Once content is created, it would be a careless feat to not worry or care about it any further. However, to simply treat a piece of “yesterday’s news” as “yesterday’s news” would not be prudent. Being able to store these gems for future use (or sale) is paramount to being successful. Ergo, choosing the right storage medium is crucial. And it has to be readily accessible and utterly reliable.
The past decade has seen an intense evolution in the demand for high-availability storage. Because the media and entertainment's livelihood has become increasingly dependent on the content in the data storage industry, the reliability and availability of data storage has to be radically enlarged to avoid the severe costs that may result from server or storage failure – hence data loss.
Perfect for general IT, broadcast and the video related markets where horsepower, ease-of -management and uptime are critical, the newly released third generation JMR BlueStor™ Networked Storage Server is equally at-home in broadcast and post production applications being a news or mail server, online/nearline storage for editorial work, data backup and recovery, etc.; or other market applications like NVOD and VOD content distribution; surveillance/security; high speed D2D; medical imaging; geo-spatial imaging, and pre-press (automated printing), to name a few.
Specific to video applications, the JMR BlueStor Networked Server is actually a high performance file server that normally runs as just that – a file server, which allows multiple users connected via Ethernet and a switch to upload, download and edit files created by their work stations. The applications are limitless – anything that can run over a network will be accepted, stored and shared by the BlueStor unit.
By combining SAS RAID and file server functionality into a single unit, the new enterprise-class storage server fills the need between very high-end enterprise systems costing five times more and lower-end SMB systems, which can't offer such performance and reliability. The BlueStor Networked Storage Server is available in three high-performance configurations that are priced right: (1) Business 64-bit; (2) Premium Ultra; and (3) HA (High Availability) Cluster 64-bit. Offering a host of enterprise features, the system can be loaded with 16 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID disk drives with up to 96TB of native capacity; standard are four (N+1 configured) high-velocity cooling fans, dual 620W (N+1) hot-swappable power supplies, dual 10-core Xeon CPUs, 32GB of DDR3/1333 MHz memory, expandable to 1000GB, dual 24-port 6GB SAS expanders, four 1Gb/s NIC ports or optional Dual/Quad 10Gb/s network adapters (SFP+). A lower-cost optional configuration is also available with a single Quad-Core i7 3.5 GHz CPU and 32GB of memory, sufficient for most users. The basic Business 64-bit configuration offers RAID 1,5 support. The Premium Ultra and HA (High Availability) Cluster configurations, with the highest storage capacity support, provides support for all of JMR's internal hardware RAID controllers (Providing RAID 0/1/4/5/6/10/40/50/60), 10 Gb/s networking with 802.3ad link aggregation (LACP), load balancing and added failover features. The HA Cluster product (which requires the use of dual servers) is the ultimate for demanding environments where performance, data security and 100% availability are mission critical, and provides the features of Premium Ultra with complete redundancy and active-active server failover. What's more, users can have unlimited storage license with purchase, unlike 'pay-as-you-go' licenses from competition.
Unique in its 3U rackmount modular design, The BlueStor Networked Storage Server minimizes both failure points and airflow restrictions because it
uses no cables in the data path! It has been engineered with vertically-mounted disk drives in lightweight, cost-effective, vibration dampening disk drive canisters for lower drive temperatures and higher operational efficiency in order to maximize air-flow and provide the highest signal integrity.
If that wasn’t enough, the BlueStor Networked Storage Server is SES 2.0 compliant and provides real-time disk activity/failure status for every drive bay as well as physical user interface controls; indicators for power and cooling status with visible and audible alarms, plus front panel “ON-OFF” and “reset” switches ensures easy monitoring and control.
Further, the powerful BlueStor Networked Storage Server euroNAS software has a number of features, which make it attractive to both IT professionals and A/V professionals, including AFP, NFS, SMB/CIFS and FTP support; built-in iSCSI and fibre channel target; asynchronous replication that replicates storage to another server; snapshot replication that replicates live data quickly and reliability; and point-in-time snapshots that recover files to the earlier state.
A typical application workflow would comprise of one BlueStor network file server connected to multiple workstation clients via a switch. Data such as camera output files or work-in-progress files are loaded to the workstations first, which would manage what’s being uploaded to the BlueStor server, and then can be downloaded at any time for additional intermediate work or finishing, by any number of connected clients. The advantage of using a networked storage server is that it allows any number of clients to share the same files and work on them in real time. Many users can read simultaneously, while one user can “write” at a time, to avoid conflicts; the advantage of “big capacity” is the system can actually store the contents of an entire feature film, or many shorts, commercials, or whatever they wish and archive it while the work progresses all the way through finish – and then archive it on the same system if they wish. The system is also expandable to Petabytes of storage capacity with a single head unit.
