Displaying items by tag: GB Labs

GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, has demonstrated comprehensively its technical credentials, and is now recognised as a Ross Video technology partner. The recognition came as part of a project to build a studio for Canvass Credit Union in Denver, Colorado.

“The system architects of the new studio had specified a Ross Video Graphite all-in-one production system which includes switcher, audio, and XPression graphic , and were keen to use our storage platform,” said Dominic Harland, CEO and CTO of GB Labs. “We shipped a FastNAS to Ross Video in Canada where it was tested by writing and reading video streams to it 24/7 for a week, never dropping a single frame That proved to Canvass that the configuration was ideal for their needs, and the certification from Ross Video for our FastNAS and SPACE storage solutions means we can propose our products alongside Ross switchers and XPression with complete confidence.”

"Ross Video is excited to be able to integrate GB Labs storage solutions with XPression", says Garner Millward, Product Manager, Technical for Graphics at Ross Video. "GB Labs provides a powerful storage solution which integrated into XPression with virtually no trouble at all."

GB Labs will be at IBC2022 (RAI Amsterdam, 9 – 12 September) in a dedicated meeting room in the IABM lounge, hall 4, second floor.

Ross Video will be at IBC2022 at Stand 11.B10.

GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions, has provided a powerful new NAS infrastructure, installed at the British Army HQ in Andover by GB Labs distributor AGX Holdings Ltd. (www.agxuk.com). The FastNAS installation supplements an existing GB Labs storage network at the site, extending the capacity, agility and flexibility.

The new storage network is used by the Army photographic team: it runs alongside an existing FastNAS cluster used by the Army design team. The fully redundant GB Labs installation provides highly secure storage for both work in progress and archive, supporting large numbers of concurrent users.

FastNAS is built on three key technologies from GB Labs: the Velocity RAID engine controls and manages the disk array; Nitro the acceleration tool which provides a huge speed boost; and Blueshift, which enables the specialist architecture of FastNAS to sit on a conventional network and deliver to clients over standard protocols. This is vital in this implementation, as it allows the Army teams to connect their preferred design and image processing software to the powerful store and archive.

The GB Labs installation at Andover includes three fully mirrored 64 TB disk arrays, connected over a 10 gigabit ethernet network. The main FN16 production server delivers sustained data rates of 2.5 gigabytes a second with the backup and archive server running at 2.0 gigabytes a second.

“FastNAS is a unique product, which combines dedicated hardware and industry-leading software to manage in detail the process of reading and writing large amounts of data to disk,” said Dominic Harland, CEO/CTO of GB Labs. “This ensures fast, consistent and extremely reliable storage for large data files and large numbers of users. This project has significantly upgraded the agility, as well as the capacity, supporting the vital work of these two critical parts of the British Army, and we are pleased to have been able to work with them to achieve their goals.”

The new storage system for the photographic team was delivered and installed in January 2022.

GB Labs will give visitors to NAB Show 2022 a first look at HyperSpace Generation 3, the latest iteration of its rack-based SSD accelerator. Now delivering double the performance and an exponential increase in flexibility compared to the previous version, HyperSpace gives users access to the fastest data rates on the market when combined with GB Labs SPACE and SPACE+.

Workflows have changed significantly since the last version of HyperSpace was developed, with the increased need for flexible and remote working production creating much larger throughput highs and lows through different periods during the day and week. Creative teams are now more geographically diverse and access data through a variety of ways – on-premise as well as via hybrid or cloud-based platforms. This significantly increases random access resulting in ‘peaky’ demand that other central storage fails to deliver, leading to compromised performance and workflows. With HyperSpace Generation 3, GB Labs delivers more robust, faster and smarter algorithms that meet these shifting real-world needs.

HyperSpace Generation 3 delivers a significant uptick in performance compared to previous versions. The combination of this new technology with GB Labs’ SPACE or SPACE+ gives creative teams exceptional performance of up to 9GB/s for simultaneous read and write tasks.

Now shipping, HyperSpace Generation 3 eliminates the need for customers to install additional racks of storage to support ‘peaky’ usage. Instead, this GB Labs solution delivers storage enhancements without increasing the environmental impact in an additional 1RU. HyperSpace Generation 3 can satisfy the needs of even the busiest facility, regardless of whether creative teams are working on site, or accessing data via hybrid or cloud-based workflows. Together with SPACE, HyperSpace Generation 3 delivers the equivalent performance of numerous spinning disk drives and provides a three to ten times reduction in power consumption. HyperSpace Generation 3 provides the best-in-market for not only performance, but also power consumption, low support costs and incredible flexibility.

