Stone Shared

Autodesk® Stone® Shared is a new high-value, high-bandwidth, real-time storage area network solution ideal for multi-user collaboration on uncompressed film, HD, and SD projects with 2-5 seats. Designed to provide the necessary bandwidth to support the most demanding HDTV and digital intermediate workflows, Stone Shared is easy to configure and fully scaleable.

Overview

Autodesk® Stone® Shared is a new high-value, high-bandwidth, real-time storage area network solution ideal for multi-user collaboration on uncompressed film, HD, and SD projects with 2-5 seats. Designed to provide the necessary bandwidth to support the most demanding HDTV and digital intermediate workflows, Stone Shared is easy to configure and fully scaleable.

Stone Shared increases system performance and productivity; reduces file duplication; and utilises an open, non-application-specific, shared file system: SGI's CXFS. CXFS supports many operating systems including Windows® and IRIX®, and Linux®.

Stone Shared is an extremely open solution that doesn't require network mounts, complex configurations, or the intensive IT support often associated with traditional SANs.

Stone Shared is available in the following standard configurations:

Stone Shared 4-port (800 MB/s theoretical)

Storage Capacity: 5, 10, 21, or 42 TB*
Number of clients: 2-5 real time clients (additional ports available for scaling)

Stone Shared 8-port (1600MB/s theoretical)

Storage Capacity: 5, 10, 21 or 42 TB*
Number of clients: 2-5 real time clients (additional ports available for scaling)

Stone Shared Custom configurations; Autodesk Professional Services required

The SAN is not constrained by technical limitations, but by facility workflow and performance requirements. Each SAN will be sold with performance metrics to ensure client satisfaction.

* Can be scaled higher in custom configurations – requires Autodesk Consulting Services

Features

Download the Autodesk® Stone® Shared technical specification.

Autodesk Stone Shared Technical Specification (pdf - 295 Kb)

Main Components
SSH8500 appliance based on DataDirect™ Networks Silicon Storage Appliance (S2A) technology
SGI® Origin 350 metadata and file server*
InfiniteStorage shared filesystem CXFS
Fibre-Channel storage units (JBOD drives and enclosures)
Adapters, Fibre-Channel switches and cabling

Silicon Storage Appliance Features
Stone Shared utilizes SSH8500 appliances that provide consolidated and fully integrated SAN functionality in a single, powerful, easy-to-manage and intelligent device. The SSH offers a fully pipelined, parallel processing architecture designed to deliver a highly reliable SAN storage solution that is both easy to install and manage and easy to scale in capacity and performance. Its zero-bottleneck architecture removes the complexity, congestion, latency, and contention of switched fabric SANs.
Single or dual 2U SSH with four or eight 2Gb/s ports
20 back-end Fibre-Channel loops
Up to 148 disk drives supported in standard configurations*
5, 10, 21, or 42 TB Fibre-Channel disks capacity in standard configurations*
Sustained Performance with random access up to 1.0 GB/sec per couplet*
Full Fibre-Channel Duplex Performance on every port
No performance penalties in degraded mode operation; very fast rebuild rate
1 GB/sec+ individual LUNs without host-based striping

CXFS Features
Stone Shared features SGI’s InfiniteStorage CXFS shared file-system. CXFS is a powerful cross-platform file-system capable of delivering superior performance while scaling massively to meet the most demanding needs of digital media production. Key characteristics of the CXFS shared file-system include:
High performance: capable of sustaining extremely high data rates (read/write)
Mediation and management of concurrent shared file access
High workload: multiple processes on multiple hosts directly reading/writing the same file
Guaranteed Rate I/O (GRIO): guarantees required bandwidths to the user/application**

Other Features
Integrated software features with no need for external software. Key features include:
LUN mapping and masking by WWN
Port zoning
Real-time data verification
Background data dcrubbing
LUN in cache
Placeholder LUNs
Intelligent stream detection
Read-only LUNs
Advanced AV modes

Optional Software Features
In addition to the standard features, the following features are available as an option:
Java®-based GUI
System management console with SNMP trap display utility
Logging
Remote administration utility
Telephone fault notification utility

Standard Communication
Ethernet Telnet, Ethernet SNMP, RS-232 Serial, SES in-band, Management API

*Custom configurations are fully scaleable. Contact Autodesk Media and Entertainment for a solution tailored to your needs.
**not currently certified for Stone Shared