facebookpixel

Roaring Back – Collaboration, Creativity, and Flow

cloud

No doubt about it – creatives have battled through a year of disruption, with some hard ‘lessons learned’ in a short period of time about how to get their creative work delivered with more remote team members and ever-changing workflows – all while rising to the challenge of unprecedented content demand . 

Above all, creative teams have learned how resilient they can be and how to deliver no matter what’s going on–after all the ‘show’ must go on. Most customers were able to keep at least a small pilot team of creatives that worked with high-resolution content in their facility, while incorporating remote team-member contributions and making full use of proxy workflows. But there is clearly a tremendous pent-up demand to get back to full, ‘pedal to the metal’ production and truly harness the creative vision of creative teams to deliver their best work, faster. 

Like most things creative – building an environment to support the creative ‘flow’ that is as frictionless as possible is critical. 

StorNext – Designed for Collaboration and Workflow Fit 

StorNext  has always been developed and deployed with a mission to give users a truly collaborative, frictionless workflow from a file sharing and storage perspective; by empowering teams of content producers to all mount the same storage volumes natively on their workstations or servers for extraordinary read and write performance and lowest latency – in other words, ideal for multiple users accessing multiple, very high-resolution streams of video as with film or television production projects.  

And since StorNext can combine shared storage from different types of storage platforms in a complete, end-to-end management workflow, it can be easily tuned to deliver more performance where your users need it by scaling out, or adding NVMe storage  for truly eye-popping performance – or tuned to deliver economical storage at the largest scale. 

StorNext 7 – the Newest Advancement Gives You Even More Creative Choice 

Now, with the newest evolution of StorNext 7, where StorNext’s software services are containerized and delivered on Quantum’s H4000 Storage Appliance  – you can now take the full capability of StorNext into more places than ever before, giving you another dimension of ‘frictionless workflow’ that let’s you shift where you place your collaborative environment. 

Here are some examples: 

  1. Level Up to Truly Collaborative Storage: If you’ve been using a patchwork of solutions to move files around, other shared storage, or a NAS system that isn’t designed for large files with world-class video streaming performance , or just making do with a patchwork of older storage – you can have the full capability of StorNext racked and running in minutes to get your entire team working together at speed on a system that is ready to grow as fast as your business does. 
     
  1. Add More Capability with Precision: If you’re already using StorNext – you can quickly stand up more capability in a new department, office, or city without waiting to add more storage or infrastructure to your main StorNext environment – letting you take on new projects quickly and deliver them faster. 
     
  1. Take StorNext with You: When you can have a collaborative environment and storage in such a small footprint – you can explore taking your trusted StorNext environment into new places beyond your main facility – to produce live events on location or bring more ‘post-production’ closer to the set for camera ingest, DIT, special effects visualization, or more. 

We Can’t Wait to Hear You ‘Roar’ 

So, as you’re mapping out how to truly build the most creative environment for your team and get that production edge, reach out to your Quantum Value Added Reseller or your Quantum Representative to review your workflow – we can’t wait to hear about what you create! 

Join Our Live Talk – June 22, 2021 

Join us for our live talk – Collaboration Just Got Easier – on June 22 where we’ll discuss how to build a collaborative workflow quickly and the deployment scenarios outlined above in more detail.  

Register for Live Talk Now  

To view our Partner blog, click here

Meet the New StorNext: Virtualized. Containerized. Cloud-Ready.

cloud

On April 27, we made a major announcement – a new software-defined architecture for StorNext and a new line of appliances in the Quantum H4000 Series. Although much of the focus might be on the new line of appliances, the real magic is the software architectural work that we’ve done under the covers. 

In this new software-defined and virtualized architecture, StorNext 7 file services, data services, and block services run virtually on a single platform. StorNext 7 has been virtualized, and major architectural components, such as management layer and APIs have been containerized in a Docker environment. In short, it is a totally redefined, modern, and cloud-ready software architecture. 

h4000 blog arch

This represents a major architectural step toward enabling public- and hybrid-cloud deployments of the StorNext 7 file system and will make it possible to use StorNext on additional cloud and hardware platforms in the future.  

Easy to Deploy and Use in More Places than Ever

What does this mean for our customers? It means that StorNext is now virtualized, and easier to deploy and use in more places than ever before, whether it’s at the edge, on set, in the field, or anywhere you want to stand up a complete, collaborative environment or extend your production workflow. This new software delivers greater efficiency, more flexibility, and a dramatically simplified user experience. Explore the new Quantum H4000 here .

Join Us for a Live Quantum H4000 Tour

Join us on May 18 I 10AM PDT for a live tour of the new StorNext 7 software-defined architecture and the simplified easy-to-use interface. We’ll show you how to deploy the H4000 with StorNext in minutes, so you can easily harness the power of data to accelerate your workflows and production pipelines.

