Magazine:

Review contents:

• About the Benefit of Conservatism and Canning or Once Again About the Digital Video Archives

• The Technologies of Storage of the ADTX Company
• The Systems of ASM Archiving on the Base of DVD, MO, CD, CD-R, CD-RW
• The GaSSS Systems
• The "Videoarchive" from the JS Systems Integration
• The New Technologies in the Sphere of Archiving and Search of Video Materials
• The Robotic CD/DVD Libraries of the MC-8000 series of the JVC Company
• The System of the Automated Archiving - Leitch
• Medea VideoRAID
• The New Facilities for the Recording and Storage of the Video in the DVD Format
• The Lowest Level Archiving System
• Teracart series DVD libraries

625 Content: 2002 : #4

The Technologies of Storage of the ADTX Company
By Alexander Osipov, Maxim Jurzinov, Vladimir Mys

"People pay for the "use", but not for the "wide opportunities." The majority of people doesn't buy something because it is cool or must be cool, but because it allows them solving their problems or provides an opportunity to do something that they have never thought about or couldn't do that earlier."
(Can Vitto, ADTX 2001).

Who much time does it take to kill the most disastrous and refined monster? This procedure happens on the eyes of the Hollywood thriller lovers and takes about two hours. At the studio that makes the movie it takes months of intensive and follow up work. At the array of hard discs that stores all the work information it will take only a moment which is enough for one of the hard discs to fall out and all of the information on the array would be lost forever.

Exactly because of the necessity of insurance of the data storage lots of genies in a number of different companies had started to develop a hardware that allows preventing the loss or to restore all the information after the local crisis.

ADTX (Advanced Technologies and System Co. Ltd.) is the engineering companion of IBM Japan Ltd. in the development and creating of the disc arrays generating the working capacity at the breakdown of separate elements. The main office of the company is situated in the Yokohama (Japan).

The line of the ADTX production is one of the advanced in the industry of the data storage. This production provides the high productivity quality and reliability that are so important while the operation with the contemporary computer programs and cyberarts and at the price that is comparable with the chipper "non-RAID" products for the data storage.

The main characteristics of the RAID arrays ADTX are:

The safety of the information. RAID arrays of levels 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 allow saving the data and not to stop the work in the case of the falling out of the hard disc that is the part of the array. RAID system maintains the 'hot' change of the hard discs and the automated restore of data without the decline in the general productivity of the system. Besides there is an opportunity of replacement of the broken power unit without the shutting down of the whole system.
Big volumes for the data storage. RAID arrays Fibre Channel of G and J series might be united into one system to achieve the bigger volumes.
The high productivity. The RAID controllers ADTX established of the G and J series maintain the constant flow of data at the speed of up to 40 MB/sec. The RAID controllers established in the K series maintain the constant flow of data at the speed of up to 160 MB/sec. The RAID controllers Fibre Channel can provide up to 200 MB/sec and to operate up to 10 000 of the entering/withdrawal operations per second.
The operation systems. RAID systems of G and J series maintain all the standard operation systems: MacOs, NetWare, OS/2 Warp, Windows (all versions), IRIX, UNIX, Linus and Solaris.

All the line of the RAID arrays of the ADTX Company is divided into the series that vary in the opportunities and productivity. It allows to orient in the choice of the necessary facilities and to determine the task more easily.

The G series

Desktop version of G series RAID array

The systems of the G series are supplied in the desktop case or in the version for the rack mount. The build-in RAID controller allows achieving the high speed of the data transfer. All the arrays of that series maintain 0, 1, and 5 RAID levels. In the case of operation with the 5 RAID level with the detailed spare disc the system will automatically transfer the coping of data from the broken disc to the working one. All the hard discs might be changed without reloading or shutting down of power supply of the system. On the array realized in the rack mount body two power supply units are established and one of which might be also changed without shutting down of the whole system if it falls out.

The additional functions of that system are:

Background Retry Function. That function allows retrying the data from the array to the computer even during signal processing of the second query of data, what is good for the operation with the programs of nonlinear editing.
Background Surface Verification Function. This function in the specially provided time automatically verifies the surface of the hard disc without the noise for the main working process.
Software Power Supply Control. With the pressing of the button that turns off the power supply of the array this function allows maintaining the power till the fault or saving of the information that is located in the buffer to the hard disc.

Rack version of G series RAID array

All the arrays of the G series consist of 6 high-speed discs (7200 rpm) with the maximum volume of 720 GB (6 per 120 GB) and join to the computer through the Ultra SCSI-3 interface. In the diffraction models the joint of the quantity of arrays up to 15 into one system is possible. The speed of reading out and recording of the information is 35 MB per second. The control and tuning of the RAID controller is accomplished with the help of buttons and the liquid-crystal display situated on the front board of the body. The series of arrays guarantees the integrity of the data and continuation of work in spite of the critical situations and is appropriate for work with the digital and analogous videos of the standard clearness.

