Deluxe Spain opts for the DVS SAN solution

Deluxe Barcelona installs a SAN with a centralized storage capacity of 140 terabytes, while in Deluxe Madrid the existing SAN has been expanded to a total of 200 terabytes.

The laboratories Deluxe Spain de Madrid and Barcelona have just upgraded their shared storage infrastructures with the DVS SAN solution to streamline and optimize their post-production workflows.

In the case of Deluxe Barcelona, Trigital, exclusive representative of DVS in Spain, has installed a SAN with a centralized storage capacity of 140 terabytes, while at Deluxe Madrid the existing SAN has been expanded to a total of 200 terabytes.

The DVS SAN is the ultimate high-end storage solution for post-production and broadcast workflows. These facilities generate enormous amounts of data per day, with hundreds of terabytes and even petabytes that need to be stored with great speed and security. The DVS SAN effortlessly manages hundreds of connected clients, and can provide data to a wide variety of processing systems within the infrastructure. DVS SAN modular storage is based on next-generation fiber channel controllers with optimized SAS and SATA drives.

Juanjo Carretero, Digital Cinema Manager at Deluxe Spain, has admitted that "we chose the DVS SAN because we had already used it in our laboratory in Madrid with excellent results. It is a solution that offers very good performance. First of all, it is very fast, which allows us to work in 2K simultaneously with several computers at the same time. It is also a very robust machine and very easy to handle when it comes to any type of intervention on disks and sources. But above all it is a very reliable system: it never fails and we have never had a problem with her.”

Deluxe's ​​new SAN infrastructure constitutes the central storage core for the company's various post-production, digital intermediate, editing, graphics and color correction positions. In Barcelona, ​​the DVS SAN offers service via fiber channel to two Autodesk Luster rooms, one Autodesk Flame, a DVS Clipster, an Arri scanner, a DaVinci Resolve color correction system and the new Cinevator imagesetter. As for Madrid, the storage infrastructure provides fiber service to two DVS Clipster rooms, an Autodesk Luster, an Autodesk Smoke, an ARRI video recorder and scanner.

In addition, both Deluxe Madrid and Deluxe Barcelona have a DVS SpycerBox NAS to serve data from the SAN at maximum speed via Ethernet to different composition and graphics equipment. The SpycerBoxes are also in charge of backing up information against the LTO backup library that each delegation has. And the Deluxe SAN is also made up of a back-up library of around 30 terabytes for data dumping.

DVS Spycer

All media management on the SAN and across the network is performed using DVS Spycer media management software, which allows users to quickly explore, search and manage large volumes of data across the network from any connected workstation. It also has tools for encoding, changing formats and resolutions, high-speed copies, stream defragmentation, and support for multiple MXF variants with codecs such as DVCPRO, XDCAM, and Avid DNxHD.

Likewise, DVS Spycer allows you to process, view and convert RAW data from RED, ARRI, Phantom and Silicon Imaging. It can also be used to display 3D LUTs, representing them as a colored cube in the player.

On the other hand, the standalone DVS Mephisto defragmentation application allows the placement of image sequences and clips in optimal locations on the storage system in combination with defrag processing, remote control copy or proxy generation, with these operations being carried out in the background.

"We are delighted with the DVS SAN and all its tools. It has greatly improved our workflow; we have gained speed and reliability, and all operators are now wondering how we could work before without this SAN. The truth is that it has become essential in both our Madrid and Barcelona studios," says Juanjo Carretero.

The main challenge for Trigital has been to integrate the new SAN storage infrastructures while limiting the downtime of the rooms as much as possible. “An installation of this type takes a week, but Deluxe could not stop for that long, so we have done everything possible so that the integration affects the normal development of its work as little as possible,” highlighted Mariano Gismero, technical director of Trigital.