Media and entertainment (M&E) organizations are facing the challenge of managing a colossal amount of content. There is a constant need to ensure efficient and cost-effective storage from video creation, production, delivery, and archive. Storage is at the heart of every stage, and it helps transform the way video content is used and viewed.
DataCore Swarm is a massively scalable object storage platform that solves the challenges associated with storing and protecting rapidly growing digital assets while keeping them online and accessible. Swarm optimizes storage and access at every stage of the digital asset lifecycle – from production to delivery to long-term preservation. M&E organizations including studios, production houses, broadcasters, and service providers can now store what they need, ensure media integrity, and keep assets online and accessible for reuse and monetization.
Why Media & Entertainment Organizations Use DataCore Swarm:
- Keep media content online, searchable, and accessible
- Stream videos directly from the archive
- Reduce costs and optimize shared digital asset storage
- Gain on-demand access and enterprise protection to archives
- More accessible and easier to manage than tape
- More cost-effective than cloud storage for large media libraries and archives
Offered as software-only or as an all-in-one appliance, Swarm includes built-in streaming, content management, partial file restore, search, multi-site deployment, and native data protection.
Active Archive and Multi-Site Collaboration
Your digital assets need to remain available for re-monetization, reuse, and continued collaboration. Swarm ensures that files written via S3 and HTTP(S) are all accessible, editable, and immediately retrievable. Synchronous replication over LAN and asynchronous replication over WAN provide the ability to automate movement of content to different Swarm clusters. You can also set up a feed to any S3-enabled service (S3 Glacier, Wasabi etc.) for an instant, management-free disaster recovery (DR) site.
The Swarm object storage based active archive provides a lower-cost tier of storage enabling you to offload footage and videos that are not currently in production, freeing up expensive Tier 1 storage (SAN or NAS). There are many content management options available in Swarm, enabling content to be instantly accessible and highly available with minimal manual administration.
Swarm supports video streaming and video on demand (VOD) workflows
Origin Storage and OTT Enablement
Natively accessible via HTTP, Swarm is ideal for content delivery origin storage, long-tail delivery and enabling over-the-top (OTT) services. Swarm delivers massive throughput with an industry-leading 95% capacity utilization and 100% chassis drive bay utilization. Parallel uploading of large files and range reads ensure you can store assets quickly, and viewers can view any frame in a video quickly.
Simplified Video Clipping and Streaming
Large video and project files are often stored on tape storage that must be manually restored or striped over many tapes, delaying the time-to-last-byte (TTLB) of requested data. The Partial File Restore (PFR) feature in Swarm helps you clip a large video file for rapid turnaround of a specific portion of a video (or video highlight) directly from the archive layer for editing, review, or streaming. Broad CODEC support is available through the API for integration into Asset Management solutions with MP4-based clipping available directly from the Swarm Content Management interface. M&E organizations can effectively reduce TTLB when restoring, sharing, or streaming archived video.
Partial File Restore for clipping, sharing, and streaming videos from the archive
Optimized Production Shared Storage
At the heart of most editing workflows are shared Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices that, while necessary from a performance perspective, are difficult and expensive to scale, manage, and protect. Swarm, in conjunction with the optional DataCore FileFly, optimizes existing workflows and applications in your shared storage by integrating with your Windows Storage Server, NetApp filer, Dell EMC Isilon, or third-party shared storage, moving data to Swarm object storage. The result: massive scalability and secure accessibility. No need to rip and replace, or modify applications, processes, or user behavior. Extend your NAS device’s value while optimizing capacity and utilization.
Backend Digital Asset Management
Through native integrations and S3 API support, Swarm can be used as the storage target for a number of Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Media Asset Management (MAM) solutions, bringing simple boot-from-bare-metal installation and continuous protection to your asset management infrastructure. Use integrated feeds (content distribution) to replicate to a remote site for DR or built-in compliance features like data immutability with object locking, WORM support, Legal Hold, and Integrity Seals to meet even the most stringent protection policies. Your digital assets are continuously protected and instantly accessible.
Enhance and Streamline Digital Media Workflows
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“Scalability is one of the slickest things about Swarm. One sweet thing with the platform is when you drop a new node in, it builds itself from the ground up. If you want to add a 72 TB or PB node you just drop it in.”
John Gillam – British Telecommunications
CTO for Cloud Services