Dominic Harland, CEO and CTO, GB Labs commented: “Today’s production and post production workflows are becoming increasingly complex, and facilities must manage users on site, working remotely and via cloud platforms. While our customers’ operations have evolved, what has not changed is the need for zero downtime or compromises to the seamless running of a workflow. This means the demands on storage systems have drastically increased; add in the growing demand for collaborative, remote and home working and the strain on shared storage soon mounts up and places a significant load on available bandwidth. HyperSpace Generation 3 not only supercharges the performance of customers’ existing SPACE products – a game-changer, it also provides a more sustainable solution for a true, agile working environment and a flexible future.”

GB Labs will launch HyperSpace Generation 3 at NAB Show 2022, bringing significant enhancements to performance, functionality and environmental impact. The latest version of FastNAS (Generation 2), along with the new Unify Hub data management system, will make their NAB debut and visitors to the show will also have access to a range of GB Labs’ other intelligent storage technology such as Cloak DR, Mosaic and the latest CORE.4. GB Labs will highlight its ability to support on-premise, cloud-based and hybrid workflows.

The new HyperSpace Generation 3 delivers double the performance of the previous version, giving users access to the fastest data rates on the market when combined with GB Labs SPACE and SPACE+. GB Labs has taken its deep understanding of production workflows to create intelligent software and hardware enhancements to the underlying HyperSpace engine. The addition of new, predictive capability brings greater efficiency to fast-paced and often chaotic environments.

Launched earlier this year and making its debut at NAB is FastNAS Generation 2, which now delivers a 1000% boost in capability, with up to 4GBytes/sec real deliverable network performance. The system is up to ten times as quick for mixed tasks compared to the previous generation, delivering massive efficiencies. Today’s workflows typically require an effective multi-tasking storage with fast simultaneous read and write data rates and FastNAS Generation 2 easily meets these needs.

Visitors to the show will be able to see the new Unify Hub platform in action for the first time since its launch in September 2021. Designed for scenarios that combine on-premise and cloud content, this solution is available as a standalone solution or as a software upgrade to existing GB Labs appliances. Unify Hub empowers remote production while maintaining data integrity and security, managing storage – on site or in the cloud, from GB Labs or from other vendors – to create an ultra-productive environment which is simple and fast.

Dominic Harland, CEO and CTO, GB Labs commented: “At GB Labs we are driven by creating solutions that support the real-world needs of our customers, allowing them to focus on the job of creating amazing content. We are excited to show our latest innovations to customers in person at NAB Show after a long hiatus. We are also delighted to be working in close collaboration with technology partners such as Wasabi and Archiware to give customers even better performance across their creative workflows.”

GB Labs today announces that it has appointed Tom Sheldon to the role of Chief Product Officer (CPO) and David Martin Bautista to Head of Development. Both Sheldon and Martin Bautista have worked their way up through the company, having started out as part of the development team. To meet demand for its intelligent storage solutions, GB Labs has also expanded the number of support staff, and grown its development and production teams, resulting in 20% growth in personnel.

“I am delighted that Tom and David are taking on these new leadership roles within the company and playing an active part in taking GB Labs through the next phase of our growth and evolution,” commented Dominic Harland, CEO and CTO, GB Labs. “I’m extremely proud of the way we have brought both of them up through the ranks and seen them grow in parallel with our company. I know that they will play a key role in bringing our vision for the future to fruition.”

Tom Sheldon has been with GB Labs since November 2010, progressing quickly to head of development, reporting directly to CEO and CTO Dominic Harland. He was responsible for growing the department and driving backend development. As CPO he will be based at GB Labs’ Aldermaston HQ, taking a lead in the company’s product strategy and drive product development. Sheldon will also play an active role in maintaining strong synergy between the development and R&D teams and ensuring the GB Labs product roadmap is commercially solid.

GB Labs Chief Product Officer Tom Sheldon said, “At GB Labs we are passionate about continuously improving functionality and listening to customers to ensure that our products deliver what they need, while keeping the user experience as straightforward as we can. I am delighted to take on this new role and help drive our product roadmap in a direction that remains tightly aligned with our customers’ businesses."

