HAVANT, UK, June 18 -- Xyratex Ltd, a leading provider of data storage technology, today announced that it will be demonstrating a long-distance HD video streaming solution, which it developed with Orange Silicon Valley in response to specifications defined by Orange Silicon Valley, at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC’12) in Hamburg, Germany. Representatives from Xyratex and Orange Silicon Valley will be on-hand to demonstrate the system on the Xyratex booth at ISC’12 (Booth #660).

The demonstration at ISC’12 displays several hundred HD videos that are being streamed seamlessly in real-time from file storage that is effectively 11,000km (7,000miles) away across a fully-utilized 40Gbps “network backbone” optical link. Normally the delay introduced by such distances would cause the video playback to stutter excessively or even fail completely. The team from Orange Silicon Valley specified this configuration as they wanted to showcase to their customers how Orange’s core backbone network assets can be efficiently utilized. Xyratex responded with a design that leverages its high performance ClusterStor High Performance Computing (HPC) data storage solution.

Christian Eychene, VP IT Infrastructure Technologies & Engineering at Orange, commented “We have established that the key challenges would be provisioning a video storage file-system capable of streaming video at 40Gbps and, most significantly, configuring the system to accommodate the large latencies incurred across the long-distance link. We believed that the RDMA-over-Infiniband transfer mode supported by the Lustre® file-system would help to solve this. Together with our Silicon Valley team and Xyratex, we built this end to end functional prototype which is being demonstrated at ISC’12 today.   This is one of the first, if not the first time, that this many HD videos have been streamed over intercontinental distances from remote storage via RDMA saturating a 40Gbps link, illustrating how global reach can be achieved without any compromise in efficiency of transport.”

The demonstration system shown at ISC’12 comprises a number of Linux-based video playback nodes, which drive an array of 16 video screens, that remotely attach to a Xyratex ClusterStor 3000 system over a 40Gbps QDR Infiniband connection. Additional equipment from Bay Microsystems, in the form of a pair of specially configured IBEx M40 Global Infiniband Extension Switches, provides a “virtual” 11,000km link by adding an equivalent time delay to all Infiniband traffic between the video file-server and video-playback systems. Xyratex optimally configured the ClusterStor 3000 system and the Lustre client software, which runs on the Linux-based playback nodes, to support the demanding requirements for this long-distance, high-bandwidth demonstration.

 “We welcomed the opportunity to showcase our expertise in high-performance data storage solutions in response to the request by Orange Silicon Valley,” said Ahmed Shihab, Xyratex SVP Business Line Management. “Xyratex values this opportunity to partner with Orange Silicon Valley on such an exciting demonstration and to be able to showcase it at ISC’12. We have made a significant investment in the development of our Lustre based ClusterStor family of HPC data storage solutions and are always looking for challenging applications that highlight the scalable, high performance architecture we developed.”

About Xyratex 
Xyratex is a leading provider of data storage technology, including modular solutions for the enterprise data storage industry and hard disk drive (HDD) capital equipment for the HDD industry. Xyratex enterprise data storage platforms provide a range of advanced, scalable data storage solutions for the Original Equipment Manufacturer and High Performance Computing communities. As the largest capital equipment supplier to the HDD industry, Xyratex enables disk drive manufacturers and their component suppliers to meet today’s technology and productivity requirements. Xyratex has over 25 years of experience in research and development relating to disk drives, storage systems and manufacturing process technology.

Founded in 1994 in an MBO from IBM, and with headquarters in the UK, Xyratex has an established global base with R&D and operational facilities in North America, Asia and Europe.

About Orange
France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with 171,000 employees worldwide, including 105,000 employees in France, and sales of 10.9 billion euros in the first three months of 2012. Present in 33 countries, the Group had a customer base of 225 million customers at 31 March 2012, including 181 million customers under the Orange brand, the Group's single brand for internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates. At 31 March 2012, the Group had 166 million mobile customers and 15 million broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.

With its industrial project, "conquests 2015", Orange is simultaneously addressing its employees, customers and shareholders, as well as the society in which the company operates, through a concrete set of action plans. These commitments are expressed through a new vision of human resources for employees; through the deployment of a network infrastructure upon which the Group will build its future growth; through the Group's ambition to offer a superior customer experience thanks in particular to improved quality of service; and through the acceleration of international development.

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Source: Xyratex