5600 K Productions Turns to JetStor® to Help Meet Clients’ Every Film & Video Need
If you need to produce some advertising, a corporate film, television content, a documentary, or even a feature film, turn to 5600 K production / MH5, a leading provider of film and video services. You’ll have access to the full gamut of pre-production, production, and post-productions capabilities, from scripting and set design, to direction and lighting, to editing, color correction, and even animation. Its name stems from the temperature of sunlight at noon—5600 degrees Kelvin.
5600 K has a presence in both North America and Europe with his headquarters and studios in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Canada, some 90 miles east of Montreal, and a sales office in Laval, near Montreal. With 25 highly qualified employees, the firm ensures that every film and video need is met.
THE CHALLENGE
To support its growth, 5600 K built a second production studio in Quebec province, this one more spacious at over 5,000 square feet. The firm was producing a large film project in the studio and needed to enable eight editors and two 3D animators to concurrently access and work with high-resolution footage. They had to store terabytes of data not weekly, but daily.
The company’s legacy server, however, while once adequate for smaller projects, lacked both the speed and capacity to handle such torrents of data.
The challenge was especially pressing because meeting deadlines and safeguarding its clients’ work are essential to 5600 K’s business. Moreover, the company required a solution that was quick to deploy so it could rapidly commence production. 5600 K turned to Montreal-based APY MTL, Inc., a premier provider of computers and video and studio equipment for the gaming, film, and video industries.
“APY is our long trusted partner because it understands our demand for the highest-quality solutions,” said Martin Saulnier, producer and director at 5600 K productions / MH5. “To produce our current project as well as all those going forward, we required uncompromising speed and reliability with our storage. With that in mind, APY had every confidence that a JetStor solution from AC&NC would meet our every need.”
THE SOLUTION
• A JetStor 816FX Fibre Channel SAN platform from AC&NC
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
• A JetStor 816FX FC SAN platform with 16 12TB SAS drives
• 16G Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) from ATTO Technology
• Server from APY
• 10 Gbe Network switch
BENEFITS IMMEDIATELY REALIZED
APY recommended a JetStor 816FX FC SAN platform for 5600 K’s new studio. “We have long relied on JetStor products to meet our clients’ storage needs,” said Antoine Laroche, Vice-President of Operations for APY MTL, Inc. “We knew from many prior installations that JetStor products deliver the performance, capacity, and dependability that 5600 K needed. Additionally, the JetStor 816FX device is near plug’n play, making it quick to deploy.”
Thanks to its ease of its installation, the JetStor 816FX platform was up and running in little time, supporting 5600 K’s team of editors and animators. They use sophisticated software such as Tiger Store for collaborative file sharing and Tiger Spaces for efficient project management, Final Cut Pro for advanced video editing, and DaVinci Resolve for post-production tasks like color correction, visual effects, and motion graphics.
Up to five terabytes of multi-camera footage are reliably stored on the JetStor 816FX solution every day. “Our JetStor 816FX system has met our every expectation,” said Justin Antippa, producer and director at 5600 K productions / MH5. “Even with eight editors and two animators working with huge files simultaneously, the solution provides the speed and reliability to meet our every deadline. Our clients are happy, which makes us happy.”
HOW WE DID IT
The production company installed a 3U JetStor 816FX Fibre Channel platform with a 12TB SAS drive in each of its 16 bays for a total of 192 terabytes of capacity. It also acquired two more drives to serve as backups.
The JetStor device features dual-active controllers that operate concurrently. This architecture doubles the available host bandwidth, enhances utilization of system resources, and maximizes throughput.
If one controller fails, the other controller will transparently takeover all storage services.
The JetStor 816FX array is configured for RAID 6. RAID 6 protects against the failure of two disks, making it ideal for mission critical applications.
The JetStor 816FX system links via dual 16 Gb/sec fiber links to an APY server, which connects to a Network switch with four 10 Gb/sec fiber links. Mac and PC workstations attach to the switch at 10 Gb/sec speed. The result is a robust, reliable storage area network (SAN), capable of supporting even the largest film and video files.
To back up and archive its data, 5600 K attached an mLogic LTO-9 tape device to its JetStor 816FX platform. Copies of files are stored on 18Tb tape cartridges.
CONCLUSION
Thanks to its JetStor 816FX FC solution, 5600 K gained high-end storage services to support its new studio. “We will never compromise on quality, which why our JetStor storage solution was our best option,” said Saulnier. “The fact that it was cost-effective was an added bonus. The partnership between AC&NC and APY enabled us to meet our clients’ most demanding shoots and their tightest deadlines. We’re more than satisfied.”
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