David Martin Bautista joined GB Labs in February 2013 as a developer, taking on responsibility as lead frontend developer as GB Labs grew. As Head of Development, he will be responsible for managing the in-house development team, driving software updates and future innovation – including the UI. Martin Bautista will also act as a link between the development and support teams to ensure seamless communication between the two.

“When I started with GB Labs, the company appealed to me because it offered opportunities for growth and the chance to working with interesting technology. That remains true to this day,” said David Martin Bautista, head of Development at GB Labs. “I have grown with the company, and I believe we are only just getting started; I’m excited to see where we go from here.”

Places GB Labs storage at the heart of its workflow for Goodwood’s 2021 Festival of Speed and Revival, Extreme E and Formula E .

GB Labs today announces that sports production specialist, Aurora Media Worldwide, has built live production workflows for three flagship motorsport events around its storage solution. Aurora deployed GB Labs FastNAS platform for the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed and is using the system for the inaugural Extreme E season which kicked off in April 2021. In addition, the GB Labs SPACE intelligent storage has been central to the production workflow for the 2020/2021 season Formula E. These projects see the continuation of a long-established partnership between Aurora, ccktech and GB Labs.

Aurora has been using GB Labs storage since 2015/2016, having invested in a Midi SPACE 3RU along with an additional SPACE system that was later extended and then upgraded in 2019 to the powerful HYPERSPACE intelligent storage system to gain greater capability and disk capacity. During a live race event, Aurora deploys two identical SPACE units trackside in the bespoke “POD” based OB facility with one acting as a fully redundant backup for the other. A GB Labs FastNAS storage platform was added to the workflow in January 2020 to support Extreme E’s remote production workflows.

Based on its robust and reliable performance Aurora invested in a second dedicated FastNAS for the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed on 8 - 11 July and the Revival in August, to help support the sheer scale of the live hours per day that the event requires. FastNAS, which delivers a highly cost-effective way to leverage huge performance and capacity, is also playing a central role during live production of the 2021 Extreme E and Formula E seasons. ccktech has been integral to bringing together the projects for Aurora over the last four years.

“Through our long relationships with GB Labs and ccktech, we are confident that they can meet all our needs, from performance and robustness to reliability,” said Lee Flay, Technical Director at Aurora Media Worldwide. “GB Labs gives us the ability to support all our post production, media management and live playout workflows in the field in a very compact footprint. Everything fits into a single flight case, which means less equipment to transport and a lower carbon footprint, which ties in nicely with the growing environmental consciousness of our industry and events like Extreme E.”

Dan Deadman, Head of Solutions at ccktech explains “We’ve been asked by Aurora to provide shared storage solutions both for on-location and in-house needs on many occasions and we just keep going back to GB Labs. Their ease of use and configuration for editors and tech admins alike make it a no-brainer for reliability in a high-intensity environment that the fast-turnaround world of Aurora's production demands.”

SPACE packs a punch in a small footprint, supporting the highest resolutions and providing fast efficient data transfers across 1Gb, 10Gb, 25Gb, 40Gb and 100Gb connections. The solution offers easy installation, maintenance, and upgrades, while IP connectivity ensures remote dial-in support.

Peter Walshe, UK Sales Manager at GB Labs commented, “Live sports production is one of the most fast-paced environments with zero room for error – and nothing comes close in terms of speed and the pressure for rapid turnaround of content as motorsports. We are extremely proud of the significant role our solutions play in helping Aurora deliver their world-beating service for some of the world’s most avidly followed motorsports events as well as the other premium productions they are involved in.”

GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, has introduced a completely new version of its revolutionary FastNAS technology. FastNAS Generation 2 can deliver up to 4GBytes/sec real deliverable network performance and is up to ten times as quick for mixed tasks compared to the previous generation.

More importantly FastNAS Generation 2 can deliver massively improved performance for today’s real-world workflows that typically require an effective multi-tasking storage that delivers fast simultaneous read and write data rates. FastNAS Generation 2 offers up to a ten times speed improvement over the previous FastNAS range, which was already a market leader.

Production and post production workflows today are becoming ever more complex. Storage systems have to support not just ingest and editing but rendering, archiving, cloud access and increasingly, collaborative remote and home working. All of this together puts a lot of strain on shared storage, which is now expected to support large numbers of concurrent processes, which in turn places an exponential load on available bandwidth.

FastNAS is built on three unique key technologies from GB Labs, each of which sees a major revision to achieve this dramatic speed boost. At the heart of the product is the Velocity RAID engine (VRE) which controls and manages the disk array. The new version adds increased intelligence, aimed at delivering more performance from a simultaneous mix of tasks.

