Promise Unveils Shared SAN Solution for Media and Entertainment

At the 2013 NAB show, PROMISE Technology, Inc. unveiled a SAN solution: the VTrak A-Class.

Developed with creative professionals in the media and entertainment market in mind, the VTrak A-Class is suited to the storage intensive workflows of post-production, broadcast and data asset management and archiving. The storage solution enables multiple clients running Windows, Mac OS X or Linux to access a shared SAN filesystem over FC.

As an all-in-one SAN solution, the VTrak A-Class eliminates the need to purchase a separate primary server, secondary server, metadata/journal storage device/array and the like in order to create a SAN solution. A single vendor solution is easier to deploy, more efficient and more cost effective than the alternative – separately purchasing a RAID subsystem and all of the associated servers and devices.

PROMISE has a long history in the post-production, broadcast and data asset management markets. From running dailies to storing archives, creative professionals process massive quantities of large, high resolution files on a daily basis. Excellent throughput is crucial to these data intensive tasks, and the VTrak A-Class meets and exceeds the increased performance requirements that are typical of the media and entertainment industries. When designing the VTrak A-Class, PROMISE worked closely with customers who voiced the need for a single vendor SAN storage solution that would address the challenges they faced – including increasingly complex and expensive shared storage. As an integrated SAN solution, the VTrak A-Class reduces the complexity of SAN configuration to a single unit. Requiring zero server hardware, the solution allows for high-performance collaborative editing right of the box, using PROMISE’s high performing, low latency filesystem, VTrakFS. Additionally, the VTrak A-Class simplifies support and makes it easy to grow the system all the way up to PBs – all while remaining online and without downtime.

"At Tekserve we serve creative professionals at all levels, including some of the biggest names in the post-production and broadcast environment," said Aaron Freimark, CTO for Tekserve Corp. "They count on us to provide the best in technology, sales and service, and that is what makes PROMISE’s new offering such a great fit for us. From simplifying SAN deployments so our customers can get their workflows up and running in almost no time, to bringing the high-end performance they demand to get their projects done faster – the VTrak A-Class meets some very specific needs of the media and entertainment industry."

The VTrak A-Class enriches PROMISE’s portfolio of storage solutions for rich media applications. The new solution delivers high-performance file sharing for nearly all aspects of media and entertainment, including video, film and broadcast, at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.

"PROMISE has become a trusted supplier to the media and entertainment market by developing fast, simple, scalable, cost effective storage solutions," said James Lee, CEO, PROMISE. "More than just a storage system, the VTrak A-Class builds on this legacy and moves beyond storage with a world-class SAN filesystem infrastructure. This makes it an excellent solution for companies that have high-performance digital video requirements and want to maximize the efficiency of their storage infrastructure."

Benefits Include:

• High-performance, low latency over a shared SAN.
• Collaborative editing right out of the box.
• Supports heterogeneous environments for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
• Single vendor solution – SAN server and data all in one box under a browser-based management GUI.
• Scale performance with capacity by way of adding VTrak Ex30f series as storage nodes.
• Single pane management software to manage the SAN server, storage nodes and clients means easy deployment and manageability in a fraction of the time of traditional storage solutions.
• Grow to petabytes, always online and all without downtime.
• Single appliance offers cost savings over current solutions.

VTrak A-Class will first be available in North America on April 29, through the network of PROMISE distributors and VARs.