Maintaining fast, efficient and reliable data storage in the age of modern media and entertainment is an increasingly difficult challenge.
Content creators ranging from independent filmmakers to major studios like Netflix and Amazon are churning out enormous amounts of TV shows, movies, video games, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) experiences. Each piece of content must be stored in a way that ensures it’s easy to access, ready to share and fast enough to stream.
This becomes a monumental task when you’re dealing with petabytes of high-resolution footage and graphics. Operating at that scale can overwhelm even the most seasoned professionals.
Those pros must also ensure they have both primary and secondary storage. Primary storage is designed to deliver rapid data retrieval speeds. Secondary storage, on the other hand, provides slower access times and is used for long-term storage.
Seemingly Insurmountable Odds
For media and entertainment production companies, the goal is always the same: speed production and cut costs. That’s why fast, efficient and reliable data storage solutions have become a vital necessity for those who want to survive and thrive in the modern age of media and entertainment.
The amount of data created in a single media project can be staggering.
Each new project uses one or more cameras producing footage with a resolution as high as 8K. And content captured at 8K has 16 times more pixels per frame than traditional HD video. That translates to around 1 terabyte of data for every 1.5 to 2 hours of footage.
For large-scale productions, shooting can continue for weeks, even months. At roughly a terabyte for every 2 hours of shooting, that footage quickly adds up, creating a major data-storage headache.
But wait, there’s more: Your customer’s projects may also include both AR and VR data. High-quality AR/VR can contain hundreds of effects, textures and 3D models, producing data that measures not just in terabytes but petabytes.
Further complicating matters even more, AR/VR data often requires real-time processing, low-latency transfer and multiuser access.
Deploying AI adds yet another dimension. Generative AI (GenAI) now has the ability to create stunning additions to any multimedia project. These may include animated backgrounds, special effects and even virtual actors.
However, AI accounts for some of the most resource-intensive workloads in the world. To meet these stringent demands, not just any storage solution will do.
Extreme Performance Required
For media and entertainment content creators, choosing the right storage solution can be a make-or-break decision. Production companies that produce the highest rate of data must opt for something like the Supermicro H13 Petascale storage server.
The H13 Petascale storage server boasts extreme performance for data-intensive applications. For major content producers, that means high-resolution media editing, AR and VR creation, special effects and the like.
The H13 Petascale storage server is also designed to handle some of the tech industry’s most demanding workloads. These include AI and machine learning (ML) applications, geophysical modeling and big data.
Supermicro’s H13 Petascale storage server delivers up to 480 terabytes of high-performance storage via 16 hot-swap all-flash drives. The system is based on the Enterprise Data Center Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3 form factor NVMe storage to provide high-capacity scaling. The 2U Petascale version has double the storage bays and capacity.
Operating on the EDSFF standard also offers better performance with PCIe 5 connectivity and improved thermal efficiency.
Under the hood of this storage beast is a 4th generation AMD EPYC processor with up to 128 cores and 6TB of DDR5 memory. Combined with 128 lanes of PCIe 5 bandwidth, H13 delivers more than 200GB/sec. of bandwidth and more than 25 million input/output operations per second (IOPS).
Data’s Golden Age
Storing, sending and streaming massive amounts of data will continue to be a challenge for the media and entertainment industry.
Emerging formats will push the boundaries of resolution. New computer-aided graphics systems will become the industry standard. And consumers will continue to demand fully immersive AR and VR experiences.
Each of these evolutions will produce more and more data, forcing content creators to search for faster and more cost-effective storage methods.
Note: The media and entertainment industry will be the focus of a special session at the upcoming Supermicro Open Storage Summit ‘24, streaming live from Aug. 13 to Aug. 29. The M&E session, scheduled for Aug. 14 at 10 a.m. PDT / 1 p.m. EDT, will focus on AI and the future of media storage workflows. The speakers will represent Supermicro, AMD, Quantum and Western Digital. Learn more and register now to attend the 2024 Supermicro Open Storage Summit.
Do more:
- Check out the Supermicro H13 Petascale Storage System
- Read a related blog: Why M&E content creators need high-end VDI, rendering and storage