VRE is coupled with Nitro, the GB Labs NVME acceleration tool, which gains a large speed boost in revision 2. On top of that is layered Blueshift, which enables the specialist architecture of FastNAS to sit on a conventional network and deliver to clients over standard protocols. This ability to serve media content with very low latency to large numbers of concurrent users is a unique benefit from GB Labs.

“In any normal storage system, simultaneous read and write of data is the overhead,” explained Dominic Harland, CEO of GB Labs. “The more simultaneous accesses and processes, the more latency builds and thus the overhead grows exponentially. This is why users become dissatisfied with the performance of shared storage. FastNAS Generation 2 is built to mitigate this significantly.

“FastNAS uses our own specified hardware and software to alleviate these constraints,” he added. “We were always leading on performance: this new version puts us far ahead of the competition. And we are doing it at the same price point as before and retaining our unique plug-and-play ability: you can take our product out of the box and be managing content within 15 minutes with no specialist engineering assistance.”

The new version of FastNAS is launched on 9 November 2021, and is available for immediate delivery from GB Labs.

Click here for further information.

GB Labs will debut Unify Hub, its new storage management platform at CABSAT 2021 and will also showcase its SPACE, FastNAS and Cloak DR solutions. GB Labs is attending this year’s show with its new partner, broadcast services provider and systems integrator PROLANE, who specialises in offering technology services, AV, and broadcast systems, alongside comprehensive technical support, to customers in the MENA market.

Ben Pearce, CBO Asia and Co-Founder at GB Labs, commented, “We’re really looking forward to meeting up with new and existing partners, customers and industry friends at CABSAT 2021 and highlighting the new innovations we have been working on to help overcome the challenges inherent to the current trend of mixed home, office and remote working. The show offers us a fantastic opportunity to connect with people in-person after a long time of restricted travel. MENA is an exciting market where our products offer a great amount of value as businesses look to increase efficiency. We look forward to working closely with our new partners PROLANE to provide an additional layer of support to our customers in the region.”

GB Labs Unify Hub is a storage management platform designed for today’s dynamically shifting media market. It manages storage – on site or in the cloud from GB Labs or from other vendors – to provide a working environment which is simple and fast. The system provides the tools for maximum productivity from production and post production artists.

Unify Hub offers a flexible and straightforward way to implement remote and cloud-based workspaces, eliminating the need to provide direct access to cloud resources. Instead, this solution connects to the cloud, making the data visible to staff on-premise who need access to that data on the local network, very much like a traditional network share. Unify Hub presents users with an easy to use, familiar way to access data without dealing with the complication of data retrieval – the system takes care of the complicated processes behind the scenes.

Unify Hub applies intelligence to combine on premise and cloud storage, empowering remote production while maintaining data integrity and security to manage storage effectively and efficiently – on site or in the cloud. The system integrates seamlessly with GB Labs’s own storage solutions as well as those from third-party vendors, providing the tools for maximum productivity from production and post production artists and creating an environment for high-efficiency collaborative and remote working.

Maroon Khalil, Managing Director of PROLANE said, “Content producers and broadcasters in the MENA market need to have robust reliable storage that supports flexible and collaborative ways of working without adding complexity to their infrastructure and workflows - in three words: 'REAL MEDIA STORAGE'. This is what GB Labs offers and we are delighted to be working with them to bring intelligent, futureproof storage solutions to our customers in the region.”

Visitors to CABSAT 2021 will learn how GB Labs’ SPACE and FastNAS storage platforms are designed to deliver easily scalable capacity and performance, with minimal downtime. These systems provide content creation teams with collaborative access to assets for increased productivity and creative freedom whilst being easy to install, configure, maintain, and upgrade. GB Labs will also explain how it can ensure true Disaster Recovery for businesses through Cloak DR which combines two storage servers for continuous resilience and uninterrupted high-performance data access.

GB Labs and Archiware today announce integration between the GB Labs storage platforms and the Archiware P5 data management solution to deliver maximum security for ongoing and completed productions. Customers now have the flexibility to choose from different storage devices for backup and archive such as disk, LTO tape and cloud storage.

GB Labs storage platforms, such as SPACE, Echo and FastNAS, allow content creation teams to collaborate on files and projects for increased productivity and creative freedom. These products give Mac, Linux and Windows users simultaneous access to projects using 1 to 100Gb network connections. They are all designed from the ground up to be easy to install, maintain and upgrade, and the system allows easy configuration of access rights, storage quotas and permitted bandwidth for each user. Moving data between tiers of GB Labs units is optimised by the CORE OS intelligence to increase workflow efficiency.

