Low-cost active storage solution combines high performance with online expandability
Apr 15, 2011 8:00 AM, By Ned Soseman
The Omneon MediaGrid allows for rapid system expansion.
A new version of the Omneon MediaGrid from Harmonic is an active storage system that lowers the cost-of-storage capacity while delivering the performance required by next-generation media workflows. The new system is the combination of new scale-out storage hardware, the ContentServer 3000, and a new version (v3.0) of the Omneon MediaGrid file system software that features integrated software RAID for efficient and smart data protection.
The new ContentServer 3000 hardware is a building block for a continuously expandable central storage system. Its 3RU form factor houses 16, 3.5in SATA2 hot-swappable hard disk drives (HDDs) and has dual active-active controllers for high availability. This modular and reliable hardware, when powered by the Omneon MediaGrid file system software, allows for rapid system expansion without worries about forklift hardware upgrades or long and error-prone content migrations. Users can start with a few terabytes in capacity and, without taking the system offline, seamlessly grow to multiple petabytes. The system linearly scales bandwidth as new capacity is added.
The version 3.0 of Omneon MediaGrid file system software has built-in software RAID to deliver very high levels of storage efficiency while still ensuring fast application performance and high availability. It offers both RAID 6 (dual-parity) and RAID 4 (single-parity) options, enabling users to balance storage capacity with performance-based on their workflow needs. A key differentiation of the Omneon MediaGrid file system, the file system driver (FSD) client-side software will continue to provide applications with fast and parallel access to data distributed across multiple ContentServers, unlike the slow and serial access to content provided by generic NAS or clustered NAS systems. With no special license cost associated to the file system driver, users can deploy these software agents on as many clients and servers as needed without accruing license costs.
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