In a bid to address increasing storage demands as its
pupils push the boundaries of content creation, the British Record
Industry Trust (BRIT) School has implemented a
San-based solution.
Amy Winehouse, Katie Melua and Leona Lewis are among the past
students of the BRIT
School which is dedicated to the education and vocational
training of 14-19 year olds in performing arts, art and design and
media. The school prides itself on its technology resources
offering students a sophisticated learning environment, featuring
what it claims is state of the art equipment typically only found
in the most advanced of workplaces.
Anticipating the increased demand for content creation, sharing
and storage after revamping its edit centre by purchasing a new
editing suite, the BRIT school knew it needed to find a solid and
reliable storage solution.
“Our needs were demanding: we wanted a shared storage system
that would allow any student or group of students to simultaneously
access, edit and share media files from any of the seven available
FCP workstations in the editing suite,” explained Alison Pemberton
of the Broadcast and Digital Communication Department at the BRIT
School.
The BRIT School turned to
Studio Network
Solutions who created a customised shared storage system,
featuring two globalSAN X-16s with SANmp able to handle multiple,
simultaneous streams of high definition video over Gigabit Ethernet
using iSCSI.
The San was connected via one of two Mac Pros 2 Gigabit Ethernet
ports with the other network port being used for a separate LAN
connection. This gave students the ability to open up their
projects from any of the seven suites.
An archive server was also installed, to access the globalSAN
volumes with Read Only access for backing up and the server was
configured so it can mount volumes with Write access should a
restore ever need to occur on the system. The server archives from
San to an LTO 4 Tape Library using a local SCSI connection and
Backbone NetVault workgroup software.
Centralising storage needs has brought not only archival
security but a huge increase in flexibility. “The system that we
are now using is not only reliable, but because of the current
trend in Apple as a brand, the students are no longer finding the
conversion from PCs to Macs difficult. The fact that students now
have the freedom to use any computer in the room, allows us and our
students to be much more flexible.
“We are able to have more projects happening at the same time as
our globalSAN can now handle the volume of work,” added Pemberton.
“Our globalSAN solution is working like a dream, providing us with
the freedom and security we have desperately needed.”