Challenges with SMB file storage in media and broadcast
In today’s globalized media and content production houses, production files are shared over multiple geographic locations, with multiple users needing access to the same files, and multiple clients (PC workstations and Macs). High quality 8K+ resolution productions require hefty storage space – not to mention editing, rendering, and streaming these massive files over a shared network requires high-performance, low-latency software.
The SMB protocol is a critical technology used to facilitate file sharing and file applications over the distributed shared networks used in modern production houses and content streaming. Both free and proprietary Linux-based SMB solutions are available for use for media and content storage, but many are not able to meet the rigorous performance, availability, and massive scalability demands to satisfy your production or streaming needs. As a matter of fact, if your SMB server solution lacks advanced RMDA support, it’s not even possible to write files in 8K+ resolutions to a shared network.
Fusion File Share by Tuxera SMB for media & broadcast applications
Make sure your content and files are accessible from any location – despite the resolution of the content – without disruption and slowdowns. Fusion File Share by Tuxera, our SMB server solution, reduces the bottlenecks and limits imposed by an under-performing SMB solution. It ensures consistently high performance and boosts I/O throughput for rapid file transfers, access, editing, and streaming. Our SMB server features a modular and threaded design, SMB over RDMA, and advanced SMB compression support to ensure the highest performance.
Using Frametest, a tool for benchmarking file systems by emulating access to 4K or 2K video streams for editing, our tests showed that as more threads are added, Fusion File Share continues to outperform other SMB alternatives.
M&E workload performance comparison
Fusion File Share is easy to integrate into any storage or file application architecture and is dynamically configured. Tuxera’s team of storage development experts support you all the way from evaluation to implementation, going above and beyond to ensure your solution performs flawlessly.
Technical features relevant to media file access
- RDMA over SMB-Direct
- Multichannel support
- Scale-out awareness
- Threaded data processing
- Encryption
- Low CPU use and network overhead