JMR FibreStream RAID Bought by Miller Wishengrad Post

As computer graphics become more sophisticated, the size of the graphics files gets larger, so they take up ever greater amounts of storage space. Miller Wishengrad Post, a boutique editing company in Santa Monica, Calif., that works on commercials, movies, and other video projects, has experienced this surge in storage demands first hand – especially recently, as new high-definition film has moved to the mainstream.

“When we worked in standard definition, a drive that was 100GB was fine. But now we’re working with high definition, and that takes up a lot more space,” says Sean Leute, an editor at MWP. “We’ve seen an exponential increase in storage in the last few years.”

Collaborative Editing
MWP’s four editors used local SCSI storage drives connected to their Apple MacPro workstations. Although that setup worked just fine for individual editing tasks, it did not allow for collaborative editing of large projects, such as commercials or films where several editors may need to work on different sections of the clip. Editors could only work one at a time on a project, sending the large file across the office network or accessing it via a file sharing utility. That clogged the office network and meant projects took longer to complete. It also led to duplication of large files, which consumed precious megabytes of storage space.

The company needed a cost-effective system that could scale to meet its growing storage needs and would allow editors at individual workstations to edit different parts of the same clip at the same time, rather than the usual method of one person editing a part then sending the entire file on to the next editor. MWP also wanted a system that would provide robust performance in handling streaming high-definition video, a feat that is difficult for many storage systems.

Early this year, JMR Electronics, a reseller of enterprise computer and storage equipment approached MWP with its BlueStor FibreStream RAID storage system. The FibreStream array comes with 16 hot-swappable 3.5-inch disk drive canisters for 3Gb SAS or SATA-2 disk drives and can hold up to 32TB using 2TB SATA-2 drives, although MWP is currently using 1TB SAS drives. Should the number of drive bays prove insufficient down the road, MWP can expand by adding a BlueStor SAS Expander, which adds 16 hot-swappable SAS/SATA bays. According to Leute, the system provides MWP with twice the storage capacity for nearly half the cost of a competing product they had considered.

FibreStream is also a fast performer, says Leute. It’s capable of up to 1,300MBps and is designed for data-intensive applications such as video post-production editing. To test its performance with high-definition video, MWP had it stream uncompressed high-definition 10-bit clips. “If there are problems with speed on your hard drive, it would show with stuttering issues or just not keep up. We were able to play the high-definition files with all effects; it pushed through the media with no problem,” says Leute.

To make the move from local storage to the SAN-based RAID array, MWP connected the four editing workstations to the FibreStream using Fibre Channel cable. The company then began copying all of the media files from the SCSI drives to SAS drives. That took about a day, says Leute, after which MWP disconnected the local drives and began working off the SAN.

“The only way to really test a system like this is to use it every day. After we’d made sure it worked, we moved everything to the FibreStream, turned off our old SCSI drives, and went for it,” says Leute.

The drives are partitioned for each user, and users have read/write ability for their own partitions, but read-only access to other partitions. With the new FibreStream system and SAN, MWP was able to take advantage of the Avid workflow engine in the Avid video-editing software the company uses. The workflow engine enables editors to work on pieces of the same file over the SAN. It keeps track of the edited pieces, which are typically stored on the individual editor’s partition, and then reassembles those pieces and streams the finished clip in its entirety when played.

Another major advantage of having a larger storage system is that editors don’t have to make painful decisions about which older clips to delete to make room for new work.

“We used to go in and delete the media, either because we didn’t need that media anymore or needed the space. But then we might get a call three months later saying the customer wants to do something with it,” says Leute. “Then we’d have to go through the process of redigitizing things and getting the project back together. Now with ample storage, we don’t have to do that. We have partitions that we haven’t dedicated to any project yet, empty and ready to go.”

If Miller Wishengrad Post eventually does need more space, however, it can add up to 16 additional bays by daisy-chaining a BlueStor JBOD SAS Expander. One addition that MWP plans to make at some point is an LTO tape archive or, perhaps, some sort of tapeless archival system.

“We have masters going back to the 1990s,” notes Leute. “But lots of projects are not shot on tape anymore, but on files like XDCAM [a tapeless video disk that can hold up to 50GB] or RED [RED ONE, a technology that uses flash or hard disk], so we’re looking at having a more permanent archive system for that.”

Production Mode
MWP kept the FibreStream product in trial mode for 30 days to test its performance and then began moving it into production mode at the end of March.

JMR Electronics BlueStor FibreStream
A 16-bay Fibre Channel-based RAID array configurable to RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 40, 50, or 60. Each bay can hold 3Gbps SAS or SATA-2 disks, for a total storage capacity of 32TB.