Solution Summary Finding Answers with VTrak A-Class

Discover Answers in GenesisAnswers in Genesis (AiG), founded in 1994 and headquartered in Kentucky, is a Christian ministry that focuses particularly on providing answers to questions surrounding the book of Genesis and biblical authority. As an apologetics ministry, AiG is dedicated to enabling and training Christians to defend their faith through studying the tough questions about the Bible. In order to help and train others, AiG employs scientists and PhD’s from around the world to speak on topics such as creation, geology, anthropology, astronomy and much more.

The Bible based and scientifically accurate lectures are key resources that AiG leverages to create a broad array of media which are distributed as DVDs to their customers and are added to the extensive Video on Demand collection available online. Additionally, AiG produces commercials and also has multiple video series, such as a Vacation Bible School curriculum for children.

With an increasing demand to create more media, AiG long outgrew the 500GB of storage capacity it first worked with when the ministry employed 15 people. In 2013, with more than 300 employees, AiG required a SAN solution that helped its video editing team work more efficiently, was easy to set up and use, and was cost-effective. After speaking with Rob Oddo of Chi Corporation, who AiG had been working with for years, AiG turned to PROMISE Technology and the VTrak A-Class shared SAN storage solution.

High-Performance Shared SAN StorageBefore deploying the VTrak A-Class, AiG used six Macs for video editing with each connected to an external FireWire hard drive. This created problems since the storage was not centralized, so collaborating meant copying data from one Mac to another which took a very long time. AiG also faced a lack of storage for the growing amount of media the video production team was producing in increasingly higher resolutions. The VTrak A-Class easily addressed the issues that plagued AiG.

At A Glance• Answers in Genesis (AiG) is an

apologetics Christian ministry located in Kentucky

• AiG creates a broad array of media to help and train others about creation, evolution, and the Bible

• AiG required a high-performance, high capacity shared SAN storage solution to help the video editing team collaborate more efficiently

The PROMISE Solution• AiG deployed the VTrak A-Class

shared SAN storage appliance

Benefits• Simple to set up, configure and use

• All key systems can access the same shared storage which makes collaboration a breeze

• Enterprise-grade RAID protection delivers much higher fault tolerance than previous system

• 65TB of usable capacity provides plenty of storage for all video projects at AiG

• Great price point compared to competing SAN solutions

• Excellent technical support

• Export and rendering time cut by 50%

• Improved quality and efficiency of video editing team

Case Study:VTrak A-Class

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Answers in Genesis

An ad for the International Spy Academy Vacation Bible School by Answers in Genesis

AiG’s VTrak A-Class is connected to a QLogic Fibre Channel switch which is connected to Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters inside six Macs and three PCs. AiG also has one MacBook Pro connected directly to the VTrak A-Class with the PROMISE SANLink Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel bridge. The VTrak A-Class, configured in RAID 5 with hot spares, provides AiG with a much higher level of fault tolerance compared to its previous set up where if a drive died AiG would lose the data. Plus, with 65TB of usable capacity the VTrak A-Class provides storage for all of the video projects ongoing at AiG, including those shot in 4K+ resolutions.

Easy to Set Up and ConfigureIt was very easy for AiG to set up and configure the VTrak A-Class. PROMISE sent an engineer with an evaluation unit and walked AiG through all of the necessary steps so once AiG purchased their own unit they knew exactly what to do. According to AiG, this was a huge advantage over competitors who simply send a whitepaper with instructions which can cause a lot of frustration and unnecessary tech support time. AiG believe PROMISE did it the right way and has definitely been happy with the technical support.

“In addition to PROMISE having a very close relationship with Apple, PROMISE has done a lot to shield the user of typical set up for FC and we really appreciate that. The VTrak A-Class shared SAN storage system with its ease of use, out of the box set up, and simple configuration really makes it so much easier,” said Ben Wilt, Senior Director of Radio, Video and AV, Answers in Genesis.

Increasing ProductivityWith the VTrak A-Class, collaborative editing is now a breeze for AiG as all key systems can access the same shared storage which brings huge improvements in efficiency and productivity. The editors no longer need to copy data from one FireWire drive to another in order to collaborate. Plus, the video editors at AiG are now more productive because they can multitask and open up more projects at once and with its high bandwidth, low latency throughout, the time VTrak A-Class delivers incredible performance for 4K+ workflows.

“Collaboration on projects by multiple workstations allows for better quality end results and more efficiency in meeting deadlines. Because of the PROMISE V-Trak A-Class we were able to create an effects heavy three minute promo in only two and a half weeks from shoot date. This would not have been possible in our previous workflow environment. Even exporting and rendering speed has been cut by at least half and sometimes more. We no longer spend hours on each project copying files for the next person to work on,” said Wilt. “The promo was shot in 5k resolution with the Red Epic and we are able to work with multiple tracks of 5k footage instead of only 1.”

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Learn More About:VTrak A-Class• Shared scale out SAN filesystem

storage appliance

• Optimized for rich media applications

• SAN in a Box- single 4U box for RAID storage & metadata controllers and switch (switch not needed for up to 4 clients)

• Simple to set up and manage

• 50% less cost, 30-40% space and power savings

• Supports Mac OS, Windows, Linux clients

• Fast - 5.5GB/s Read and 2.4GB/s Write, per node (8 nodes)

• Scalable – Modular, scales up to 7PB Data, 1B files, 1000s clients, 8 nodes, 8 file systems

Learn more: www.promise.com/VTrakA-Class