Fully Digital Capture System Stresses Storage And Networks

“When we converted to an all-digital, file-based capture system,” explains Roland Rodgers, BBC NI’s technology development and infrastructure specialist, “the production team was immediately able to take advantage of the file-based workflow—but we did not anticipate the impact it created on the storage systems and networks.”Dramatically increasing data volumes and more formats needing transcodingthreatened to create bottlenecks. “Frankly, the IT team was surprised at the impact of the change,” Rodgers recalls. “It became obvious that we had to plan carefully and upgrade our systems in a smart way to avoid creating delays for the editors.”

升级以提供灵活性并避免瓶颈

The solution was to overhaul the workflow system, upgrading applicationsand the network as well as storage systems, and expand the existing StorNext environment to include two Fibre Channel–connected locations. As material accumulated, onetape archive was added so that higher-performance disk was only used for current productions. Later, a second archive was added to support long-form current affairs features.Over time, the team added hundreds of terabytes of new disk storage, expanded the SAN, replaced StorNext controllers with higher-performance models, and upgraded drives and media in the archives. “Except for changing the controllers, virtually all of the upgrades were non-disruptive,” Rodgers notes.

Meeting Needs For Performance, Redundancy, and DR Protection

“新系统总体上具有更快的性能，”Rodgers说，“它提供了更大的灵活性。现在，我们有200个席位，通过StorNext文件系统对所有共享内容的高性能访问 - 以便更多的编辑器可以更快，更加合作，并花费更少的时间移动或周围的内容。“两个贝尔法斯特位置中的每一个都具有性能磁盘资源和StorNext Ael6000磁带库。Rodgers表示，“一个人在磁盘上持有新闻代理文件以及倒带存档的悲险存档的悲观档案，而另一个人拥有新闻的所有全额质量内容。除以工作给我们最大的性能，但这两个站点通过光纤通道链接。因此，在捏捏中，任何一个都可以充当另一个备份。我们有一个跨越整个系统的StorNext文件系统，使其易于共享文件。“

Mirrored Libraries Provide Protection And A Low-cost Archive

“As soon as data hits the working disk, StorNext automatically writes two copies—one to each of the LTO libraries,” says Rodgers. “That way, we have a copy of everything stored in two places for backup and DR protection. And when files are no longer actively being worked on, we remove the disk copy to free up space for new content—that helps us save money on disk capacity. StorNext and Cinegy, however, see all the content on disk and tape, so that editors have access to everything.” Editors normally work from proxies on disk,and Cinegyautomatically pulls the full-quality versions from disk or tape.

最大绩效和无中断升级

“News footage is ingested into the disk environment at high speed—where StorNext supports multiple parallel transcoding operations—so the data is made available with minimal delay to the content production teams,” Rodgers explains. “StorNext lets us get the maximum performance out of all our disk resources. “Over the years, we moved from a minimum-sized implementation—one storage node and one library at one location—to a fully redundant, highly resilient, dual-site implementation without significant downtime or disruption to our users. This capability is a strength of StorNext, and the way that it and Cinegy work together.”