Facts and findings from extensive POC testing of 4 industry-leading storage vendors

It’s no secret that large-scale broadcasters, professional sport productions, and digital media powerhouses require high performance, efficiency, and scalability to remain competitive. With the increasing demands of high-resolution video and creative user’s need for uninterrupted, highly productive workflows, traditional storage systems often fall short. Recently, a leading North American broadcaster faced these exact challenges, prompting a thorough search for a cutting-edge and highly performant storage solution.

The broadcaster realized that their storage infrastructure required some serious updating to serve their multiple stations. The existing 7-year-old storage system was increasingly unable to meet the demands of their high-resolution video projects and growing number of editing stations. The aging system’s slow performance caused frustration among users, and became increasingly difficult and costly to maintain. They needed a system that could offer faster performance, improved data protection and reliability, and scalability.

Engaging Unbiased Industry Experts 

With so much on the line, the broadcaster decided to put four leading storage providers to the test. As a result, they tapped one of OpenDrives’ premier channel partners, Key Code Media, to help in their search for the fastest and most reliable storage solution.

Based in Los Angeles, Key Code Media is a leading systems integration and media technology company that designs, installs, and supports integrated solutions for businesses nationwide. They specialize in assisting facilities to adopt broadcast, audiovisual and media technology solutions that will be effective today and in the future.

A Detailed Storage Performance Test  

In a thorough evaluation process supported by Key Code Media, the broadcaster tested four different storage vendors side by side in a Proof of Concept (POC) lab environment, including OpenDrives’ Atlas, a high-performance, software-defined storage platform. The rigorous testing was designed to measure storage performance, environmental factors, ease of use, and scalability capturing key metrics for:

  • Caption extraction time on a POC editing system
  • Caption extraction time on an existing editing bay
  • 2x playback rating
  • Power-up time
  • Recovery time from power loss
  • Redundancy from failing nodes or disks
  • Write speeds under different types of loads
  • Virtual environment performance

Facts and Findings from Rigorous Storage Performance Benchmark Testing

During the benchmarking process, OpenDrives’ Atlas demonstrated superior performance and processing capabilities across multiple metrics, including read/write speed, playback rating, recovery time, and more. Atlas’ consistent performance and reliability helped the broadcaster grow confidence in accelerating their editorial workflows, increasing productivity by as much as threefold.

Some of the key findings from the testing phase highlighted several Atlas advantages, including:

POC Graphs v07 1

To see the full results, download the benchmark report.

Results + Informed Decision = Atlas

Rising to the top of the intense selection process, Atlas won out in terms of performance, reliability, and cost when compared across all four vendors, As a result, Atlas was selected for the broadcaster’s next-generation enterprise storage platform.

Choosing Atlas offers multiple benefits to organizations that need to optimize their media workflows. With faster data processing and seamless integration into existing workflows, editorial teams can focus more on creative tasks rather than technical issues. The scalable architecture can easily expand storage capabilities as needs grow, future-proofing operations. In addition, the Atlas platform’s intuitive storage management interface reduces the need for constant support, enabling in-house teams to handle most tasks efficiently. Plus, OpenDrives offers a competitive pricing model, providing high performance at a lower cost compared to other solutions evaluated.

To read all the details of each benchmark, download the full benchmark report and be sure to contact us for more information.