Digital Transformation in the Manufacturing sector
Media And Entertainment Whitepaper 090308
1. Isilon in Production
Driving Productivity, Cost Reduction and New Opportunities in
Media and Entertainment
An Isilon® Systems Whitepaper
September, 2008
2. Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
The Digital Production Pipeline..................................................................................................................... 4
Creation & Editing......................................................................................................................................... 5
Costs and Risks.......................................................................................................................................... 5
Scale‐Up Storage Limitations ................................................................................................................ 5
Accelerate Creation and Editing ............................................................................................................... 6
Increase Productivity ............................................................................................................................ 7
Cost Reduction ...................................................................................................................................... 9
Take Advantage of New Business Opportunities................................................................................ 10
Rendering, Compositing & Encoding .......................................................................................................... 10
Near‐line Storage and File Management.................................................................................................... 11
Bringing it All Together ............................................................................................................................... 12
Exponentially Increasing Business Value ................................................................................................ 13
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................... 14
ISILON SYSTEMS 2
3. Introduction
Create it. Manage it. Deliver it. It sounds simple. But within these three key media and entertainment
processes are a myriad of moving parts, immeasurable man hours, and ever increasing challenges. The
production (or post‐production) processes alone can entail hundreds of people working on thousands of
gigabytes of HD frames, composites, 3D renderings and enormous encoded files. The completed media assets
then require archiving and distribution. All of these core media processes—production, archive and play‐
out—have two key things in common: each relies heavily on the crucial element of storage and, if effectively
streamlined and accelerated, each would significantly impact business value.
This document will focus entirely on storage requirements in the media production process. Regardless of the
segment of media and entertainment—broadcasting, animation, live action films, etc.—the production
process can be further broken down into three main components:
Creation & editing
Rendering/compositing/encoding
Focus
Near‐line storage and file management
We will examine the current challenges and drawbacks of using traditional “scale‐up” storage technologies in
each of these components and how Isilon’s clustered “scale‐out” architecture can significantly increase
business value by:
Increasing productivity
Reducing costs and management overhead
Enabling new opportunities
ISILON SYSTEMS 3
4. The Digital Production Pipeline
Media and entertainment companies have experienced quantum leaps in the ability to turn out high‐quality
assets extremely quickly, achieving both economies of scale and production advancements not dreamed of
even a few years ago. However, although productions that once seemed impossible are now everyday
occurrences, the advent of next‐generation digital production processes have not come without headaches
and complications.
Digital media assets have quickly ballooned from hundreds of files consisting of just a few hundred
megabytes to thousands of files at gigabytes in size, with single projects ranging into the terabytes. There are
a variety of reasons for the explosive growth, from consumer demand, new devices and new delivery
mediums (requiring media files to exist in multiple formats), to major advances in digital filming and VFX
techniques. For the purposes of this paper, we need not examine all the various reasons for such growth.
However, it is important to understand that, considering we are only at the cusp of the digital media era,
more explosive, exponential growth is inevitable.
To accommodate growth, the traditional method has been to “simply add more space”. However, in this new
era of digital media production, it’s not that “simple”: When managing large digital media files, traditional
scale‐up storage technologies reach a point of diminishing return. Adding capacity will eventually overtax
processor and throughput power, degrading overall system performance to unacceptable levels. And
eventually, due to the fixed capacity ceiling of scale‐up storage, more space cannot be added to an existing
file system, requiring a duplicate, disconnected island of storage. Each level of growth is compounded with
another layer of complexity, requiring additional inconvenient steps and management overhead to what
once seemed like a smooth, efficient process.
As digital workflows become convoluted with layer upon layer of storage, human resources are taxed,
escalating costs. Media professionals must spend time navigating IT based tools, data sets, file systems and
volumes—rather than focusing on their creative work. A new breed of highly paid, specialized media IT
professional is needed to design and manage proper storage systems and workflows. And, as storage
complexity increases, even more resources are required to simply manage the data through the production
pipeline (known affectionately as “data wranglers”).
Therefore, the systems that enabled the initial breakthroughs in digital media have led to compound layers of
storage that escalate costs, create bottlenecks and limit the ability to take on larger, more complex projects,
rather than enable new opportunities. Storage should not add complexity and cost to digital workflows, but
instead fully support them by presenting a single file system, requiring little management and dynamically
scaling in any direction as business needs dictate.
