Media and Entertainment Drives Storage Demand. Analyst Report, Coughlin Associates

Transcription

1 Media and Entertainment Drives Storage Demand Analyst Report, Coughlin Associates

2 Media and Entertainment Drives Storage Demand Analyst Report, Coughlin Associates Media and Entertainment Growth Trends The creation and distribution of entertainment content is a big driver in the growth of digital storage. This growth is placing new requirements on digital archives used to retain this content. We will look at a modern workflow as well as trends in post-production digital storage in order to understand how all this content storage is created and managed. Figure 1 represents a Digital Entertainment Content Workflow showing various aspects of the role of digital storage in the creation, distribution, and archiving of digital entertainment content 1. Figure 2 is a schematic of a non-linear editing station (an important element in video post-production) showing optional connection to shared on-line (or real-time) storage via a SAN or NAS (or even a cloud-based object storage system) and a host bus adapter (HBA or GbE card). The storage requirements for video production are increasing in size due to higher video resolution, higher frame rates and more bits per pixel. This is true for the high end of the market, but even lower cost production is increasing in its storage demand as the costs of these technologies decline. Table 1 shows various representative characteristics for professional media standard formats used in content capture Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report, Coughlin Associates,

3 FIGURE 1. DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT WORKFLOW FIGURE 2. PROFESSIONAL NON-LINEAR EDITING MODEL SYSTEM 1 2

4 TABLE 1. EXAMPLE RESOLUTION, DATA RATES AND STORAGE CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS FOR PROFESSIONAL MEDIA CONTENT Format Resolution (width X height) Frame Rate (fps) Data Rates (MBps) Storage Capacity/Hour (GB) SDTV (NTSC, 4:2:2, 8-bit) HDTV (1080p, 4:2:2, 8-bit) Digital Cinema 2K (4:2:4, 10- bit) YUV Digital Cinema 4K (4:4:4, 12- bit) YUV Digital Cinema 8K (4:4:4, 16 bit) X 480 ~ X X X ,910 6, X ,890 86,000 Frame rates as high as 120 fps are supported in conventional high-end video cameras that support 4K or higher resolution, and much higher frame rates are available in some specialized cameras to create the ultimate in slowmotion special effects. In general, as the resolution increases, the frame rate increases as well. There is a trend for more cameras and for more hours shot per each hour of content in video productions; because of these trends, within a few years the stored content for a single movie production project could approach 1 exabyte 3 2 Super Hi- Vision Video Parameters for Next Generation Television, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, May/June 2012, P

5 (1,000 TB). Total archived content in media and entertainment is estimated to increase 3.5X between 2014 and All of this content must be kept somewhere so that it can be monetized and used in the future. Storage Devices for Media and Entertainment The most common storage media used in media and entertainment applications are hard disk drives (HDDs), magnetic tape and optical discs. In addition, the use of flash memory is growing in applications where high performance storage is important. The types of HDDs used for long-term storage of media content are mostly high capacity SATA interface HDDs. These drives may have capacities of 4-10 TB. Magnetic tape formats most commonly used are enterprise-tape formats from IBM and Oracle, with raw storage capacities up to 10 TB per cartridge, as well as the LTO tape format. Surveys 2 show that 70% of media and entertainment professionals that use magnetic tape for archiving employ the LTO tape format. LTO tapes currently have up to 2.5 TB capacities. Optical discs used in archiving are increasingly Blu-ray archive discs because of their higher storage capacity per disc. Current Blu-ray archive disks have 100+ GB per disc but next-generation archive discs will offer 300 GB, and future generations are road-mapped to 1 TB per disc. Figure 3 shows a comparison of these three storage technologies for random input/output operations (IO) plotted on a log-log scale, comparing the number of times that all the data on the storage device can be accessed over a given period of time (the touch rate) versus the response time (the time it takes to get the data once it has been requested). The storage devices plotted here are a 4 TB SATA HDD, an LTO-6 tape library and a current generation Bluray optical disc library. 4 For all three technologies the response time and touch rate are a function of the size of the data object being accessed. As the size of these data objects increase the touch rate increases at first, but then response time begins to degrade. At some point the touch rate saturates with larger objects and the response time significantly degrades. The chart shows that high-capacity SATA drives can provide faster response times with high touch rate for smaller object sizes. On the other hand, magnetic tapes take a while to load

