WELCOME TO mMEDIA
Content creation in the digital world is an ever-evolving process. From the earliest days of the analog to digital transition, to the move from SD to HD, content production companies have struggled to define the perfect workflow storage solution that meets their individual needs. Not only does it need to be custom tailored, but also cost-effective and highly adaptable. The proprietary solutions of the past were and are mainly too inflexible, and many of the open platforms involve a high degree of roll-your-own engineering.
Apple stepped in during 2005 with Xsan and the promise of a complete low cost and relatively open system based on standards and good hardware, and it was well accepted and became a standard. Unfortunately Apple, for the most part, stepped back out of the market and once again production companies were left with more questions than answers.
Along the way Active Storage and a few innovative partners began to build solutions to bridge this need to a platform of the future: an integrated workflow storage platform with the performance, scalability, and configuration flexibility to meet nearly every broadcast and post production facilities ingest, on-line and near-line archive capability.
That platform is finally here, and it's called mMedia.
mMedia is more than a collection of components, it's a complete media creation storage platform that stores and manages content from ingest to archive.
The combination of mRAID and ActiveSAN can meet any on-line media production challenge. Nothing can scale to more users, greater resolutions, or higher throughputs, all with the lowest latency and easiest deployment and management using all the production tools and asset management software you are using today.
mRAID - THE NEXT-GENERATION MEDIA-ENHANCED RAID PLATFORM
mRAID represents many years of Active Storage development combined with the latest storage processing intelligence, and developed from the input of our extensive user base which includes some the largest media production companies in the world.
mRAID is unlike any storage you have used in a creative workflow. It's fast, smart, scalable and easy. Best of all, it's built on industry standards utilizing the same rock-solid Linux foundation of the Active Storage ActiveRAID. And with thousands of ActiveRAIDs in the field powering the top names in post production and broadcast, you can rely on mRAID to deliver the same level of highly available operation and on-going reliability.
While mRAID draws heavily on the successful design of the ActiveRAID, it's also different; mRAID is a much-evolved storage system that is truly a new platform for expansion.
What makes mRAID so unique is that its design is very straightforward yet immensely powerful. The enclosure has a strong family resemblance to ActiveRAID, yet is ground-up designed and specially-engineered to handle the next generation of Intel-based storage processors. The mRAID, unlike other systems, employs many features that improve reliability, performance, ease of deployment and maintenance.
SUPERIOR CROSSFLOW COOLING DESIGN
Our crossflow cooling design ensures that every component in the system receives equal airflow and cooling to eliminate hot spots and component failure. This includes cooling hard drives, RAID controllers, backup batteries and IO systems.
Our crossflow design is also highly efficient, not only using less power under normal conditions, but also providing ample cooling headroom when used in less than ideal conditions.
Beyond the enclosure design, mRAID is an all new platform, designed to provide new capabilities beyond average storage systems while offering vast improvements in scalability of both performance and capacity.
ADVANCED SYSTEM DESIGN
The advanced system design of the mRAID is based on what we have learned over many years of building award-winning storage systems and servers, and our latest ActiveSAN appliance design. It is designed to deliver the highest possible throughput and the lowest latency. The overall design is a total integration of hardware and software, leveraging the strengths on each in order to produce a cost-effective highly reliable platform.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSING ENGINE
mRAID's processing power is immense. It can move huge amounts of content from the SAN to disk and back, leaving additional headroom for other functions such as optimizations, adaptive caching routines and background data scrubs, as well as error checking. But the one area we did not want mRAIDs processor to be loaded down with was UPS control and environmental process handling, so we didn't.
Enter the Environmental processor or ENV.
The ENV is new with mRAID although the concept is well proven. This "control center" for the system environment is a specialized processor that controls systems indicators, out-of-band communications with expansion systems, and UPS control.
mVAULT - THE SCALABLE MEDIA ARCHIVE
mVault - its all about content, your content and where you keep it, and how you keep it safe. mVault is quite simply the very-high-density storage expansion component of the mMedia platform.
When combined with mRAID, mVault can scale to Petabytes of near-line content archive. By deploying mVault, you will not only have "disk performance" from your archive, but at much lower cost and much smaller footprint than typical primary storage. And mVault is media savvy - its been optimized for content and so you can be sure of 100% compatibility and the performance needed to meet your media production needs.
mVault is not a replacement for off-site long term tape archive in all cases, but a fantastic complement. With mVault your content will be available nearly instantaneously as you need it.
WORKFLOW
mMedia is powerful yet simple. As a building block technology, mMedia provides all the components needed to build end-to-end workflows. And because the mRAID is the heart of mMedia, future applications can meet future needs.
The combination of mRAID and ActiveSAN can meet any on-line media production challenge. Nothing can scale to more users, greater resolutions, or higher throughputs, all with the lowest latency and easiest deployment and management using all the production tools and asset management software you are using today.
As with on-line storage, the mmedia platform for archive is easily deployed and managed, can be managed with the same management suite and offers nearly unlimited growth and capabilities.