German TV Service Provider nobeo Adopted Facilis TerraBlock

Facilis Technology, Inc. announced the installation of a large-scale shared storage solution at German TV production service providers, nobeo GmbH.

Working with local channel partner, Cologne-based Speed Systems GmbH & Co. KG, Facilis has installed three TerraBlock 24EX/16 and TerraBlock TX16 expandable storage systems together with a TerraBlock Hybrid24 storage system.

All the TerraBlocks are connected to a switched 10Gb/s ingest and logging network and to an 8Gb FC editing network that supports the entire seven studio, outside area and post production campus where they manage all ingest, logging, service and backup operations.

Working for Europe’s broadcasters and content creators, such as Endemol Shine Group Germany GmbH, UFA Show & Factual GmbH, Filmpool entertainment GmbH, RedSeven Entertainment GmbH  and Norddeich TV, nobeo has invested in an extensive and specialized production infrastructure. The facility operates an Avid infrastructure comprising 80 Media Composer edit systems and six ProTool HD edit suites.

Until recently, nobeo employed Avid Unity MediaNetwork storage, and this strategic decision sees it replacing this with the Facilis-based shared storage system.

“A key driver for upgrading to Facilis was our existing FC infrastructure, including many sanboxes and host adapters,” commented Norman Ende, head of post-production, nobeo Studios. “We like the option to use both technologies – Ethernet for service tasks and our fast FC for editing jobs.“

A central feature of TerraBlock is the collaborative operating practices that it facilitates – a feature that Ende describes as: “must have within Avid workflows. Already we can recognise the very fast behavior of the Facilis system and how it provides large, highly cost-effective amounts of storage – it is straightforward to expand our network with cheaper 1GbE or 10GbE clients for logging and ingesting tasks.“

“With Facilis, I like how easy it is to expand our storage network, simply by adding an additional server and not having to concern ourselves with issues such as managing servers, databases or client licensing,” Ende concluded.