6 in a library and to move to the data location so their response times are much greater and their touch rate per year is less. FIGURE 3. TOUCH/Y AND RESPONSE TIME FOR 100% RANDOM IO 3 Current-generation optical discs have somewhat faster response time than tape. This is due to their random access of data when the disc is mounted in a drive, and because the disc has limited storage capacity. As a result touch rate per year on disc is higher than tape. This figure can be used to help design a tiered archive system where more active data can be kept on HDDs, while less active data is kept on tape or optical storage. Due to their lower overall cost and lower performance (response time and touch rate), magnetic tape and optical discs are mostly used for longer-term storage where the content is accessed less often. With these media the time for data to be delivered after it is first requested can be on the order of minutes in a large tape or optical library, depending upon several factors, such as the number of drives in the library system. 5 3 S. Hetzler and T. Coughlin, Touch Rate, 2015 White Paper,

7 HDD Systems for Active Archives In cases where data must be accessed more often and response times for data must be quick (often called Active Archives), hard disk drives may be used or even some flash memory to increase performance. Hard disk drives in a near-line storage system are attractive for many active archives because they provide faster time to data than optical discs or magnetic tape while being less expensive on a $/GB basis than technologies such as flash memory. Because use of stored video enabled by network storage technologies and content use over the Internet is increasing, there is a need for more frequent access to media archives. This trend drives greater growth in active archives (primarily using hard disk drives) versus inactive archives that employ magnetic tape or optical discs. This growth in near-line (active archive) content versus off-line (inactive archive) content is seen in Figure 4 1. FIGURE 4. ANNUAL NEAR-LINE AND OFF-LINE DIGITAL STORAGE FOR M&E CONTENT ARCHIVES Archive Storage (PB) 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 Near-Line Off-Line

8 Conclusions Digital media workflows provide content that serves our modern high-demand video market. Video projects have unique performance and access requirements that have resulted in digital storage products that can meet these needs. The proliferation of distribution channels, and in particular, the Internet and mobile networks, are increasing access to vast libraries of video content and enabling new ways for video professionals to work together. Modern digital media workflows use every type of digital storage technology including flash memory, hard disk drives, optical discs and magnetic tape. In addition, cloud-based storage and other online services are increasingly used to facilitate collaborative workflows, as well as to complement the capabilities of local-network and direct-attached storage. Because of the need to re-use and access older content, active archives using hard disk drives are growing; such archives also complement longerterm, high-latency library storage using optical discs or magnetic tape. As the cost of higher-resolution, higher-frame rate and more immersive content decreases, the digital storage requirements for media workflows will increase. Efficiently meeting this need for more digital storage requires storage tools with the optimal balance of performance and cost. 7

9 Imation Imation offers a number of digital storage products that can be used in different parts of modern media workflows. Pre-Production through postproduction may use E-Series or NST storage. Distribution and archiving may also use E-Series or NST storage, and in addition may use the Assureon archive system. Figure 5 gives details on the use of different Imation Nexsan products in modern media workflows. Nexsan NST, E-Series and Assureon products provide support for the different requirements in a production workflow. Figure 6 shows how Imation storage products can be used with an asset management system in various parts of a modern media workflow. Imation storage offers M&E customers a cost-effective open and nonproprietary storage solution. Imation works with many partners providing content delivery, asset management and backup and archiving software to provide workflow services for M&E customers. The flexibility, speed and scalability of Imation s Nexsan products helps them meet the demanding performance requirements of video production, share media across various storage platforms, maximize system uptime, and provide a compelling total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition, the storage density of Imation storage products helps customers conserve data center real estate. Imation and its partners have had considerable success in the media and entertainment industry, as shown in the following case studies. FIGURE 5. IMATION PRODUCTS FOR MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT 8

