It is no longer a surprise or novelty: the Computer science came to the world of imaging to stay. Every time there are more video producers and television stations than are transforming all the material they work with in scanned files. And computerization brings with it the need for infrastructure, in particular servers and equipment storage.
The decision for the buying a server has a first branch: is it convenient to acquire specific equipment for the world of video or you can buy a standard, branded server recognized, such as HP, Sun or IBM?
While technologically both can meet disk capacity requirements, memory availability and processing speed, the truth is is that specific servers, developed by companies such as Omneon (with his Spectrum), Leitch (with his Nexio) or Thomson Grass Valley (with the Profile family), among others, have a advantage: conceptually assimilate video work and offer functionalities and flexibility typical of this market.
There are particularities such as the need to work in real time to get content to the air, HD workflow support or time code, which are specific to the world of video and are hardly contemplated in standard servers.
In general, the Infrastructure is completed with other products, such as storage equipment or interfaces with editing islands and ingest and output devices. It is common for all server manufacturers offer solutions directly infrastructure assemblies that incorporate all devices necessary to cover the IT needs of the organization.
Data to take into account
What aspects should be evaluated when selecting a new one?
video server? One of the most important is the
scalability. This means the ability of the team to
grow as the company does. If the production company today
processes 100 hours of video monthly, but can grow to
triple within one year, the server must be able to tolerate
that increase without needing to be replaced, but only
with the addition of memory or capacity on disk. This is why it is
valuable that the equipment is modular, that is, that it can be divided
in small independent modules, each of which
it has its functions defined.
Another point is the support for standards and market protocols, as well as the flow capacity of HD work and the ability to migrate between technologies and operating modes (analog to digital, tape to disk, from SD to HD, single-channel to multichannel, etc).
Compatibility is an item that it cannot be set aside. The capacity of the server work and interoperate with devices of other brands. Many sometimes, it is convenient, for example, to acquire the solution of storage from a different manufacturer than the server, because it is more economic, to better adapt to the specific needs of the organization or by having a greater capacity. In that case, there is to verify that the server and storage equipment are communicate with each other seamlessly. Advancing standards and formats make this increasingly simpler, but, anyway, it is still an aspect to be taken into account.
Reliability is capacity of the server to keep running despite the contingencies. This is particularly important, especially in those organizations that have become 100 percent computerized and that your business depends entirely on proper operation of infrastructure. A shutdown server is synonymous with a company that loses money. In general, new equipment has architectures that complete maximum operability, even when any of the components fail.