With this in mind, let’s examine more closely the three main components of production (with an emphasis on
creation & editing) and explore the ways Isilon’s clustered storage solution can move beyond the bottlenecks
created by traditional scale‐up storage systems to increase productivity, reduce costs and enable new
opportunities.
ISILON SYSTEMS 4
5. Creation & Editing
[Note: As each media house has its own set of unique digital workflows, for the purposes of this document we
will only consider the general steps, looking at specific workflows as examples only.]
Creation & editing can be one of the most time and cost intensive functions performed in media production.
Content must first be flawlessly ingested into high‐speed storage and then accessed by nearly every member
of the editing team, necessitating clear, concise workflows and file logistics, as well as extremely high
network throughput. Errors, misdirected files and “wait time” in this portion of the production process can
quickly escalate costs and lead to missed deadlines.
Costs and Risks
Traditionally, ingest has required a completely separate, dedicated system consisting of expensive, high‐
performance storage. These proprietary storage systems usually require the use of unique file types, have
limited capacity and require specialized management. Regardless of the specific system used, the ingest
phase has been an inherent bottleneck as artists must wait until the file is completely ingested in real‐time
before beginning work.
Once ingested, there are two common methods for providing content to artists: a) use a multiple‐copy
method to distribute the project to each editing station with its own direct attached storage (DAS) or b)
provide a higher‐speed central repository that each artist can work from (NAS or SAN). When using the
multiple‐copy method, large media files continuously traverse the network—bouncing back‐and‐forth
between islands of storage. Once the editors have processed their separate copies of a project, the files must
once again be sent across the network to a separate storage device for rendering. This method requires the
time‐intensive movement of large data files, which increases exponentially as a function of the number of
copies, the size of the file and the I/O limitations of the storage devices. This time expenditure not only
results in longer production cycles for media assets, it also translates to paying expensive artists to simply
wait…
To alleviate the challenges of the multi‐copy method, a centralized storage repository may be employed.
However, if this central repository becomes overtaxed, slowing to a crawl as artists, compute stations and
backups all require access to the same system, production is again stalled. The primary issue with a
centralized storage repository is the inherent limitations of scale‐up storage technologies, namely scalability
and performance.
Scale‐up Storage Limitations
Traditional scale‐up storage architectures (DAS, NAS, SAN), are characterized by individual systems controlled
by a single head, with an inherent fixed performance and capacity ceiling. As capacity grows, performance
resources do not, becoming oversubscribed by the additional data access load and management, degrading
overall storage performance. Regarding capacity, traditional NAS technologies are capped at 16TB per file
system. At first glance this sounds rather large, but as media files continue to explode in size and number,
ISILON SYSTEMS 5
8. Time‐savings result from:
Concurrent Workflows: Isilon IQ’s architecture and resulting ultra‐high aggregate I/O allows for
concurrent workflows without performance degradation. Artists are never waiting for the storage
system to “catch‐up” while it is being accessed by other devices, as processes are no longer subject
to the I/O limitations of a single head.
Single copy and in‐place editing: Isilon is completely file agnostic, therefore, any client (e.g.
Windows®, Mac, Unix) using standard network protocols can read and write any type of file on the
Isilon cluster. And because Isilon IQ is not just an enormous single‐headed storage device, but a fully
symmetric system, multiple parties can access a single, centralized file without performance
degradation, allowing for true in‐place editing.
Ingesting directly: The unique architecture of Isilon IQ and the
OneFS operating system allow administrators to designate One company interviewed for this
“access zones” to certain I/O processes, such as ingest or paper reported, were they able to
rendering. This basically dedicates throughput and processing ingest directly to a centralized pool of
power that will not be disrupted by other processes accessing storage it would give them an extra 3
the same pool of storage. A single Isilon IQ Accelerator‐x node hours per day.
provides single‐stream throughput of 400MBs, and an
aggregate of 700MBs. When using Isilon for ingest, rather than spending hours per day copying files
to‐and‐from expensive primary storage, a single copy of the file is created just once for all purposes.
Each artist can immediately access the ingested file, without waiting for files to be copied. When
used in combination with certain third‐party workflow tools such as Sienna by Gallery, artists can
actually begin work on a file while it is still being ingested, within seconds after ingest begins, saving
innumerable hours.
Single location for all projects: Trying to locate which disk or volume the correct copy of a file
resides on is frustrating and wastes time. With a single pool of storage, files can be stored logically by
project, rather than be subject to the limits of technology, such as physical disks, volumes and LUNs.
