 also offers a powerful economic edge. By combining Archion’s lower
prices, the significant cost benefit of RAID 5 protection compared to mirroring and high-
capacity power efficiency, the cost per protected TB can be as much as 70% less to the
end user.

Keeping with the Synergy standard of legacy compatibility, Synergy UX8 allows existing
Unity networks to be expanded without expensive upgrades, and it will continue to work
with the new system when it’s ready to be upgraded. Synergy UX8 is certified for
MediaNetwork (4.x) and Media Engine (5.x)

Vdisk: The ‘Compatibility Engine’

Archion’s proprietary patent-pending technology, Vdisk, operates as a “compatibility
engine” to enable the only dynamic storage in the industry, adjusting to the changing
SAN or IT storage demands in real-time. As the protocol layer in Archion’s storage
systems that allows the creation of virtual disks, Vdisk responds to the applications
dynamically by analyzing and addressing the requirements of the underlying data
requests and then adjusting its drive parameters to fit the data requested.

The manner in which Vdisk streamlines data across all applications results in a
significant improvement in throughput, relative to static storage.

For more information: www.archion.com.