(Click photo to enlarge)
For active failover cluster applications where data availability and integrity are key, two BlueStor servers can be connected using the euroNAS HA Cluster software to provide critical shared-data on a network, as well as system and data drives for physical and virtual production servers and critical workstations. Data is mirrored in real time between both servers. Powerful cluster management functionality allows the definition of resources: such as, which resource should run on which server. As an example, we can represent a cluster drive as a mirror of two drives on each individual server. These two drives can be a single disk, software or RAID array. In addition, the cluster drive doesn’t necessarily need to use the full-size of the available space, either. It is possible to create multiple cluster drives on the same disk or RAID array, which can be then be split across the servers. For instance, on each individual server, there is a RAID array defined by 16 TB. On cluster drive creation, you can create 2 separate cluster drives of 8 TB size. Each 8 TB cluster drive can be defined to run on one of the servers. All resources defined on this cluster drive (iSCSI, NFS, AFP/CIFS) will run on this server. This way, the load between the servers will be balanced to achieve best possible performance. As a result, efficiency runs between both servers and provides the highest level of performance at the same time. If one server should ever fail, services will still automatically move to the other server; when the failed server is back online, its services will automatically move back. And with the “HA Cluster”, it’s 100% fault-tolerant, so “uptime” is greater than 99.9%, as opposed to using a non-failover system which can never achieve that.
Have I mentioned that whole server and cluster configuration can be done within 10 minutes? I have, now! So, what else has it got? The BlueStor server provides fast data throughput thanks to network bonding, jumbo frames and GbE (10Gb/s optional) adapter support. The server also supports replication and snapshot functionality.
Legacy storage manufacturers often use proprietary hardware and an operating system which will only run on the hardware in question; this makes it difficult to expand in the future and forces you to buy new units. The worst part of this type of system is that recovery of total server failure is much more difficult with proprietary hardware in use. The highest possible redundancy in case of server failure is not only a must, but so is having a hardware-tolerant operating system that runs on any hardware. The seamless integration of BlueStor™ (hardware) and euroNAS OS is not tied to proprietary hardware and provides the redundancy, making it a highly flexible and scalable solution that can grow as a company's storage needs increase.
And now, price. Don’t need to worry here – as mentioned earlier, I’m saving the best for last! The BlueStor Networked Storage Server is priced at up to five times less than other enterprise-class systems, and it’s available in 16, 32, 48, 64 and 96TB of native data capacities. A basic 16TB NAS dual RAID system starts at $11,299 MSRP.
Keep in mind that 3.3GB/s or greater transfer rates are achieved when using two storage shelves and 32 disk drives; and going to three shelves (48 disks) results in transfer rates in excess of 4.5GB/s, creating unmatched performance metrics for less than $0.70/GB!
FEATURES
• 3U 16-Bay SAS/SATA Drive Enclosure
• 16 X 3.5" DISK DRIVES
• 96TB MAX CAPACITY**
• QUAD CORE 3.5 GHZ CPU
• 32GB DDR3/ECC MEMORY
• euroNAS ULTRA PREMIUM 64b OS
• RAID 0/1/4/5/6/10/40/50/60
• 4 x GbE Network Ports (RJ45)*
• Internal R/W Transfers 1,800 MB/s
• Hot Swap Drives, PSUs, Cooling Modules
*Optional: 2 x 10GbE network ports (SFP+) + 2 x GbE ports
** Single Unit Capacity, system scales up to 1.1 PB with single head unit
SUPPORTED: • Microsoft CIFS/SMB (Windows Networking) • Apple AFP • Linux/Unix NFS v3 (Network File System) • FTP Protocol (File Transfer Protocol) • iSCSI Target with support for VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN etc. • Fibre Channel Target with support for VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN, etc.
About JMR Electronics
JMR is a leading value provider of scalable storage systems for high performance and capacity driven applications for multiple markets including; video and post-production, military and government, education, VOD, DCC, gaming, security, medical imaging, HPC and Web 2.0. Since 1982, JMR’s reliable and innovative RAID systems are proudly made in the U.S.A., manufactured entirely from their Chatsworth, California facilities. JMR’s complete line of SilverStor™ and BlueStor™ Cloud-ready rackmount and desktop solutions are built to handle the most demanding project needs from ingest to deliverable. Reliability. Innovation. Performance. This is JMR. For further information please visit www.jmr.com, contact sales@jmr.com or call 818-993-4801.
