New Harmonic MediaGrid 4000 Shared Storage Solution

"With the increased performance and density of the Harmonic MediaGrid 4000, a facility can truly deploy one storage platform to support the entire production workflow," said Bart Spriester, senior vice president, video products at Harmonic. "Specifically built to support media applications, reduce the costs of storage management and optimize video production workflows, the MediaGrid 4000 can handle everything from compressed workflows to online digital libraries and uncompressed video. Flexible scaling of both bandwidth and capacity enables users to immediately take advantage of their storage investment, and to build on it as their workflow demands evolve."

There are two members of the new MediaGrid product family. Offering twice the performance of MediaGrid 3000 system components, a 50-percent increase in storage capacity and double the number of 10-Gb Ethernet ports, the MediaGrid ContentServer 4000 elevates the capabilities and throughput of base MediaGrid systems to their highest level yet. Storage capacity can be expanded incrementally by 48, 96 or 144 TB by adding MediaGrid ContentStore 4240 nodes outfitted with 24 hot-swappable 2-TB, 4-TB or 6-TB SAS drives. ContentStore 5840 nodes can also be added to MediaGrid 4000 systems for the highest storage density in the industry — up to 504 TB in 5 RU.

The capacity and throughput of Harmonic MediaGrid 4000 makes it possible to consolidate "islands" of storage and run all workflow steps off a single system. Boasting a low rate of IT utilization, this model not only reduces operational costs, but also increases workflow productivity by reducing media copy and transfer times. Backwards compatibility allows current MediaGrid 3000 users to add MediaGrid 4240 storage nodes to their existing systems, making it easy to expand their storage deployment without disrupting ongoing business operations.

"As an increasing number of media facilities transition to 4K, video codecs become more demanding of storage systems and make capacity requirements more daunting," added Spriester. "The Harmonic MediaGrid 4000 offers an ideal solution to these challenges, leveraging SAN performance and NAS simplicity to facilitate the optimal balance of bandwidth and capacity."

About Harmonic
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) is the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure for emerging television and video services. Harmonic enables customers to produce, deliver and monetize amazing video experiences, with unequalled business agility and operational efficiency, by providing market-leading innovation, high-quality service and compelling total cost of ownership.