QuickSpec

SeaChange Blue Whale File System (BWFS)

The SeaChange Blue Whale File System (BWFS) is a media-centric distributed file system developed and customized for media applications. Through virtualization, it simplifies the management of storage resources, offering tremendous performance, scalability, and concurrent high-speed file access to heterogeneous clients, all across a single global namespace. SeaChange BWFS enables organizations to efficiently create, manage, and deliver content throughout their digital workflows, addressing the different storage challenges in todays media-rich era.
N A S C l i e nt s (NFS,CIFS,FTP)

Single global n a m e s p a ce

FILES

FILES

FILES

FILES

( Fi b re C h aChannel, C S I , I n n i b a n d, N A S ) (Fibre n n e l, i S iSCSI, Infiniband,NAS)

S SeaChangeeBWFS eaChang GFS

M e t a d at a S e r ve r s ( H A c l u s te r )

Ag gre g ate b l o c k s to ra g e ove r S A N (FC,iSCSI,In niBand)

M u l t i p l e vo l u m e gro u p s w i t h i n d i v i d u a l a l l o c at i o n a n d p l a ce m e nt options

SeaChange BWFS consolidates different storage systems into a single storage pool where all connected clients share a single global namespace. It supports a massive capacity of up to 144PB, billions of files, and hundreds of clients, all in a single file system. Multiple volume groups can be defined with individual data allocation and placement parameters, allowing ultimate flexibility in supporting different requirements of connected applications. Storage reconfiguration is also transparent to clients, requiring no client configuration changes or downtime. SeaChange BWFS features a high-performance, low-latency architecture that provides direct block-level access simultaneously to BWFS clients. Employing an out-of-band data transfer architecture, data is directly transmitted between connected clients and physical storage over Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or Infiniband, allowing maximum performance and overcoming the long latencies and overhead of traditional file systems.

Key Features
High real time performance
SeaChange BWFS employs configurable write behind and read ahead buffers to provide high real time performance.

Media centric file layout

With a media-centric file layout, SeaChange BWFS allows space efficiency for small files and high streaming performance for large media files.

File change notification

Unlike other file systems, SeaChange BWFS features file change notification that allows media applications to maintain up-to-date content inventory without re-scanning massive number of files.

Video. Personal. Everywhere.

SeaChange Blue Whale File System

Client-based bandwidth control
SeaChange provides secure bandwidth control that is more aligned with how customers want to manage storage access in a multi-user environment vs volume-based bandwidth control offered by other vendors. Bandwidth caps can be set on each client through a GUI utility in order to ensure QoS to high-priority real-time applications and limit bandwidth usage of non-priority users.

Highly tunable
SeaChange BWFS provides many tunable parameters and configuration knobs to enable tuning and customizing for media applications and underlying storage systems. This ensures that performance is optimized according to application behavior and requirements.

Dynamic non-disruptive scaling

Storage expansion is nearly instant, allowing a storage grid to scale either vertically or horizontally in less than 10 seconds. Storage expansion also happens online, without disruption to client access, and without impact to client performance.

Access control
SeaChange BWFS is fully integrated with LDAP and Active Directory for IT-friendly multi-user access administration.

Key Benefits
Scalability Resource Management

content can be stored and future proofing the system even for rapid expansions Non-disruptive scaling means better productivity (no need to stop or delay production or playout when adding more storage)
Performance

Massive scalability (up to 144PB) means more

Optimized capacity utilization (i.e. free space across

the entire file system is consolidated and made easily available, no underutilized storage systems) More efficient workflows by reducing file transfers between parts of the workflow or applications with different operating systems

Cost

Support more simultaneous sd or hd streams for

Better ROI and reduced acquisition costs through

efficient capacity utilization Lower operating costs through simplified management Hardware independence means more vendor choices and flexibility in cost Pay as you grow

playout or editing sessions Simultaneously support different applications (i.e. playout, editing, etc) through efficient bandwidth management Better QoS through client bandwidth control and file system tunability

SeaChange Blue Whale File System

SeaChange BWFS Specifications

Maximum capacity Maximum number of file systems Maximum file size Maximum number of files Maximum number of LUNs Maximum LUN size SAN technology support NAS protocol support Client OS Support 144PB per file system 16 per MDS 32TB Billions of files depending on file size 4096 Variable limited only by maximum drive logical block addressing Fibre Channel, iSCSI, Infiniband CIFS, NFS, FTP, HTTP Microsoft Windows XP/2003/2008/Vista/7 (32-bit & 64-bit) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x/5.x (32-bit & 64-bit) CentOS Linux 4.x/5.x (32-bit & 64-bit) Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.x/5.x (32-bit & 64-bit) SuSE (32-bit & 64-bit) Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard (32-bit) Mac OS X 10.6.x Snow Leopard (32-bit & 64-bit) Active/Standby Metadata Servers Metadata journaling Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x/5.x (32-bit & 64-bit) CentOS Linux 4.x/5.x (32-bit & 64-bit) Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.x/5.x (32-bit & 64-bit) Memory: 2GB RAM minimum (8GB recommended) CPU: Dual-core AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon EM64T or higher System disk: 80GB minimum disk space Network Interface Card: Gigabit Ethernet network cards that are supported by Linux FC HBAs: QLogic 23xx, 24xx, 256x

HA features

MDS OS requirements

MDS hardware recommendations

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SeaChange International, Inc. 50 Nagog Park, Acton, MA 01720 USA T 1.978.897.0100 F 1.978.897.0132 www.schange.com
03.28_2012
2012 SeaChange International, Inc. SeaChange is a registered trademark of SeaChange International, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. While every effort is made to ensure the information given is accurate, SeaChange does not accept liability for any errors or mistakes which may arise. All features, specifications, system requirements and/or compatibility with third party products described herein are subject to change at any time without notice.