NBC Universal
When NBC Universal needed to take a bite out of storage costs, the studio asked ALT Systems to help.
ALT Systems recommended Spectra Logic BlackPearl® to optimize total cost of ownership, and Spectra’s StorCycle® to streamline editorial workflows.
Every media organization faces a moment when their editorial storage system doesn’t have enough capacity to meet day to day demands.
That’s the exact dilemma that faced NBC Universal’s Worldwide Creative Marketing team in Los Angeles. The pressure to turn out movie and episodic trailers meant online editorial storage was constantly near capacity. An aging 150TB storage system was at the end of its useful life and required costly technical support to maintain. Constant pressure to create movie trailers and other marketing materials meant users were wasting time and money juggling media so editorial storage didn’t overflow.
NBC already owned a Spectra Logic T200 LTO archive library, but the pace of editing operations meant waiting for archive and restore operations to finish wasn’t an option. That’s where ALT Systems recommended adding Spectra Logic BlackPearl® with StorCycle® media asset management software.
The result: NBC Universal has an integrated workflow to manage content throughout the media lifecycle, and editors and artists no longer have to waste time managing free space on their primary storage system.
“The combination of Blackpearl and StorCycle gives NBC Universal an end-to-end workflow to seamlessly move media among storage tiers.
The end result: increased capacity, greater flexibility, and reduction in total cost of ownership.”
The Spectra Logic BlackPearl Converged Storage System provides a cost-effective way to leverage standard storage interfaces to form a simple and affordable media storage architecture.
Spectra Logic BlackPearl can easily store media forever at virtually no cost using a tiered storage strategy that is cost effective, easy to manage and scalable to exabytes of data. With a simple RESTful Spectra S3 interface, content creators can confidently keep data for pennies per gigabyte.
BlackPearl is available in four different series depending on your media write speed requirements:
- BlackPearl V Series 200—300 MB/s sustained write
- BlackPearl S Series 450—800 MB/s sustained write
- BlackPearl P Series up to 3 GB/s sustained write
- BlackPearl X Series up to 10 GB/s sustained write
In addition, BlackPearl is available with both NAS and object storage capabilities in a single cost-effective solution providing self-protecting, flexible and affordable secondary storage for data that does not require continual backup.
StorCycle saves money because data policies ensure your media resides on the most cost-effective tier, but is still instantly accessible.
Spectra Logic StorCycle® cuts storage costs by moving less-frequently needed content to nearline or offline tiers until needed. No longer do organizations need to fully redesign their storage infrastructure to implement a storage lifecycle management software solution.
StorCycle provides flexible options to orchestrate media movement:
- HTML and Symbolic Links or “stubs” can be left in place of the original file at the exact location where users previously accessed the media. StorCycle and BlackPearl make the media available, and editors avoid having to relink to media during editing.
- Copy/Keep migration copies files to a perpetual storage tier such as nearline storage or LTO tape but keeps the original file on the primary storage tier for a period of time. Storage policies can then be used to delete the original file if the content has not been accessed within a certain period of time.
- A traditional archive workflow will migrate media from the original location to spinning disk nearline or LTO tape tier. With this method, StorCycle’s intuitive web interface allows users to restore data when needed.
StorCycle helps preserve data for long-term storage and future monetization – as well as providing a high degree of cyber-attack preparedness.
