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My mom died when my sister and I were teenagers ['The Finishing Touch']. She'd planned to knit us each an afghan. Mine was completed, but she was only halfway through [...]

A few years back, a host of hungry and outspoken start-ups defined the emerging market for the newest data-protection panacea: continuous data protection (CDP). Today, in the wake of a […]

Digital content creation studios have unique requirements when it comes to their storage infrastructures. Most shops, whether large or small, require the utmost in performance, capacity, and content sharing and […]

Eight years ago, most IT organizations' ideas of affordable remote disaster recovery (DR) would have consisted of tape backups stored off-site and the potential use of a third-party collocation facility […]

Impending hurricanes and wild fires are examples of external events that can drive organizations to move quickly to correct weaknesses in their backup-and-recovery methods. Looming deadlines--in the areas of compliance […]

Studios are turning to new storage technologies, products, and configurations to meet stringent quality, budget, and deadline requirements. Among those technologies are shared file systems, high-speed (4Gbps) SANs and RAID […]

When disk-to-disk (D2D) backup first became part of the storage industry lexicon, a portion of intrepid users volunteered to put the first wave of disk-based backup products through its paces. […]

The core premise behind continuous data protection (CDP) is relatively simple: Users run a CDP solution non-disruptively in the background and move onto other IT tasks, all while the solution […]

Change is a constant in today's studios as they struggle with crunching deadlines, the need to juggle multiple projects at once, and the prospect of overhauling their server, storage, and […]

Consolidation. Low-cost replication. Easier management. Familiarity with TCP/IP-Ethernet. The advantages of IP SANs based on the iSCSI protocol are by now a familiar litany to most storage administrators and managers. […]

In an earlier report on the progress of information life-cycle management (ILM) initiatives in IT organizations, a few users and analysts were quick to note one obstacle to more widespread […]

For many digital entertainment studios, storage-centric IT networks are the invisible backbone of the creative pipeline. A vital work flow component that can help or hinder the efforts of artists […]

As postproduction houses and visual effects studios continue their quest to build digital production pipelines, more attention than ever before is being focused on the data storage components at the […]

Protecting personal and private customer or employee data has become something of a national crusade these days. Unfortunately, so has the need to publicly expose any company that fails to […]

When we profiled data-classification practices one year ago, we found many storage professionals using data-classification products to discover what the heck was taking up so much space on their G: […]

IT managers presently view compliance as just one piece of the storage puzzle they face, which includes mounting storage costs, double-digit annual data growth, a quest for more-efficient operations management, […]

Storage professionals are fairly comfortable in the world of backups, remote replication, off-site disaster recovery, and disk-based restore. However, comfort levels tend to drop as talk turns to the company's […]

In today's digital studios, storage-centric IT networks have become critical components that can either help or hinder the efforts of artists and creators to produce finished work for high-profile film, […]

Most IT organizations impacted by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) have had more than nine months to work out the kinks in their efforts to comply with SOX Section 404, which […]

Love it or hate it, the term "information life-cycle management" (ILM) is here to stay. Results from a recent survey of Fortune 1000 storage professionals conducted by TheInfoPro research firm […]

When it comes to investigating the benefits of a SAN for their environments, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have many needs similar to those of larger enterprises, including a desire […]

Storage consolidation projects often begin as a means to reduce the storage management burden and gain more-efficient control of data growth and data protection. This was the case with Atlanta-based […]

By now, most enterprise IT groups have undergone some form of server and storage consolidation aimed at correcting problems with backups, provisioning storage, or reducing storage management burdens. Richard Villers, […]

Disk-to-disk (D2D) or disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) backup architectures are rapidly gaining acceptance by IT organizations constrained by their reliance on tape-based backup and restore. To better understand real-world D2D issues, InfoStor […]

The debate about networked storage architectures at the enterprise level no longer centers on the SAN versus NAS controversy. As organizations have begun to reap the benefits of consolidated storage, […]

In Hollywood, pushing the envelope of what's been done before can bring high praise from critics and industry peers. According to EFILM LLC, a leading digital intermediate film company and […]

In Hollywood, pushing the envelope beyond what's been done before can bring high praise from critics and industry peers. According to EFilm, a leading digital intermediate film company and subsidiary […]

Given the amount of vendor hype surrounding compliance, you would think IT managers spend (or should spend) most of their time sorting out how best to comply with the latest […]

ASK ANY Microsoft Exchange administrator to describe his worst nightmare, and you'll likely get the same answer: having to take down the system unexpectedly, then getting peppered with questions from […]

Babysitting arduous backup-and-restore operations is nobody's idea of fun. One IT professional who knows about the effort required to monitor traditional backups is Bob Graham, senior vice president of information […]

Companies heavily regulated by compliance legislation, such as SEC 17a-4 or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, have an obvious interest in the addition of write-once, read-many (WORM) support by most 'super tape' […]

InfoStor recently took a look at how four small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are tackling their data-protection challenges. We found a lot of the same data-protection drivers influencing both SMBs […]

Going from garage-style start-up to producing TV documentaries for stations like Fine Living and The Discovery Channel can involve a few growing pains along the way. In the case of […]

When it comes to managing the many terabytes of visual effects content produced by Stargate Digital for TV productions such as Spartacus and ER, the studio's director of IT Joseph […]

Going from garage-style start-up to producer of TV documentaries for stations such as The Discovery Channel and Fine Living can cause a few growing pains along the way. This was […]

The Orphanage, a San Francisco-based special-effects studio, is no stranger to explosions. In fact, the company's nearly 200 artists--whose credits include the creation of 2D and 3D special effects for […]

The Orphanage, a San Francisco-based special effects studio, is no stranger to explosions. In fact, the company's nearly 200 artists--whose credits include the creation of 2D and 3D special effects […]

Faced with shrinking backup windows, time-intensive, or outdated tape architectures, and increasingly stringent service level agreements (SLAs) that require rapid restores, many IT storage professionals are evaluating disk-based architectures to […]

After having spent recent years bringing their organizations through large IT initiatives such as Y2K and company-wide ERP implementations, IT managers now find themselves navigating the murky and often uncharted […]

Fans of popular TV shows like E.R. or Crossing Jordan or mini-series like Spartacus might be surprised to learn how the episodes look when they first arrive at Pasadena, CA-based […]

Focuses on the emergence of data classification and policy-based management software in the field of information life-cycle management. Names being given by storage industry analysts to the classification and policy-based management market; Key differences among most of the offerings; Impact of the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act on data classification.

Offers a look at the state of storage area networks technology in fast-paced digital content creation studios. Storage systems infrastructure utilized at PostWorks, a film and high definition post facility in New York; Advantages of using a combination of custom virtualization software in digital content creation; Information on the Max-T Sledgehammer disk array from Maximum Throughput.

The article discusses the quest of EFilm, a digital intermediate film company, which enlists storage area networks and low-cost disk storage, to redefine the state of the art of digital mastering. According to EFilm, a leading digital intermediate film company and subsidiary owned by Panavision Inc. and Deluxe Laboratories, has created the first 100 percent digitally mastered feature-length film in 2001 Paramount Pictures Corp.'s film "When We Were Soldiers," directed by Mel Gibson. The film, mastered in standard definition, or 2K-resolution format, soon brought other filmmakers to EFilm's door for the same digital intermediate treatment. According to Bob Eicholz, vice president of corporate development, EFilm now routinely handles between 10 and 20 film projects at any given time. In large part because of the reduced cost of disk storage, EFilm was also able to achieve another digital mastering breakthrough with its recent work on the film "Spider-Man 2," for which it produced the world's first 4K-format, high-definition, digitally mastered feature film.