10 FIGURE 6. IMATION PRODUCTS IN A MODERN MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT WORKFLOWS Case Studies Revision3, a Discovery Digital Network Internet television network, creates produces and distributes more than 25 original shows and has more than 25 million viewers of its programming each month. The company had a critical need for a more efficient SAN storage solution that could be inserted into their production environment without any downtime. The solution was an Nexsan E- Series with 324 TB of storage that provided higher storage density in their data center and that offered better total cost of ownership in terms of acquisition costs, support costs and operating costs. According to Reid Steiner, Director of IT Operations at Revision3, Compared to all the SAN storage units we reviewed, Nexsan was the best when it came to the amount of data that could be packed into the amount of space offered. It was by far the best value of any SAN I found, especially for our Xsan environment. Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts and Design needed a new storage infrastructure that could reliably support its users cross-platform preferences and more efficiently use existing capacity. The College had 2,200 unique concurrent users in the system, spread across eight different campus buildings. The school was having issues with its legacy system dropping or losing directory support on a regular basis. 9

11 To address these issues, the College bought two NSTs to provide increased stability, thin provisions to accommodate multiple users, full service access to Active Directory and application, snapshots for data recovery and the ability to function in a data center with fluctuating temperatures. After deploying its first Nexsan NST Hybrid Storage Appliance in 2013, the College eliminated its prior problems and realized value-adds it didn t initially expect. Due to the NST s seamless integration, improved uptime and increased efficiency, the College purchased another NST to further scale its IT infrastructure. A well-known media and entertainment company was involved in the development, production and marketing of entertainment, news and information for a global audience. This company gathered video from a multitude of locations and needed to ingest the data quickly into the shared digital storage so it could become part of its production workflow. The content was in a 4K format (so one hour of video equaled about 7 TB) so the storage capacity requirements for this content library were high. Some video projects could be much larger than originally anticipated, such as a recent film with a major casting change that required three times the amount of originally anticipated video storage. The company initially bought a Nexsan E-Series storage system with 1 PB, and eventually expanded it to 3 PB. As a result the company achieved the lowest total TCO and were able to implement the storage upgrade with no disruption to their current processes. The company was very pleased with the service and support that they received in the purchase and installation of the storage system. One of America s oldest motion picture companies spent a lot of time and money re-shooting clips for productions that had been used in other projects. By storing all of the clips and being able to re-use content as needed, production timelines could be more easily met on projects and a substantial cost savings was achieved by eliminating duplication of effort. The company achieved this with a Nexsan 1 PB E-Series storage system. 10 A leading integrated global media and entertainment company with various operating units providing premium subscription video programming on pay TV, global content distribution channels and producing animated TV and movies was having trouble in their editing processes due to latencies and inefficiencies in their legacy storage. They purchased a Nexsan 500 TB E-series storage system, and found that this product was the most cost effective compared to competing products that met the performance standards needed for their workflows.

12 SkyVision, a Tokyo, Japan satellite TV company needed a reliable and costeffective storage system for archiving digital video in a virtualized environment with VMware ESXi 5.0. The company bought a Nexsan NST storage system to meet their capacity and reliability requirements at the lowest overall TCO. About the Author Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates is a respected storage analyst and consultant. He has over 30 years in the data storage industry with multiple engineering and management positions at high profile companies. Dr. Coughlin has many publications and six patents to his credit. Tom is also the author of Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide, which was published by Newnes Press. Coughlin Associates provides market and technology analysis as well as Data Storage Technical Consulting services. Tom publishes the Digital Storage Technology Newsletter, The Media and Entertainment Storage Report, and other industry reports Tom is active with SMPTE, SNIA, the IEEE and other professional organizations. Tom is the founder and organizer of the Annual Storage Visions Conference ( a partner to the International Consumer Electronics Show, as well as the Creative Storage Conference ( He is the general chairman of the annual Flash Memory Summit. He is a Senior member of the IEEE, Leader in the Gerson Lehrman Group Councils of Advisors and a member of the Consultants Network of Silicon Valley (CNSV). For more information on Tom Coughlin and his publications. go to 11