Archion Debuts EditSTOR, EditDIRECT and Synergy UX8 Media Storage Solutions

Archion Technologies is introducing a range of media storage solutions at NAB 2010 that promise to raise the bar for performance, data protection and overall value in today’s high throughput file-based workflows. The three new products being introduced at NAB 2010 – EditSTOR for shared storage, EditDIRECT for direct-attached storage and Synergy UX8 for the Avid Unity storage area network (SAN).

"For more than decade, Archion has been setting the highest standards of RAID- protected media storage and performance for those creating video, audio and graphical content, and our high-performance storage technology has been critical to the success of thousands of TV and feature film projects," said Mark Bianchi, Chief Executive Officer of Archion. "At this year’s NAB, we continue to push those standards by introducing three key new products that are specifically designed for the way today’s leading creative professionals work."

"As the leader in storage for content creation workflows, we are very excited to be introducing our completely new Edit Duo with EditSTOR and EditDIRECT storage solutions as well as Synergy UX8, our newest storage system certified for Avid Unity," he added.

EditSTOR
Collaborative File-Level Sharing for Post Houses & Creative Agencies A simple multi-platform shared storage system, the new EditSTOR is specifically designed to meet the budget of smaller post-production facilities and creative agencies. Available in 8, 12, 16 and 32TB configurations, the turnkey, self-contained hardware RAID-based system offers a streamlined workflow with the flexibility of multi-write OSX, Windows and Linux across standard Ethernet networks.

At 300MB/second minimum in the standard configuration with an aggregate throughput of up to 650MB in the larger port configuration, EditSTOR supports demanding ProRes or DNX workflows. It is upgradeable to 10GigE for nearly double the performance of the standard configuration. Designed for content creation applications, an unlimited number of available volumes provide ease of organization, and volumes show up as drives, not network volumes. Additional client ports can be added quite simply. EditSTOR will be available in a self-contained, multi-platform Fibre Channel model by Q3.

EditDIRECT
For Final Cut Studio, Avid and other editing tools, EditDIRECT is Archion’s first product specifically targeted to direct-attached applications. Based on proven architecture and its years of experience with Avid and Apple workflows, EditDIRECT is certified as direct-attached storage across Avid’s editing products, including DS, Final Cut Studio, Adobe, Autodesk and other popular editing tools. It is also ideal for the Pro Tools sound creation and production system. Pre-configured, it is easy to set up for Mac, Windows and Linux editing systems.

Specifically designed to address this market at competitive prices, EditDIRECT enhances today’s file-based workflows to deliver an array of benefits through its flexible, high-speed serial-attached SCSI (SAS) storage technology. It offers up to 700 MB/sec real-time performance, making EditDIRECT ideal for 2K, 4K and RED workflows. Available in 4, 8, 12, 16 and 32TB configurations with enterprise class SATA II drives as well full SAS configurations, in a 3RU 16-bay chassis, EditDIRECT offers full hardware RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), failover hotspare media protection and full performance during rebuild.

Synergy UX8
Affordable hardware RAID storage for Avid Unity, powered by Vdisk, Synergy UX8, is a family of storage systems that has been designed to enhance the asset protection of Avid Unity, simultaneously work within its flexible storage and Avid NLE integrated workflow as well as provide the benefits of affordable hardware RAID storage. It solves the problem of protecting the media on Unity’s drives without having to mirror and, at the same time, takes away the catastrophic nature of a single drive failure.

The new Synergy UX8 offers a highes performance RAID protected add-on storage for Avid Unity MediaNetwork and Media Engine platforms. It expands Archion’s popular Synergy UXE from 4 Gigabytes (GB) to 8GB and with 8GB infrastructure it delivers nearly four times the write performance and twice the read performance as a mirrored Avid XT chassis.

Synergy UX8 offers storage capacity up to 32TB in a single 3RU chassis, with 24TB of protected and usable storage – three times the amount of protected storage as a 16TB Avid XT. Like the UXE, Unity can now scale to 128 TB of protected storage. It features a built-in, intelligent hardware RAID (configured in level 5) to manage storage more efficiently and ensure that all media is protected while eliminated the need to mirror. Users no longer have to risk leaving their media unprotected because they felt that they could not afford additional Avid XT storage. In addition, it automatically rebuilds a faulty drive so the rest of the network is unaffected by the drive failure.

Synergy UX8 also offers an economic edge. By combining Archion’s lower prices, the significantcost benefit of RAID 5 protection compared to mirroring and high- capacity power efficiency, the cost per protected TB can be as much as 70% less to the end user.

Keeping with the Synergy standard of legacy compatibility, Synergy UX8 allows existing Unity networks to be expanded without expensive upgrades, and it will continue to work with the new system when it’s ready to be upgraded. Synergy UX8 is certified for MediaNetwork (4.x) and Media Engine (5.x)

Vdisk: The ‘Compatibility Engine’
Archion’s proprietary patent-pending technology, Vdisk, operates as a ‘compatibility engine’ to enable the only dynamic storage in the industry, adjusting to the changing SAN or IT storage demands in real-time. As the protocol layer in Archion’s storage systems that allows the creation of virtual disks, Vdisk responds to the applications dynamically by analyzing and addressing the requirements of the underlying data requests and then adjusting its drive parameters to fit the data requested. The manner in which Vdisk streamlines data across all applications results in a significant improvement in throughput, relative to static storage.