In the 4K era, don't make storage a bottleneck

I do not know what your habits, anyway, whenever I go to visit Suning and Gome, through the TV sales area, will always stop, dozens or even dozens of television broadcast the same content, but the definition, color saturation, The nuances of fluency can always lead to arguments. In addition to the appearance factors such as large size, thinness, and the like, visual perception has become an important factor in the selection of television. From SD to HD to 4K Ultra HD, this is an inevitable evolution. Let us enjoy the visual feast of the 4K era!

Find a short board

Perhaps you did not pay attention to the return of Zhang Yimou's big movie - "Return" is a 4K movie. In Japan, South Korea, the United States and other places, 4K ultra-high-definition television programs have long been nothing new. In China, more and more television “Reality Shows” programs have begun to test 4K production. Someone made this calculation: If the famous variety show “I am a singer” uses 38 4K cameras to shoot at the same time, the bit rate is calculated at 400Mb/s, and the film ratio is calculated at 400:1, then a program with a length of 90 minutes will be produced. The storage capacity will exceed 4000 TB; and a variety show with a ratio of up to 1000:1 such as "Where is Daddy?", its storage capacity can easily exceed the PB level.

We have entered the 4K era. An important sign is that the industry has formed a 4K ecological map. 4K standard specification, 4K collector, transcoder, transmission technology, and display terminal are all ready. Supporting 4K production software and high-performance professional 4K workstations are also ready. We are not ignoring what? Storage is right, it is storage. The massive data brought by 4K content creation and editing requires the storage to have extreme performance, high scalability, and support for the integration of mining, editing and broadcasting. Who can provide such a storage tool?

The upcoming CeBIT 2015 came with good news. Huawei officially released the OceanStor 9000, the world's fastest scale-out storage system. This product can be said to be designed specifically for the media industry, can better support ultra-high-definition video production platform, calmly deal with the challenges to the 4K ultra high definition (Ultra High Definition) era.

OceanStor 9000 three treasures

Around the 4K content production, professional production software, video workstations and high-speed networks all have mature products and solutions, except that storage is a "short board." Massive data, complex processes, and continuous rising costs are the gaps that storage must surpass. Huawei's OceanStor 9000's extreme performance, superior horizontal scalability, and converged integrated platform design can solve the aforementioned storage challenges.

Do not believe it? Let us analyze it.

First, from a performance point of view, according to Apple's description of 4K production, under normal circumstances, the TV station's non-original (compressed) edited 4K code rate is at least 400Mb/s-800Mb/s, and the current market is generally all-IP. The storage system can basically meet the requirements of a single workstation for 3K 4K editing, such as live editing of sports programs, but the production requirements for the 4th floor and above include post production of news production, drama, and variety shows, and existing storage systems. It cannot be afforded. The performance threshold makes many storage vendors frustrated with 4K.

Huawei OceanStor 9000 is a storage system based on the all-IP architecture. It is optimized for the needs of the media industry and provides better performance than other mainstream solutions in the market. The core of Huawei's 4K ultra-high definition video production solution is the OceanStor 9000. What is special about it is that it is the only all-IP architecture storage solution on the market that can satisfy the smooth editing of 6-layer 4K video streams on a single workstation. In addition, due to the ability to scale horizontally, the maximum bandwidth of the OceanStor 9000 is up to 400GB/s, which effectively avoids the problems that non-linear editing workstations can easily cause while dragging or browsing multiple layers of video and cause frames to be dropped.

Secondly, from the perspective of capacity expansion, people's demand for bandwidth is endless, and the same is true for the pursuit of visual experience. From standard definition to high definition to 4K ultra-high definition, program content is collected, compiled, broadcast, and managed. Space also increases linearly. As mentioned above, the storage capacity of a 4K Ultra HD TV reality show may reach the PB level. Although the capacity of general-purpose storage devices continues to increase, it is difficult to meet the production requirements of 4K ultra-high-definition television programs without a strong horizontal expansion capability.

However, the OceanStor 9000 can cope with it, because it uses a fully symmetrical distributed architecture, the maximum capacity can be expanded to 60PB, equivalent to accommodating 350,000 hours of 4K media assets.

Finally, from the perspective of supporting the entire process of 4K content creation, the Huawei OceanStor 9000 can easily support full-stream data mining, editing, broadcasting, management, and sharing based on the current popular fusion architecture, avoiding system files spanning chimneys. The waste of time and resources caused by the migration of information architecture, thereby maximizing the utilization of media assets, will increase production efficiency by 40%.

The media infrastructure supported by the all-IP network is not only a future development trend, but also a clear target for Huawei. Compared to the complex management and application of FC networking or hybrid networking, people prefer the plug-and-play and all-IP network architecture that can effectively reduce the operation and maintenance costs. Huawei OceanStor 9000 is the industry's first solution for processing 4K ultra-high-streaming video with all-IP NAS storage. It optimizes the data flow through the IO features, file storage distribution, and read-ahead features involved in the 4K video production process. , well reduced delay.

As the saying goes, the surgery industry specializes. Huawei OceanStor 9000's high-performance, high-scaling capabilities and integrated design seem to be born for 4K ultra-high-definition video production. The OceanStor 9000 makes storage no longer a "short board" for 4K ultra-high definition content production.

Comprehensive strength to win

However, if you think that Huawei can easily tap the door of the 4K ultra-high definition content production market with just an OceanStor 9000 high-performance storage, it is wrong. At CeBIT 2015, Huawei’s years of hard work in the media industry lies behind the dazzling audio-video feast created by Huawei's 4K ultra-high definition video production solutions. You may not know that as early as 9 years ago, Huawei set up a professional team of radio and television media and entertainment industry solutions within its storage product line, engaged in the design and development of related industry solutions, and pushed many research and development achievements to the media industry. , To provide customers with IT infrastructure solutions including media asset storage and management, 4K ultra-high definition video production, system cloudization, etc.

The technological innovation represented by the OceanStor 9000 is only a successful factor for Huawei to achieve a breakthrough in the media industry. Huawei is deeply rooted in the media industry and, more importantly, it relies on its comprehensive strength, and in particular, always adheres to the “customer-oriented” service. idea.

In August 2014, BIRTV 2014, Huawei's 4K integrated production group, jointly launched with ISV Sober, a well-known media industry, made its debut on BIRTV 2014 and caused a sensation. This is said to be the first public appearance of Huawei's 4K ultra-high definition video production solution. Since then, Huawei's 4K ultra high-definition video production solutions have performed brilliantly at both large and small domestic and international media content exhibitions. At last year's Huawei Cloud Computing Conference, Huawei and Sobe, DVISION, a supplier of 4K laser projection solutions, demonstrated their 4K ultra high-definition video production and broadcasting solutions to more than 10,000 customers throughout the venue. In addition, Huawei has also established strategic partnerships with CCTV in the field of big data storage and jointly developed a deep-energy-saving high-density media storage system.

Understanding customer needs, working with partners and customers to develop R&D, this is a concrete embodiment of Huawei's deep industry and practice of “customer-oriented” service concept. The arrival of the 4K era has provided Huawei with a new opportunity to continue deepening the media asset industry.