WNET discovers 'virtual' solution to storage needs

COMPLEX STORAGE networks comprised of multivendor technologies are commonplace in today's IT landscape, but adding storage onto a mixed network can often wind up straining a company's bottom line.

Ken Devine, CTO of WNET Channel 13 in New York, was all too familiar with this scenario. The nonprofit station, which produces such PBS shows as Nature and Great Performances, operates three separate storage domains that support three different operating systems running on two networks. The station's Unix-based fund-raising system and Windows NT-based office-and-accounting system each back up to their own storage domains using the same network; WNET's video production arm, which uses a blend of NT and Macintosh technology, has its own dedicated network and storage domain.

"The demands and issues in video [storage] are separate from the office [storage] demands. The physical storage [requirements] of video are so high, and the demands are so great, that it never occurred to me to combine the networks," Devine explains. "We have 25 edit rooms and someone is working on a project in each one with a baseline of 100GB per room, so you begin to see the scale of [our storage needs]. And that's just the editing," Devine says.

When given a heads up that the TV station would be adding a digital video channel to stream five multicast video signals to WNET's audience in addition to the current broadcast lineup, Devine knew how much added storage capacity would be needed to make all this work. The project had the potential to send his budget skyrocketing.

Devine looked at a variety of hardware-based SAN (storage area network) solutions without finding one that met his needs.

"We've been working in the SAN space for five years with a variety of different vendors, and none of [the solutions] worked ... for a variety of reasons. There was really no standard development. There were a variety of vendors, but no one had everything under one hood," Devine says.

As it turns out, the solution for WNET lay not in any particular vendor's storage box, but in a storage virtualization software solution from DataCore Software, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Simply put, storage virtualization is the ability to arrange multiple physical storage devices, such as disk or tape arrays, into a single "virtual" entity that appears as one disk to the network operator. This virtual storage disk is easier to manage and allows for rapid storage growth and reconfiguration.

The benefits of managing an open-storage platform were driving factors in Devine's decision to go with the DataCore software.

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