Updated Shared Storage for Pablo Rio Supports Four Clients, Up to 6K Playback

Quantel has launched Genetic Engineering 2, bringing the company's shared-storage system to users of Quantel's Pablo Rio finishing systems running on off-the-shelf hardware.

Up to four Pablo Rio systems can share the same GenePool storage, or a GenePool Gateway in place of the fourth Rio client can allow Pablo PA systems and third-party systems to connect via 10 Gig Ethernet. Real-time performance is guaranteed, the company said, no matter what is happening in the next suite over, and jobs can be instantly laid off to Pablo PA or other systems when appropriate.

Each Rio system connects to the GenePool — actually SAS disk arrays — via 16 Gb Fibre Channel client connections through a Linux PC known as a GenePool Storage Appliance (GPSA). Additional disk arrays can be daisy-chained on the GPSAs, and additional GPSAs can be added in parallel to increase capacity and performance, enabling high resolutions and frame rates.

Depending on the number of Fibre connections per client and the number of GPSAs in use, the initial Genetic Engineering 2 release supports up to 6K playback from disk to 4K outputs, and systems with nearly 400 TB of workspace can be configured. Quantel said future releases may support more than four clients with the addition of a Fibre Channel switch. 

Quantel said the first GE2 system was installed last October, but the architecture has now been released for use by all customers.