With P5 now able to run natively on GB Labs devices, the latest CORE.4 OS allows users to configure the P5 client via the integrations tab to access files on GB Labs storage products for backup and archive. The integration provides an efficient way to protect production and provide business continuity. The P5 platform offers enormous flexibility in configuration, setup, storage and policies. The synergy between the two systems also means production is protected in multiple ways.

P5 Backup protects ongoing production against accidental deletion, file corruption and any other mishaps. The scheduled automatic Backup is the best way to keep files safe. The optimised restore process hands any file back identically to continue with production (including xattributes, ACLS, etc.). P5 Backup works with disk, tape and cloud storage to provide maximum flexibility and fulfil any requirements. Encryption is available for both transfer and storage.

P5 Archive migrates finished projects and their assets to disk, tape or cloud to preserve them for the long-term. Finding files at a later date is easy with its MAM-like features, customisable metadata fields, thumbnails for still images and proxy clips for videos. Combined search and visual browsing functionality help to locate files when they are needed for re-use, reference and monetisation. Full LTFS integration (ISO/IEC) provides import, export and archiving on LTFS tapes and the system makes it easy to catalogue and include existing third- party LTFS tapes into the P5 Archive.

Howard Twine, Chief Product Officer for GB Labs, said “We are delighted to bring this latest CORE OS update to our users allowing them to easily configure the Archiware P5 client so that it can access files for either backup or archive (or both). This allows our customers the flexibility to choose different storage devices for backup or archive like LTO tape from other vendors offering a ‘best of breed’ approach.”

Dr. Marc Batshkus, Director Marketing and Business Development at Archiware, confirmed, "We are proud to have GB Labs as integration partner for P5. Our shared strength, like the focus on customer experience, help to offer solutions that are powerful, cost-effective and easy to use. Especially in media production, the accessibility of any solution is key to improving productivity."

Both P5 Backup and P5 Archive support LTO tape drives and tape libraries from all vendors, ensuring the highest durability and shelf life of decades and the lowest TCO of all professional storage media starting from 10€/USD/GBP per TB. When using multiple drives, throughput can grow (and almost multiply) with each drive added though P5´s drive parallelisation feature. For maximum security and offsite storage P5 offers tape cloning to create two identical tape sets with two LTO drives.

Aldermaston, UK, 29 September 2020 - GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, has launched Unify Hub, a platform designed to meet all the challenges of today’s media production environment combining on premise and cloud content, empowering remote production while maintaining data integrity and security.

Unify Hub is a data management platform designed for today’s changed world. It manages storage – on site or in the cloud; from GB Labs or from other vendors – to provide a working environment which is simple and fast, providing the tools for maximum productivity from production and post production artists.

“For most of this year, collaborative production has been impacted,” said Dominic Harland, CEO and CTO at GB Labs. “Content is back to being stored in multiple locations, with all the problems of delays in moving material from place to place, the risk of creating multiple ‘master’ versions, and of course poor security.

“First and foremost, Unify Hub provides a unified approach to content and metadata,” Harland added. “Wherever your material is physically stored, the content you need appears as a single, secure and coherent source. That makes it ideal for high-efficiency collaborative and remote working.”

Unify Hub offers five key pillars of advances in productivity, connectivity and security:

Unify Hub Cloud Mounts: Align the local user permissions with cloud accounts to facilitate single sign-in and simplify the secure access of cloud accounts on-premise

Acceleration: Leverage GB Labs technology to speed up the user experience, as well as reducing costs and saving internet bandwidth
S3 Endpoint: Connect on-premise workspaces to cloud services or remote users

Remote Working: Provide remote workers with a seamless experience, regardless of your location

Virtual Workspaces: Simply select what is needed and securely make available everywhere, instantly

Through its management structure, Unify Hub allows users and groups to be established for each project. All appropriate cloud accounts can then be accessed through the single sign-on, with pre-authenticated cloud endpoints appearing as SMB storage shares. For system administrators Unify Hub File Manager provides a single pane of glass overview and control; for users their log-in brings all the material they need to their workstation, wherever they are working and the content is stored.

Unify Hub is the winner of the Best of Show Award 2020 during IBC 2020 from TVBEurope magazine.