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NEXIO® Intrinsic Mirroring™

SAN Protection System

NEXIO® Intrinsic Mirroring™ is the latest advance in storage protection for NEXIO storage area network (SAN) systems. It builds on the powerful RAIDsoft™ software RAID controller to mirror all content onto two identical SANs simultaneously during the ingest process, creating a more redundant and resilient storage system.

Intrinsic Mirroring is not just a simple mirroring technology. Each SAN maintains its own RAID protection — either ECC parity, which supports two drive failures anywhere in a volume; or RAID 3, which supports a single-drive failure per volume — in addition to mirroring content. All ingesting content is supported, including baseband video, files imported via FTP and NLE-rendered material. The mirror process is managed entirely by the domain itself, making it transparent to auto-mation systems.

In NEXIO systems protected by Intrinsic Mirroring, I/O nodes are connected via Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet to each of the two mirrored SANs. These connections are entirely independent of each other, allowing data to still flow through one pathway if there is an interruption on the other. As a result, the software-based Intrinsic Mirroring technology allows customers to build highly resilient storage systems without the need to manually replicate their I/O — or wait for background file transfers or content replication to take place to keep two SANs in sync. As with standard RAIDsoft-protected, single-SAN systems, rebuilds take place as a background task and do not cause the system to run in a degraded or partially operational state. Rebuild times are minimized, as only this missing data needs to be rebuilt.

NEXIO SANs running Intrinsic Mirroring take low-level control of 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel ports in each node, and manage them so that problems or interruptions in data communications do not cause on-air disruptions. There is no local caching or background transfer operation that takes place. A system can lose an entire volume — or even a whole SAN — plus up to two drives per volume on the available SAN without any disruption. Best of all, because RAIDsoft maintains RAID protection on each SAN as well as mirroring, a SAN failure does not leave the system vulnerable to additional drive failures — adding peace of mind for users.

No additional hardware is required to build a system protected by Intrinsic Mirroring — only additional storage and Intrinsic Mirroring software licenses.

Features

  • Simultaneously mirrors content during ingest to two identical SANs
  • Supports baseband, file-based and edited content
  • Enhances system performance and content protection
  • Provides on-the-fly content management issue resolution during and after failures
  • Does not impact I/O port count
  • Does not affect standard system bandwidth
  • Requires no additional automation device control
  • Requires no additional system bandwidth

Product Details

graphic2.jpgHow Intrinsic Mirroring Works
Intrinsic Mirroring adds mirrored writes as an extra level of protection to RAIDsoft ECC or RAID 3 parity. NEXIO nodes employing Intrinsic Mirroring maintain two independent frame allocation tables (FATs) in their system RAM — one unique instance for each SAN. In addition, the FAT for each SAN is striped across all storage drives on the SAN, further contributing to system resiliency.

Writing Mirror Data
All data that enters the server passes through the NEXIO Low Level Module (LLM), whether it is baseband video, edited content or a file. The LLM writes the data simultaneously to each SAN at the block level, which guarantees a mirror of the data at all times. During ingest, the I/O node also updates the FAT on each SAN, and in RAM on each NEXIO node in the system. If a write error occurs, the FAT for the affected SAN is marked and ingest continues on the operational SAN without interruption.

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Reading Data
Data is read first from alternating SANs based on the server node number (odd numbered nodes from data member SAN; even numbered nodes from the parity member SAN) through the LLM for baseband, editing or file output. The LLM validates the data integrity during the read process, applying mirroring parity checks as needed.

If the initial read fails for any reason, the data is then read from the other SAN through the LLM. There is no disturbance to playout. If both SANs contain good data, the load is balanced between the two SANs. Unrecorded or faulty sectors are noted and will not be used in subsequent read operations until the error is corrected as part of a rebuild cycle.

Recovering From Failures
If a connection, one or more drives, or an entire SAN fails, no disruption occurs on air. Once the failure is resolved, drive rebuilds can begin, as needed. Since rebuilds take place as a background task, I/O operations can continue uninterrupted and with no impact to system performance.

Probe commands are sent periodically to determine when Intrinsic Mirroring is working again, and normal mirroring operations resume automatically. No manual process is needed to select the correct data copy because the most recent copy is always the one available. Each data cluster on disk is time-stamped. If a drive, volume or entire SAN is offline for a period of time and later becomes available, the system knows to use the data clusters with the most up-to-date time stamp and then correct content, if necessary.

Nexio Servers Supported

Ordering Information

NXA1000IMNEXIO Intrinsic Mirroring software license for 1
Fibre Channel-connected data or video I/O node

NOTE: Intrinsic Mirroring requires 2 SANs with the same storage hardware
Sales Contacts
  • North America +1 800 231 9673
  • Caribbean and Latin America +1 786 437 1960
  • Europe and Africa +44 118 964 8200
  • Middle East and South Asia  +971 4 433 8250
  • Asia, Pacific Rim +852 2776 0628