Therefore, media professionals can focus on media creation and editing, not data management.
Performance at scale: Isilon clustered storage scales linearly and independently, depending on
specific business needs. In linear scaling, each dimension of the system—storage capacity, processing
power, memory and throughput—all scale together. This means that as the system scales, overall
performance is improved. This is accomplished through the addition of standard storage nodes.
With independent scaling, processing power, throughput and memory can scale independently of
storage and vice versa. This is accomplished by the addition of either accelerator nodes (Isilon
Accelerator‐x, built for ultra‐high performance to boost the entire cluster), or the addition of storage
expansion nodes (for systems that are more storage intensive, such as archive). The preconfigured
nodes reduce IT time used for a) determining what components need to be scaled, replaced or
upgraded, b) determining how that will affect other aspects of the system, c) reconfiguring the
various file systems, d) performing the actual hardware upgrade.
ISILON SYSTEMS 8
9. On‐the‐fly scaling: Both highly valuable media production
time and IT time are saved as Isilon cluster configurations
“Our whole production environment
can be dynamically changed on‐the‐fly, without requiring
simply wouldn’t work without the large,
a system redesign, or even a system re‐boot; all scaling
high‐performance single storage pool that
can be done while the system is online. This means that if
Isilon gives us. Without it, we would’ve
business needs change or a project exceeds original size never completed this movie.”**
estimates, precious production hours are not forfeited for
–Howard Postley, CTO‐
an upgrade. All aspects of the system scale within 60
3ality Digital Systems
seconds of powering on a new Isilon node. No other
storage architecture allows this level of dynamic,
instantaneous online scaling of a single file system.
Cost Reduction
When utilizing Isilon as the primary single pool of storage for creation & editing, numerous cost savings are
realized.
Reduce data and storage management overhead: Data
wrangler efforts in the editing process are virtually eliminated. One Isilon customer reported that
With a single pool of storage that is self‐balancing (even when their media IT headcount, supporting
new nodes are added), the need to move data from one over 140 artists, was reduced from 6
to 3 due to simplified storage
system to the other, either for load balancing or during
management and not needing data
normal production processes, is simply no longer necessary.
wranglers.
Additionally, the complication of managing multiple types and
brands of storage is eliminated.
Storage costs: The cost of storage itself is reduced and efficiency is increased, as all free space is
available for use rather than locked away in inaccessible silos. The average utilization of DAS is only
25—30% and NAS is 60%—whereas the average utilization for an Isilon cluster is 82%.
Network hardware and management costs: Without multiple copies of massive files constantly
traversing the network, network load is significantly reduced, requiring less hardware. And, front‐
end switching technologies that attempt to load balance I/O are no longer required.
[NOTE: A recent independent study by Forrester Research confirms that Isilon clustered storage provides
significant cost savings for file‐based storage over traditional technologies, providing 125% RIO with a
payback period of 5 months. See “The Total Economic Impact of Isilon’s Clustered Storage System,” found at
www.isilon.com.]
ISILON SYSTEMS 9
10.
Take Advantage of New Business Opportunities
Storage infrastructure should never be a limiting factor when considering new opportunities or building out
new media workflows. With traditional storage, the inability to quickly scale both capacity and performance
translates to saying “no” to last minute projects that would overtax current systems. It may also limit the
ability to add new product lines or utilize new breakthrough effects and techniques—such as stereo imagery.
Instead, storage should be able to flex, quickly and dynamically, as business needs dictate. The ability to add
new nodes to an existing cluster in a matter of seconds allows for true “pay‐as‐you‐grow” scalability and
flexibility. Therefore, administrators can respond to new demands for capacity or performance
instantaneously, enabling the organization to more quickly adapt to new business needs, take on new
projects and create new, groundbreaking productions otherwise impossible with traditional, difficult‐to‐scale
storage technologies.
In short, Isilon IQ’s dynamic scalability, flexibility and record setting I/O capabilities enable truly concurrent
in‐place editing of a single project file throughout the entire creation & editing process, reducing time, costs
and management overhead—enabling media companies to do more with less.
