The media and entertainment (M&E) industry is already taking advantage of the cloud, but most of the workflows have been rendering, simulation or other ephemeral use cases. The advantages of using the cloud for more permanent project tasks though should have even greater appeal. A key challenge to more fully utilizing the cloud is storage.
From a storage perspective, almost every aspect of M&E counts on a file system. These organizations need high-performance, highly reliable file systems that enable multiple artists to interact with the same data sets. The challenge is that most on-premises file systems don’t acknowledge the cloud even exists and if they do, they typically only use it for backup. The applications that the M&E organizations want to run in the cloud also count on NFS and SMB; most do not natively work with S3.
Most M&E organizations already have an on-premises data center, and ideally, they want to exchange information with the cloud on a routine basis. They can use the cloud for ephemeral use cases like rendering, or they can use it for a permanent use case like facilitating data access for a remote office or employee. Using the cloud means that the organization doesn’t need to provide a high-end computing device to every remote employee. The organization can stand up a Linux or Windows workstation in the cloud, and then the remote artist can connect via almost any remote computing device.
Using the cloud also enables the organization to protect its intellectual property. It can limit what data the remote user can access, making sure they only have access to the specific sections of the project relevant to their task.
Scaling performance is also something the file system should support. The cloud is designed to enable multiple servers to be leveraged to resolve performance problems. The challenge is that few scale-out in the environment that can most take advantage of scale-out architecture, the cloud. The ability to scale-out performance and capacity and to do so independently should be considered a must-have.
Another must-have is the ability to provide insight into cloud resource utilization. The file system needs to report not only on capacity utilization but also on storage performance and bandwidth needs as well as CPU consumption. Knowing these factors enables the organization to not only scale-up to meet user demand but also to scale-down during periods of inactivity to save money.
Qumulo is developing a hybrid-cloud file system designed to deliver maximum performance both on-premise and in the cloud. The experience is the same in either location, and it enables the free-flow of information. It also provides critical data insights so organizations can ensure they are using both their on-premises and cloud-based resources efficiently.
To learn more about how Qumulo solves M&E storage challenges and enables better use of cloud resources, watch this Lightboard Video with Scott Kovach, Cloud Business Development Manager for Qumulo, and Storage Switzerland’s Founder and Lead Analyst, George Crump, as they discuss how Qumulo Cloud Studio enables M&E organizations to fully leverage the cloud.
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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