Register Now

To view our Partner blog, click here

Announcing the H4000 with StorNext 7 – Fast, Collaborative Production Just Got Easier

Block Storage

If the new pace of production and sheer sprawl of content and unstructured data that you need to manage, organize, and protect seems overwhelming – you’ll be glad to know that big help–in a small package–is on the way. 

The Full Capabilities of StorNext Platform – Now Fits in Only 2U 

Today, we’re pleased to announce the newest, fastest StorNext ever on a converged appliance from Quantum. Together, StorNext 7 on the new H4000 appliance  deliver a complete StorNext environment that fits in only 2 rack units. And when you can place the full capabilities of StorNext, the world’s fastest collaborative, shared file platform in more places than ever before, it will change how and where you think about your critical workflows. 

Take Your Solutions to the Edge – Move More of the Studio to the Set 

By converging all of the capabilities of StorNext , the world’s fastest collaborative, shared file platform into a single appliance, you can get racked and running in minutes whether you’re adopting StorNext for the first time or adding more power and capability quickly to your existing environment: 

  • Bringing Your Entire Team Together Just Got Easier: Make the leap to a unified, end-to-end workflow for a new level of efficiency and faster time to delivery. 
  • Adding New Teams and Projects Anywhere Just Got Easier: Extend your existing StorNext environment quickly to a new office or for a new project without complex infrastructure buildout. 
  • Analysis and Insight at the Edge Just Got Easier: Move high-performance analysis and critical solutions closer to the point of capture for faster insight and action.
  • Bringing Post to Set Just Got Easier: Bring post-production to the set – from ingest, to pre-visualization, to rough cuts.  

The new H4000 truly lets StorNext 7 – and your workflow fly: 

  • Ultrafast end-to-end architecture on PCIe 4 and the latest multi-core processors. 
  • New unified interface to manage the entire StorNext environment and the H4000.
  • Converged architecture to deliver all of the capabilities and services of StorNext. 
  • Flexible storage options to deliver 12 or 24 bays of storage and up to 160 TB or 307 TB. 
  • Flexible connection options to deliver your optimum mix of network and connection technologies including 100 Gb Ethernet and 32 Gb Fibre Channel.  

Join Our Live Talk on May 18! 

We’ll be taking you through all the features and all the ways you can get the most from StorNext 7 on the H4000 – join us here .

Until then, you can read more H4000 Series details here  or contact  your Quantum representative or Value-Added Reseller to review your workflow. 

To view our Partner blog, click here

VirtualQ I Transform Recap: Helping you Unlock the Value of Unstructured Data

ActiveScale

As we head into the holiday season, it’s a good time to recap some of the major things we’ve introduced this year, and in many ways our recent VirtualQ I Transform event was the culmination of a years’ worth of effort in bringing new products and solutions to market. 

In November, our VirtualQ I Transform event focused on how unstructured data growth, and unlocking the business value in this data, is transforming how our customers think about data. This event was the culmination of our launch efforts of the expanded portfolio we announced on November 10 – focused on managing, storing, and protecting unstructured data across its lifecycle. You can access all of the sessions and watch at your convenience here .

Most Popular Topics During VirtualQ I Transform

Based on the hundreds of attendees across many different sessions hosted over two days (one European event, and one event for the Americas), here are some of the topics that resonated most and generated the most interest:

Unstructured Data Sprawl: Many of our customers are outgrowing their capacity and looking at new ways to manage ‘unstructured data sprawl.’  We are helping these customers gain better visibility into what data they have, where it lives, and automate ways to move data between edge, core, and cloud environments. The new automated data movement we’ve added to StorNext 7 and ATFS can help in this regard, and were two of the key things we introduced. 

ATFS Storage Platform: There were many questions about our new ATFS storage platform, an easy to use, cost effective NAS platform with integrated data classification. This data classification is a major advancement in giving customers visibility into the file data they are storing.  With simple queries, customers can gain new insights into the make-up of their file data, where it lives, and then quickly use those insights to drive actions that can be enforced with data placement policies, data protection policies, and storage quotas. 

ATFS Trial Download: As we mentioned during our event, for anyone interested in learning more about the ATFS platform, and to start to classify the file data you have today, download a full version of ATFS here . It only takes a few minutes, and you can start to see the impact this platform can make to your NAS infrastructure.

Ransomware Protection: There was also a lot of interest in new ways and best practices to protect against ransomware, and security of data in general. This continues to be top of mind for many of our customers, and we now have options to protect against ransomware regardless of your technology choice, and regardless of the application you are using. We’ve introduced Object Lock to our ActiveScale object store software , we are adding a similar snapshot retention lock feature to our DXi backup appliances , and tape remains the most secure storage with innate air-gapped protection, Active Vault software to automatically move tapes to an in-library vault, and security capabilities like AES-256-bit encryption and multi-factor authentication.

