Products

Product Overview

AST is a Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) solution that offers unlimited distributed storage capability by managing any combination of data-tape robotic libraries with disk arrays in NAS and/or SAN configurations.

At Tedial we believe the archive is the most important asset of any broadcasting organisation and that a good archive system is the cornerstone on which media asset management and business process management systems are built. Consequently, AST offers much more functionality than a simple data-mover: it automates media and metadata transfers between fast local disk storage and data-tape robotic libraries as required by the MAM, Traffic and Playout Automation systems and their workflows.

AST has been built to work seamlessly with Tarsys, Tedial’s MAM system. Harnessing Tarsys’ intelligence, AST continually and dynamically reprioritises the job list by taking into account not only workflows that are currently being executed but also those that are to be executed in the near future. This automatic file transferring ensures that media needed by Traffic and by workflows is always kept automatically 'online' on disk. The resulting instant media availability considerably increases operators’ efficiency because they don’t have to waste time deciding what needs to be kept ‘online’ and/or waiting to retrieve clips needed for their daily scheduled work. The concept of ‘near-online’ becomes obsolete - because required media is always ‘online’.

AST competence applies beyond whole assets: its partial restore is also intelligent. Unlike most data-movers, AST doesn’t constantly execute repeated individual restore commands. AST keeps a global view of the clips and their associated segments as required by the different operators and the workflows– thus ensuring optimal prioritisation of partial restores in real time. For example, if two segments close to each other are already on disk and there is a request to retrieve from the original asset a third segment located between these, AST proceeds to restore only the ‘gap’ in the master file from the LTO tape and reuses the segments online to complete the requested third segment. Equally, if there is a request to retrieve several small segments from the same single asset, AST may restore the whole file instead of retrieving the individual small segments one-by-one. This not only saves precious time, it also dramatically reduces tape mounting operations in the library.

To further optimise LTO tape usage, AST works applying ‘media object’ policies by creating single storage files containing several small files grouped together. This achieves efficient storage backup of small files such as index tables, storyboards, proxies, etc. while the small files are simultaneously kept online in disk storage for instant availability. Moreover, AST supports the creation of rules for automatic group archiving because from a performance and operational point of view it’s better to keep similar things together. Tape groups and on-line disk partitions can be defined in order to classify the media from different sources (e.g. news, programs) or different formats (high and low quality). This feature provides great versatility, helps implement comprehensive user media access rights and enables resources to be dedicated to the most critical areas. Remember, this is done automatically as background task – busy operators are not burdened with these housekeeping tasks.

AST’s remarkable flexibility allows for configuration according to resources available and the precise workflows implemented. This enables the dynamic prioritisation of disk repositories, drivers and media transfers according to the urgency and importance of each workflow, media type and the specific user rights of the operators involved.