Rendering, Compositing, & Encoding
Many Isilon customers utilize Isilon IQ as a mass storage system for high‐performance computing, such as
render farms, compositing stations and encoding devices. Traditional storage architectures used for these
workflows rely on a single high‐speed head and metadata server, often separate from the rest of the storage
network. Up to a certain point, these metadata servers can be very fast, but once pressed beyond that point
performance is quickly degraded, bringing the system to a crawl. And, if the storage behind the metadata
server is not separate but shared with the editing process, not only is performance slowed, artists may be
unable to access their files as the compute nodes all attack the same data set. Automated render queues can
be employed to help with load balancing, but this leads to complex data logistics which inevitably absorb
more time.
There are a number of aspects of Isilon IQ’s clustered storage architecture that make it ideal for high‐
performance computing environments:
Dedicated throughput of 200MB/sec in every storage node and an aggregate of up to 20GB/sec.
Accelerator‐x nodes provide integration with next‐generation 10GbE networking, enabling over
700MBps of aggregate throughput per Accelerator‐x node.
ISILON SYSTEMS 10
11. The ability to scale a single‐file system, on‐the‐fly, up to 2.3PB:
a) reduces the chance of an incomplete write, b) ensures no One Isilon customer reports that they
single project has to be divided among volumes and c) ensures have over 1,000 render nodes hitting
the same dataset at the same time
current processes can continue uninterrupted while the system
without performance degradation
is scaled.
and their render processes are now
over 100% faster.
With linear scaling, performance is increased as capacity is
added.
Built‐in redundancy protection ensures that if a drive or an entire node fails during a render or
compositing process, the process can continue as scheduled. With Isilon’s N+4 protection, up to four
entire nodes can fail without losing access to data or disrupting a read or write process.
Therefore, with Isilon clustered storage:
Rendering/compositing/encoding jobs no longer need to be scheduled and queued based on storage
limitations.
Artists do not need to wait for one job to complete before another can begin. Nor do they need to
determine what volume or drive a particular file resides on or where it should be written.
Data wranglers are no longer needed to manually move files and processes from over‐taxed drives.
No downtime is required when more space is added.
And most importantly, heavy workloads with concurrent access patterns will not degrade the
performance of an Isilon IQ cluster.
Near‐line Storage and File Management
Often, the same system that is used for rendering, compositing or encoding is used for storage of the
completed project—awaiting either distribution to an archive/play‐out server or to a film‐out device. Or, if
many projects are being completed at the same time, another near‐line storage system may be required to
offload the completed files. In both instances, traditional storage systems have inherent bottlenecks that
hinder the process and create unnecessary management headaches.
One of the primary bottlenecks when utilizing the same storage device for both high‐performance computing
needs (such as rendering) and near‐line storage is concurrent access. While the compute nodes either pull
data from the server into local RAM, or write it back, other processes suffer, including providing access to
completed projects. If a separate server is used to offload the completed projects, the same bottleneck
occurs, just earlier in the process.
Similarly, when using the same storage device for both high‐performance computing and near‐line storage
there is a large divergence in access patterns. Traditional storage can be physically and logically tuned for
ISILON SYSTEMS 11
12. various data access patterns, but once tuned, it is efficient at one type and inefficient at another. Therefore,
near‐line storage is often moved to a separate device built specifically for short‐term storage of large files.
Again, creating drag as additional servers means additional data moves, as well as more volumes, LUNs and
file systems, all of which add complexity and management overhead.
Whether near‐line storage is shared with the rendering/compositing/encoding processes or not, the system
must be able to handle large amounts of data with ultra‐high availability, reliability and clear disaster
recovery mechanisms. The cost of achieving the kind of protection required with traditional storage systems
can be astronomical.
Isilon IQ breaks these bottlenecks by providing:
1. A truly‐symmetric clustered file system: A single, seamlessly expanding shared pool of storage to
hold all projects.
2. Up to 20GB/sec throughput: Enough bandwidth to avoid degradation during concurrent reads and
writes.
3. Access zones: Administrators can carve out virtual portions of the cluster for specific access patterns,
yet still utilize the same file system and data set.
4. Industry leading data protection: Unmatched availability and reliability with no single point of failure
and multiple layers of hardware and software protection. Additional technologies are available for
ultra‐fast backup and disaster recovery over LAN or WAN.
5. Low cost: Isilon clustered storage costs approximately 1/3 of traditional storage technologies.
As an Isilon cluster can start with a minimum 3‐node configuration of 6TB and scale to as large as 2.3PB (with
a 96 node Isilon IQ 12000), some customers first introduce Isilon as a near‐line storage device, designed to
hold completed projects awaiting distribution or film‐out. However, Isilon is usually used for near‐line storage
by default in conjunction with rendering/compositing/encoding functions, as it is a natural fit and no other
storage is required for completed projects.