The J series

J series RAID array

The systems of the J series are supplied as the previous one in the desktop case and the rack mount version. The RAID controller of that series of arrays 'helps' to computer to calculate at the optional distribution of resources at the different queries. That means that the applications, which need the constant transfer of the big data flows, will have the bigger priority than the others that are less demanding will. All the arrays of the J series are sold already configured in advance. The control board that is situated on the body of the array allows producing of the control and tuning of the array to the user who doesn't have any special technical knowledge. In the J series all the main achievements of the RAID technologies are used what allows to these facilities operating even with one disc broken. In the arrays which are in the rack mount version the two power units and two cooling ventilators are set and one of the power units might be changed without the shutting down of the array in the case of falling out. All the arrays of the J series consist of four high-speed discs (7200 rpm) with the maximum volume of 480 GB (4 per 120 GB) and connected up to the computer through the Ultra Wide SCSI (LVD) interface. The speed of the information read-out is 34 MB/sec and recording is 32 MB/sec. These arrays might be used for the storage or operation with the digital or analogous videos of the standard clearness (SD) as well.

The K series

This series is based on the use of the Ultra 160 technology and represents an exceptionally volumetric storage of data that is fitting in a not big rack mount body (2RU).

All the arrays of the K series maintain the RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, and 5. In the case of using of the RAID level 5 with the detailed spare disc the system will automatically transfer the copying of data from the broken disc on the working one. All the hard discs can be changed without reloading or shutting down of the power supply unit of the system. In these systems there are also the two power units one of which can be changed without shutting down of the array in the case of its falling out. The configuration of the array might be also done on a distance. This RAID system meets all the requirements that are necessary for the operation with the videos of the standard clearness (SD) as well as with the videos of the high clearness (HD), but they were projected especially for the operating with the videos of high clearness. With the use of few flows of uncompressed videos there appears the necessity to enlarge the disc space. The maximum volume of the array of base configuration that consists of 6 discs may achieve 720 GB (6 per 120 GB). The capacity of the array may be enlarged up to 21.6 TB. Due to the use of the Ultra 160 technology in the one and two-channeled configuration of K series arrays can record are reproduce few flows of videos of the standard (SD) and high clearness (HD). The single-channeled systems are appropriate for the operation with the videos of the standard resolution with the flows up to 100 MB/sec. The two-channeled systems are capable of operating at the speed of more that 200 MB/sec, what makes them ideal with the use of 10-unit material of high-resolution (1080i). For the appraisal of the speed of work, as an example, there might be site a result of the test that was produced on the Mac G4 computer with the clock rate of 467MHz, Atto EPCI-ULSS (single-channeled adapter, one array ADTX). The result was the following: reading-out 111MB/sec, recording 92 MB/sec. With the use of the two-channeled adapter and the two ADTX arrays (Atto EPCI-UL3D) the speed of reading-out accounted for 215 MB/sec and the speed of recording was 192 MB/sec. These data mean that the system easily maintains few flows of videos of standard (SD) or two flows of videos of high resolution (HD).

The use of the EIDE to SCSI technology allows to the K series arrays operating with the speed of SCSI and Fiber but at the price of EIDE.

The FC series

FC -1 RAID array

The arrays of that series are capable of data transfer at the speed of up to 200 MB/sec and of producing up to 10000 of entering/withdrawal operations per second. The maintained configurations are RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, and 5. In some cases the FC series arrays might be configured with the use of the combined RAID levels: up to 10 combinations in one array.

The ArrayMasStor FC system is capable to maintain up to 20 hard discs of 18.2, 36, 73 and 181 GB volume (with the use of an additional power supply unit).

The total volume of the disc space of each particular array configured under RAID level 5 may achieve 1.8 TB. All the main working elements (RAID controller, power unit, cooling system, and hard discs) may be changed without the shutting down of power or reloading of the system.

All the arrays of that series are delivered with the software for the RAID configuration and control of the array's operation. Besides the delivery includes the program that allows copying of the separate parts of data on the especially reserved for them spaces on the array. That provides an opportunity to increase the level of the data security and to make the work of planning their reserved copying easier.

The FC-II series

The arrays of that series have the fiber optic interface and achieve the maximum speed of 2 Gbit/sec. The ArrayMasStor FC-II systems maintain the FC-A12 standard (one of the latest standards) and can provide up to four connections at the speed of 2 Gbit/sec. That makes them reasonable choice for applications that need the high-speed data transfer. Besides ArrayMasStor FC-II is compatible with the interface that provides the speed of the data transfer of 1 Gbit/sec. The array represents the standard 19" body that is 3U high. Such a block might maintain up to 15 hard discs with the volume of 73 GB each (the rotation speed is 10 000 rpm). That allows getting the maximum volume of 8.76 TB (with the addition of 7 more blocks). All the arrays of that series maintain the function of the 'hot' change of all the elements of the system. ArrayMasStor FC-II maintains the RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, 3, and 5. With the use of the two-channeled configuration of the cache of data (512 MB on each controller, the general buffer volume is 1 GB) the flow might be equally divided between the two controllers for the increase of data security level. ArrayMasStor FC-II allows changing the tuning of the configuration of the data cache for the efficient processing which is necessary for the different computer applications.

All the arrays of the FC-II series can operate under the control of the operation systems Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0, Linux, etc.

Provided by the Ovako Company.

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