TPC (technology and production center Switzerland) has recently upgraded its audio/video workflow efficiency through the addition of a failover cluster managed high-capacity Merging Technologies Luxor media server.

Having progressively adopted Merging’s Pyramix DAWs and VCube video players in its studios and mobile units since 2007, TPC now operates a total of 12 Pyramix systems and four recently upgraded VCube HD units.

The Pyramix and VCube systems provide real-time audio and video streaming to and from any location in a shared network without restrictions like having to use dedicated SAN volumes, iSCSI emulation, or any other restrictive storage management protocols. Any network connection allowing for sufficient bandwidth may be used to stream media to and from Pyramix and VCube, whether copper-based 1/10Gigabit, optical Fiber Channel or mixed.

TPC’s 16Tb Luxor comprises two clustered Microsoft Windows Server Enterprise 2008 R2 64-bit servers attached to a 16-disk fibre channel storage bay. Luxor is seen by up to 70 clients as a single storage volume with full read/write access to all media volumes. All hardware components have fully redundant power supplies and redundant 10Gb fibre channel cabling.

‘Failover Cluster’ managed dual-server allocation architecture insures automatic switching of control from the primary to the secondary clustered server, averting down time in the event of a critical hardware failure of either one.Both clustered servers are attached to a 10Gb FC switch as well as the workstations, allowing each Pyramix to run at full read/write track count capacity while each VCube streams HD picture leaving room forexpansion.

‘Now that we have almost completed our migration to a full MXF-based tapeless workflow, having a central server with no-single-point-of failure is absolutely essential to our facility.,’ says TPC Studio and Postproduction engineer, Martin Jacober. ‘We have found that Luxor follows the Merging tradition and is a very efficient solution to speeding up our workflow.’