Bringing it All Together
To improve productivity and reduce costs, Isilon’s clustered storage systems can be implemented anywhere
within the production process: as a point solution, or for a particular high‐intensity sub‐process such as
rendering. However, once the benefits of performance, scalability, data protection and ease of management
are realized, customers quickly identify other areas where Isilon can be leveraged. As more aspects of the
production process are moved to Isilon clustered storage, business value begins to multiply across the
production cycle.
ISILON SYSTEMS 12
13. The very architecture that makes Isilon IQ a perfect fit for creation
& editing, rendering/compositing/ encoding and near‐line storage, “We approached Isilon and initially
makes it ideal to handle all of those functions simultaneously purchased a mid‐sized Isilon IQ 6000i 20
terabyte cluster. Then we began adding
without degradation. The primary reason a media organization
more and more storage along with
would not utilize the same storage for the entire production
capacity and throughput. Today Isilon
process is that traditional NAS and SAN solutions simply cannot
manages 250 terabytes of Turner Studios’
handle that level of concurrent processing (leading to over‐taxed post‐production data.”*
systems, hours of waiting and possible data/frame loss). Isilon IQ
–Ken Brady, Director of Technical
can.
Operations and Digital Media,
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Another reason an organization may not desire a single storage
system is data protection—not wanting all data housed on a single
system. Isilon emphatically answers the data protection issue with multiple layers of fault tolerance, no single
point of failure, flexible N+4 protection that can handle an unprecedented 4 node failure without
interruption, automatic preemptive warning and off‐loading of files from at‐risk disks, the shortest rebuild
times in the industry and multiple backup options including ultra high‐speed offsite backup using Aspera for
Isilon. When carefully analyzed, a single Isilon cluster provides better business continuity and a much higher
level of protection than multiple, individual storage systems, and is much simpler to manage.
Exponentially Increasing Business Value
If we consider a point solution (such as ingest) as a single dimension of the production process, then an entire
sub‐component (such as creation & editing) is a second dimension, and the entire media production process
(the culmination of all components within production) is a third dimension. With each new dimension taken
on by the Isilon system, the productivity, cost savings and ability to leverage new opportunities increases
exponentially.
Therefore, using a single pool of Isilon clustered storage for all aspects of media production multiplies
productivity, cost savings and new opportunities across the entire production pipeline.
Image and audio capture can be ingested directly to the very same system that is used for editing,
without dropping frames.
Editing can start immediately after ingest begins.
ISILON SYSTEMS 13
14. Rendering and compositing can take place while artists are
working on files without degradation, and the completed
One Isilon customer reported being
files can be stored on the very same system.
able to produce 4 times as many HD
Copies of files are not continually traversing the network. shots per week by using Isilon as the
primary storage system for all
Constantly balancing data across multiple file systems is not
aspects of production.
required.
There is only one single file system to manage for the entire
production process.
Work is not stopped when more capacity or processing power is required.
When Isilon clustered storage is used as the central repository for the entire production process, storage is
no longer the bottleneck that limits the ability to take on larger, more complex projects, but instead once
again enables breakthroughs and new opportunities by accelerating processes, improving productivity and
reducing costs and complexity.
Conclusion
The fully symmetric clustered architecture of Isilon IQ provides an extremely scalable, low‐overhead solution
with up to 2.3PB of storage and up to 20GB/sec of aggregate throughput, allowing media and entertainment
companies to accelerate any portion of the media production process. When used as a central storage
repository for every aspect of production, a synergy is created that multiplies benefits across the entire
production process:
Maximizing productivity
Minimizing costs
Enabling the ability to take on new opportunities
Throughout the entire production pipeline, production cycles are shortened allowing for the completion of
more projects in less time, artists are not paid to wait around for files to be copied, the cost of storage and
the associated management overhead is reduced, network load is reduced, storage can be easily increased in
a pay‐as‐you‐grow fashion and new opportunities that previously may not have been possible can now be
easily taken on.
Finally, although the topic of another whitepaper, Isilon IQ is able to take on the next dimension of media
storage by providing a single pool of storage for all media and entertainment processes from production to
archive to play‐out, at which point the benefits are once again exponentially increased.
*See Turner Broadcasting System case study at www.isilon.com
**See 3ality Digital Systems case study at www.isilon.com
ISILON SYSTEMS 14