Quantum’s New F-Series NVMe Storage Platform is Built for Cutting Edge Media Workflows

Quantum has announced the F-Series, their new line of NVMe storage arrays designed for performance, availability and reliability.

This is the most powerful storage array Quantum’s ever released and will be a featured product at NAB.

Here’s more from Quantum’s April 4, 2019 press release:

Using non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash drives for ultra-fast reads and writes, it supports massive parallel processing and is designed for studio editing, rendering, and other performance-intensive workloads utilizing large unstructured datasets. Incorporating the latest Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networking technology, the F-Series provides direct access between workstations and the NVMe storage devices, delivering predictable, fast network performance. By combining these hardware features with the new Quantum Cloud Storage Platform and the StorNext® file system the F-Series delivers powerful end-to-end storage capabilities for post-production houses, broadcasters, and other rich media environments.

Quantum F2000 Hardware Architecture

The first product in the F-Series is the Quantum F2000, a highly available and performant storage server, purpose built for NVMe. The F2000 is a 2U, dual node server with two hot-swappable compute canisters and up to 24 dual-ported NVMe drives.  Each compute canister can access all 24 NVMe drives, and includes processing power, memory, and connectivity specifically designed for the highest performance and availability.

New Software-defined Architecture

The F-Series is based on the Quantum Cloud Storage Platform, a software defined block storage stack tuned specifically for video and video-like data.  It offers a future proof and reliable platform, eliminating data services unrelated to video while enhancing critical capabilities such as enhanced data protection, flexible networking and block interfaces.  The result is an efficient architecture that maximizes streaming performance.

Tightly Integrated with StorNext

Quantum’s Cloud Storage Platform is tightly integrated with StorNext, further boosting its end-to-end storage capabilities. StorNext improves collaboration through comprehensive multi-protocol access, protects data through advanced replication and copy functionality, and offers automated tiering of data to capacity-optimized storage.  This allows customers to reduce total cost of ownership and maximize the value of content across its entire life-cycle for cutting edge workflows such as those found in:

  • Post-Production: The F-Series is designed for real-time editing of 4K and 8K content to meet the needs of the most demanding producers, directors, and studio executives.
  • Sports Video: Well-suited to environments with tens to hundreds of cameras generating content, the F-Series is capable of handling multiple concurrent ingest streams and playing out this content in real-time.
  • Rendering and Simulation: The F-Series can be deployed in animation and visual effects studios that require extremely high IOPs and low-latencies between large-scale render farms and the storage subsystem.

Benefits of Quantum F-Series

Quantum F-Series will enable customers to:

  • Ingest, Edit, and Finish Content with Lightning Fast Performance: The F-Series is as much as 5x faster than traditional flash storage / networking, delivering extremely low-latency, and hundreds of thousands of IOPs per chassis.
  • Gain Predictable, Low Latency Access via Fiber Channel or Ethernet: Enables users to reduce infrastructure costs by moving from fiber channel to Ethernet IP-based infrastructures.
  • Meet Performance Requirements with Less Rack Space: Customers who use a large number of HDDs or SSDs to meet their performance requirements can gain back racks of data center space.

Supporting Quotes

Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates: “NVMe-based solid state drive solutions are making their way into modern workflows to support the performance demands of 8K+ high frame rate video production. Quantum’s F-Series provides a valuable contribution to this transition to NVMe solutions. Combined with StorNext and its out-of-band metadata management, the F-Series provides storage tiering, content protection and diverse software defined management capabilities that should be well received by the media and entertainment industry.”

Jason Paquin, Chief Executive Officer, Chesapeake Systems: “With 4K being the new normal, and 8K coming on the horizon, NVMe enables creatives to prepare for the future while keeping infrastructure costs under control. Quantum’s F-Series NVMe appliance could be the silver bullet media production houses have been waiting for to solve the performance problem posed by 4Kand UHD workflows.”

Jamie Lerner, President and CEO, Quantum: “This is the most significant product launch we’ve done in years, not only because our F-Series product line will enable our customers in media to produce more great hi-def content faster over IP networks, but because the F-Series is the first product line based on the Quantum Cloud Storage Platform.  This platform is a stepping stone for us and for our customers, to move to a more software-defined, hyperconverged architecture, and is at the core of additional products we will be introducing later this year.”

Additional Resources

About Quantum

Quantum technology and services help customers capture, create and share digital content – and preserve and protect it for decades.  With solutions built for every stage of the data lifecycle, Quantum’s platforms provide the fastest performance for high-resolution video, images, and industrial IoT.  That’s why the world’s leading entertainment companies, sports franchises, researchers, government agencies, enterprises, and cloud providers are making the world happier, safer, and smarter on Quantum.  See how at www.quantum.com.

Quantum, the Quantum logo, StorNext and F-Series are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Quantum Corporation and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

“Safe Harbor” Statement: This press release contains “forward-looking” statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Specifically, but without limitation, statements relating to Quantum’s F-Series products including the F2000, and Quantum’s customers’ potential purchase of these products, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to Quantum on the date hereof. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Quantum’s actual results to differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking statement, including unexpected changes in the Company’s business, the potential impact to Quantum’s business of Quantum not being current with its SEC periodic filings, and the potential impact to Quantum’s business on the results of its previously announced restatement activities and the financial results ultimately reported by Quantum for the fiscal periods covered by the restatement and for those fiscal periods not yet reported. More detailed information about these risk factors, and additional risk factors, are set forth in Quantum’s periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, those risks and uncertainties listed in the section entitled “Risk Factors,” in Quantum’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 9, 2017, especially those risks listed in this section under the headings “Our results of operations depend on a limited number of products and on new product introductions, which may not be successful, in which case our business, financial condition and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected.” Quantum expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

Public Relations Contact:
Bob Wientzen 
Quantum Corp. 
+1 (720) 201-8125 
bob.wientzen@quantum.com