“Forever” Data Archives: Lastly, there was continued interest in the emerging realization that much of this valuable data being created and analyzed will need to be kept forever in a private cloud. Our solutions for this “forever” data archive continue to drive interest, from object storage software with erasure encoding, to RAIL tape, to ways to index and search the content in these archives. Look for some exciting announcements in this area in the coming weeks and months. You can check out the “Forever Archive” white paper here .

Looking Ahead

We are continuing to innovate and transform our own business with a focus on solving our customers’ most pressing business challenges in the areas of video, digital images, and other forms of unstructured data, and we can’t wait for 2021! 

Watch VirtualQ I Transform Sessions On-Demand

If you missed the event, watch replays at your own pace to learn more about managing, storing, and protecting unstructured data across its lifecycle.

Watch Sessions On-Demand Now!

To view our Partner blog, click here

Re-Imagining Quantum’s Portfolio for Managing Unstructured Data

ActiveScale

This week, we made a significant announcement, introducing an expanded portfolio focused on classifying, managing, and protecting unstructured data across its lifecycle. The new products we introduced represent another significant step in our vision to lead in video and unstructured data solutions and represent a key shift in focus from ‘storing’ data to ‘managing’ data. 

Accelerating Data Growth, Data Movement, and Use of Hybrid- and Multi-Cloud

Our customers are dealing with massive unstructured data sprawl – video, digital images, and other forms of unstructured data are growing by 30-60% per year. Many of our customers have millions or billions of files and lack visibility into what they have, and where it lives. This lack of visibility combined with the velocity of data growth is putting pressure on infrastructure costs and forcing companies to rethink infrastructure designs. 

At the same time, the COVID pandemic has resulted in permanent changes to the workforce, driving more data movement (between edge / core / cloud), and an acceleration in the adoption of hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud. The emergence of AI and machine learning techniques provide new tools to leverage this data, and is also driving new lifecycle and ‘workflow’ requirements for this data, including a desire to preserve and protect this data and keep it accessible for decades. 

All of this adds up to what we see as the key challenge facing our customers in this decade – how to unlock business value out of all of this data, and manage this data across the entire multi-decade lifecycle of this data.

Manage Unstructured Data, Across Any Workload, End-to-End with Quantum

Our expanded portfolio can help our customers tackle this challenge, starting with new ways to classify and manage data across its lifecycle, for any workload, end-to-end. This expanded portfolio is depicted and summarized below:

atfs graphic

The new announcements include:

  • New ways to visualize, automate, and purposefully place data, with Quantum’s All-Terrain File System (ATFS) , a next-gen storage platform targeted at the NAS market. 
  • StorNext 7 :  The latest version of Quantum’s high-performance file system, for high throughput low-latency workloads. StorNext 7 introduces new features like file system pools that optimize the use of NVMe for production storage, as well as new ways to program and manage the file system.
  • An expanded ActiveScale object storage portfolio , including a new 3-node object storage system, object lock to protect against ransomware, and small object aggregation to improve the performance of small objects.

Lastly, all of these new offerings are available on a capacity basis, with new all-inclusive software licensing that aligns our licensing with the value we are delivering to customers. 

We look forward to engaging with customers and partners on this expanded portfolio – to learn more, please register for our VirtualQ I Transform event where we will be showcasing all of these new solutions.

To view our Partner blog, click here

This Week at the Q

cloud

Welcome to another entry of ‘This Week at the Q’ and our top 5 highlights!

1. We have some great new explainer videos highlighting some key features of our ActiveScaleTM software that ensure data availability and integrity with a hands-off experience. Intelligent Dynamic Data Placement (DDP) and Dynamic Data Repair (DDR) are key to data’s long-term viability by monitoring data health and providing repair when errors are discovered. Learn more about DDP here and DDR here .

2. Customer success is always a favorite highlight in our week! This week we feature Canal Extremadura in Spain. As they made the transformation from a traditional radio and TV business to a modern multimedia corporation, they also needed to revamp a complex and aging IT infrastructure. Quantum collaborated and provided the content access and scalability needed for an evolving business.  Read more in Canal Extremadura’s case study here .

canal

3. Check out this new case study from our partner, Chesa. Cortina Productions, located in the DC metro area, designs and produces multimedia experiences for museums, cultural institutions, visitor centers, and aquariums across the world. With 4D theaters, and AR and VR experiences, they’re on the forefront of technology. We’re proud to have partnered with Chesa to help manage Cortina’s data more efficiently and with improved accessibility to support their more complex projects and rapid growth.

4. Want to run a cloud-based application against data that StorNext® has stored in the cloud? Need access to that data from other sites? Looking to share files with business partners via the cloud? It’s all possible! Read more in this new blog from Dan Duperron.

5. Did you miss our pumpkin carving event? Learn from the master pumpkin carver from Maniac Pumpkin Carvers. You can check out the replay here – and enter our contest by posting your photos with hashtag #QuantumTransformedPumpkins. We will announce winners on social media!

quantum pumpkin image

Leave a comment if there are topics you’d like to see added to our weekly top 5 happenings!

Natasha

To view our Partner blog, click here