Accelerate Production with Avid NEXIS—Next Gen Software-Defined Shared Storage
By Jim Bask
By Tom Graham in Avid Connect, Broadcast, Filmmaking, NAB 2016
Technology in our industry continues evolving at a blinding pace, but for shared storage it’s about more than just size and speed. Manually copying media between separate storage silos and hurdles in sharing media throughout the processes slows creativity. It’s now all about intelligent workflow and connectivity. It can be difficult to figure out the best integrated storage system and solution for your organization or creative team. Let’s start with the obvious big challenges you’re facing:
- The sheer volume of source material and content you need to manage is staggering, and it’s only going to keep growing
- The pressure for fast turnaround times on projects is intense and a serial workflow is choking it
- Too much time is wasted on non-creative tasks like copying/moving media
- Your media isn’t protected at all times in case of failure, and failures happen
- Team members need to connect and collaborate. Some even over long distances
At Avid, we believe the future is a fully virtualized collaborative system that connects people around an integrated shared storage platform. (Yes, we literally invented storage virtualization two decades ago with the Avid Unity MediaNetwork). Everyone told us that generic off-the-shelf storage options just don’t cut it for professionals and facilities, so we started working on an innovative new storage platform. And now, it’s here.
“NEXIS delivers unrivaled flexibility, scalability, control, and extensibility not only to the Avid MediaCentral Platform but also key workflow enabling third-party media applications like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro X, so you can meet any production challenge.”
Avid NEXIS is the world’s first and only software-defined storage platform, enabling fully virtualized storage for all media environments. What does that translate to for you? The NEXIS intelligent software system does some incredibly powerful things like offer a real-time scalable set of definable/resizable workspaces and a solid protection scheme that can cover you for up to 5 drive failures. Intelligent also means it is a media aware next-generation file system with pre-integrated hardware – which means it’s purpose built and tested to work as a cohesive system, (unlike generic storage and third party software). The bottom line is that NEXIS delivers unrivaled flexibility, scalability, control, and extensibility not only to the Avid MediaCentral™ Platform but also key workflow enabling third-party media applications like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro X, so you can meet any production challenge. From the smallest production teams to the largest media enterprises, NEXIS is the only storage platform that has the flexibility to easily scale and grow with you at every stage of your business.
With NEXIS, we partnered with our customers to reimagine the possibilities of what shared storage could and should be for both media production and media professionals. The result truly is Next-generation (Intelligent and) Integrated Storage.
Now if you already own an Avid ISIS system, don’t worry—your system is not obsolete. You can add NEXIS storage right alongside your existing ISIS and seamlessly access both systems from the updated NEXIS client. Avid ISIS is fully supported and tested to work with the new NEXIS intelligent software system, so you can keep your Avid ISIS system and continue to expand its capabilities.
The NEXIS family is about providing media organizations and creative teams with massive benefits over generic storage and hodge-podge solutions. Compared to off-the-shelf storage, NEXIS is a more cost-effective, powerful, and flexible system that is designed and optimized specifically for the rigors of professional media production. Compared to Avid ISIS, NEXIS has some key advantages like the ability to mix and match engines (as we mentioned above – you can add a NEXIS to your existing ISIS | 5500 environment, for instance, where previously you could only expand by adding more of the same type of engine). NEXIS also has the advantage of offering these additional options over ISIS | 5500/7500:
- Half Populated Engine Options
- Common Spares
- SSD Acceleration
- Mirror plus Dual Disk media protection
- Upgradeable Redundant Controllers for High Availability support
Because NEXIS is workflow-connected storage that’s purpose-built for the open Avid MediaCentral Platform, you can and will streamline and accelerate media production in any size broadcast, post-production, government, corporate, house of worship, live event, or media education environment. The hardware and software components are tuned for optimal performance of digital media delivery so that you have extremely predictable, reliable results.
Avid NEXIS will enable your creative team to collaborate in real-time, regardless of what type of media software you use. Thanks to the openness of Avid Everywhere, NEXIS works with all top media creation applications, including Media Composer, Pro Tools, Apple Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere Pro, Grass Valley EDIUS, and many more. All NEXIS systems are powered by the Avid NEXIS | FS file system, so you’ll experience the same consistent performance, reliability, and protection—regardless of the size of your network. It’s also the only scale-out storage solution lets you configure the system to give high priority projects more power. You can give critical projects maximum performance and throttling back on less critical workflows.
The NEXIS family includes several new storage engine options, so you can pick the system that’s the best fit for your organization.
- Avid NEXIS | E4—Medium-density integrated storage engine
- Avid NEXIS | E2—Small-footprint integrated storage engine
- System Director Appliance—Increases Avid NEXIS scale and redundancy
- Media Pack—Pack of 10 drives with 400MBytes/Sec of performance and 20 TB or 60 TB of storage
- Redundant Controller—High-availability option for Avid NEXIS systems
- Avid NEXIS | PRO—Professional-class integrated storage engine
The Avid NEXIS | PRO introduces an even more accessible price point and capabilities for professionals and small teams. Existing ISIS | 1000 customers can benefit from NEXIS | PRO capabilities with a software update.
The Avid NEXIS family will be available starting in Q2 2016.