Laboratoires Eclair implements a shared SAN

French film digitalisation specialist Laboratoires Eclair has implemented a storage area network (SAN) that enables file sharing with very large data volumes.

Laboratoires Eclair has been at the vanguard of all technological innovations in the movie industry for nearly a century.

In recent years, the rapid spread of digitalisation has prompted the Epinay-sur-Seine based company to accelerate its migration to digital technologies so as to be able to provide customers on an ongoing basis with services that are optimally suitable for film production.

Therefore special effects, postproduction, retouching and digital calibration are now laboratoires Eclair specialisations.

In 2000 demand for film digitalisation exploded, laboratoires Eclair was confronted with a difficult technical challenge.

Although demand for digital processing - often of varying types - was on the rise, each application required a specific workstation.

Moreover, as each data set had to be processed in turn, output was either reduced or file duplication necessary which posed major organisational and version management problems, as well as difficulties in terms of volume and network load.

The ideal solution would have been to divide the files so that a number of tasks could be undertaken concurrently, but most SAN solutions at the time did not support this procedure.

Another challenge was that the NAS server the company initially deployed soon proved to have inadequate file volume handling capabilities.

Back in 2000, one digitalised film image was over 12 MB and had a lower quality resolution than that used today.

"The NAS solution didn't give us the speed and stability we needed," recalls Philippe Mouton, technical manager of laboratoires Eclair's digitalisation department.

laboratoires Eclair presented its problem to Unix workstation provider SGI, which had just perfected its breakthrough CXFS software that enables file sharing in a SAN.

This in turn allows for collaboration using large data volumes, which is exactly what laboratoires Eclair needed, although it proceeded with caution in view of the mission critical nature of the activity involved.

Consequently in late 2000, laboratoires Eclair deployed an initial version of a Fibre Channel SAN in which all special effects machines were connected to a 1 Gb/s Brocade switch, which in turn was connected to a bay of 1 TB Cipricio discs.

The CXFS software regulated the file sharing amongst the various users.

The ultimate goal of this first attempt at shared SAN architecture was to validate the solution itself and stabilise its infrastructure parameters, which was a 'delicate task', according to Mr Mouton.

Following two years of use for shared archiving of special effects, the SAN replaced the digital calibration NAS, which required a massive amount of data transfer capacity and volume.

This resulted in an immediate storage capacity increase to 10 TBs using a TP9500 bay.

laboratoires Eclair's operational requirements were quickly overwhelming its infrastructure capacities, since the increase in the number of films calibrated digitally resulted in greater storage requirements.

Another consideration was laboratoires Eclair's decision to start using applications that mainly run on Microsoft and Linux platforms, as the company had only been using Unix workstations up to that point.

Hence the film specialist had to modify SAN to handle even greater volumes within a heterogeneous environment.

These new workstations were integrated into the SAN in 2003 by an additional Brocade 2 Gb/s switch, and a new version of CXFS that could handle these new systems' hits was implemented.

The capacity of the LSI Logic storage bay was ramped up to 40 TBs (20 Fibre Channel TBs for rapid file sharing and 20 in SATA for storage and archiving).

At that time the network data transfer speed ranged from 30 to 40 Mb (approximately two to three digital images) per second.

A 300 TB archiving controller was integrated into the infrastructure in 2005 so that both historical work can be archived, and ongoing work can be saved at regular intervals.

"Despite the robust nature of the infrastructure, a digital disaster can strike at any moment".

"The archiving controller enables us to back up our data incrementally at the end of each day and do a complete backup every three months," comments Mr Mouton.

Today, SAN is the true cornerstone of laboratoires Eclair's digital processing activities.

The fact that the solution enables a series of operators to work on the same film concurrently and in turn as teams has doubled and even tripled laboratoires Eclair's productivity - which is a key competitive advantage in an industry where meeting deadlines is mission critical.

In addition, thanks to the co-ordinated relationship between SGI, LSI and laboratoires Eclair's teams, the transfer of expertise was seamless, which enabled the technical department to run its production processes without outside assistance.

However, the organisation's storage and archiving needs continue to grow and the SAN infrastructure, whose architecture is by now well established, will have to change constantly as digital film technologies continue their rapid mutation.

Having started out with a mere 1 TB, laboratoires Eclair's SAN is now 40 TB strong, and this is undoubtedly only a step along the way.

"The quality of the images we process is improving constantly".

"The high definition (HD) and 4K formats (4000 x 4000 pixels) are becoming increasingly common and will undoubtedly be one of our mainstays in the very near future".

"Thus it's essential that the solution is upgradable," comments Mr Mouton.

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