Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 5, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Avid’s innovative media-networking solution offers up to 384 TB of storage and can scale to as many as 330 real-time clients with full system monitoring. Customers can now reduce administrative costs even when maintaining multiple storage systems and increase productivity by extending the collaborative capabilities of Avid Unity ISIS to everyone involved in production.
Ian Burling, one of the first beta testers of Avid Unity ISIS 2.0 and Head of Technical Support Services at Films @ 59 LTD in Bristol, England, explained its advantages: “The performance of the 10 GigE client connection in Avid Unity ISIS is fantastic. When working with various uncompressed HD frame rates, we can connect multiple Avid Symphony systems, with each system pulling several streams simultaneously. It actually seems that we cannot exhaust the system’s maximum bandwidth. Avid Unity ISIS makes planning online editing suites child’s play. Previously, we had to use SCSI storage to obtain the performance needed for uncompressed HD, which in turn limited our flexibility in moving projects. Especially for a post facility like ours, where a great deal of HD work is done and the schedule changes constantly, support for many resolutions is a major benefit and can increase our productivity enormously.”
Avid Unity ISIS is a blade-based storage subsystem that includes intelligent dual-drive storage elements, integrated Ethernet switching, and redundant power supplies and cooling. Unlike conventional Storage Area Networks (SANs), its self-balancing architecture distributes data and metadata so that each intelligent storage element independently makes the decisions currently appropriate for the system, collectively achieving optimal performance, capacity and stability. If elements fail or are replaced, the system adapts automatically and without delay, providing uninterrupted availability and performance. Broadcasters, film productions and post-production facilities can therefore work without downtime while saving time and money.
Avid Unity ISIS affects workflows in the following ways:
· It provides a high-performance infrastructure that saves users time through immediate simultaneous access to media and by combining offline and online workflows in a single system;
· A 10 Gbps Ethernet client supports resolutions up to uncompressed HD and 2K using the high-performance ISIS Engine. One ISIS Engine delivers up to 400 MB/s; combining the maximum 12 engines achieves 4,800 MB/s, or 32 uncompressed-HD streams and 240 compressed-HD streams;
· New flexibility enables rapid responses to sudden changes in priorities and timelines. Avid Unity ISIS eliminates the cost of multiple ingest stations, output devices and similar tools, extending team participation beyond the edit suite. Media loggers, journalists and producers can work simultaneously, increasing productivity and workflow efficiency to complete projects on schedule;
· Total system capacity increases to 384 TB at maximum capacity or 192 TB with full mirroring, with complete system monitoring. In mirrored mode, this allows storage of up to 300 hours of uncompressed HD or 6,300 hours of 50 MB/s compressed HD;
Powerful virtualization enables flexible and precise allocation of storage resources and can accommodate scheduling changes daily, hourly or even by the minute without risking downtime. The system’s seven layers guarantee backups for all data and components—unlike conventional RAID systems, which rely on immediate user action when a fault occurs and can lose more than 50 percent of system performance during recovery.
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