LAS VEGAS - At an event prior to the start of NAB, Omneon (www.omneon.com) introduced the MediaGrid active storage system, a content storage system designed specifically for the demands of working with large digital media files within broadcast and video production facilities. MediaGrid combines grid storage with grid computing through the use of multiple intelligent, interconnected-yet-independent storage servers. The system provides centralized shared storage that is scalable in capacity, bandwidth, and media processing power.
The modular design of MediaGrid uses industry-standard components and connectivity to create a configurable, reliable and cost-effective system. Components of the system communicate over standard Ethernet and generate massive aggregate bandwidth that is available to external clients of the system, eliminating bottlenecks associated with traditional shared-storage environments. Each storage component is also a media processing engine, making computational resources available to applications for media processing functions while content resides within the storage system.
Omneon says the solutions enables broadcasters and content providers to easily implement an all-digital, disk-based workflow and connect many disparate systems into a single shared-storage environment. Its main components are ContentDirectors and ContentServers. ContentDirectors act as the overall file system controllers, managing the distribution of data throughout the system and providing data maps to clients for retrieval of media from the system.
ContentServers are the engines that actually store and provide access to media. ContentServers, available in 2TB high-bandwidth and 12TB high-capacity configurations, are individual storage servers that provide a combination of storage capacity, high-bandwidth network access, and processing power. ContentServers act as smart nodes on an interconnected grid that require no assistance from the ContentDirectors to communicate with clients or one another.
ContentServers are interconnected via redundant Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, and additional ContentServers can be added easily to the system at any time. This simple structure makes MediaGrid highly scalable, reliable, and manageable. Storage capacities can start as small as a few terabytes and scale to more than a petabyte. Bandwidth starts at multiple gigabits per second and increases to many times that amount as additional ContentServers are added.
Omneon is seeing support for MediaGrid from a number of application developers, including Anystream, Probel, OmniBus Systems, Snell & Wilcox, Sundance Digital, TMD, Tektronix and Venaca.