Dell EMC PowerScale F200 for Ultra HD Video Workflows
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Reference Architecture
Dell EMC PowerScale™ F200 for Ultra HD
Video Workflows
Abstract
This paper describes a sample architecture for the Dell EMC™ PowerScale™
F200 in a video editing environment. It includes compressed and uncompressed
video performance estimates and features an intro to the PowerScale platform
for content creation.
September 2020
H18441
Revisions
Revisions
Date Description
September 2020 Initial release
Acknowledgments
Author: Gregory Shiff
The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this
publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.
Copyright © September 2020 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are
trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. [9/23/2020] [Reference Architecture]
[H18441]
2 Dell EMC PowerScale™ F200 for Ultra HD Video Workflows | H18441
Table of contents
Table of contents
Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2
Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................................................................................2
Table of contents ................................................................................................................................................................3
Executive summary.............................................................................................................................................................4
1 PowerScale F200 Ultra HD video edit architecture ......................................................................................................5
1.1 Compressed media playback .............................................................................................................................6
1.2 Uncompressed media playback .........................................................................................................................7
2 PowerScale overview ...................................................................................................................................................8
3 Dell EMC PowerScale™ F200 for Ultra HD Video Workflows | H18441
Executive summary
Executive summary
PowerScale is the latest generation of Dell Technologies hardware featuring the OneFS scale out network file
system. The Isilon F200 node type is ideal for teams needing high performance or wanting to add a layer of
flash storage to their existing Isilon clusters.
This paper lays out a sample architecture showing eight client systems playing back various Ultra HD video
content, both compressed and uncompressed. The results shown here were obtained with real world testing
of video edit applications in the lead up to the PowerScale product launch.
With eight client systems connected to the minimum three node F200 cluster, outstanding results were
achieved. 80+ compressed ProRes 422 Ultra HD steams played in aggregate with no dropped frames.
Switching to uncompressed material, 6x uncompressed DPX image sequences (2x per node) played back off
this same three node F200 PowerScale cluster.
4 Dell EMC PowerScale™ F200 for Ultra HD Video Workflows | H18441PowerScale F200 Ultra HD video edit architecture
1 PowerScale F200 Ultra HD video edit architecture
Video edit architecture
In this reference architecture, video is played back from a 3-node F200 PowerScale cluster (3-nodes being
the minimum PowerScale cluster size). The cluster’s front-end ports are connected using 25GbE and
9000mtu to a network switch, as are the eight edit clients. The testing for this architecture was done with
Windows 10 clients connected by the SMB3 network storage protocol, 25GbE, and 9000mtu. OneFS Smart
Connect allows for client connections to be distributed between nodes. As the eight clients do not cleanly
divide between the three nodes, nodes 1 and 2 had three clients connected while node 3 had two
connections. No special client tunings were performed on the Windows workstations beyond verification of
SMB3 multichannel.
OneFS features several media specific file access and layout strategies that improve cluster performance in
high throughput playback scenarios. In the testing for this architecture, streaming mode is used for the
compressed playback and file-name prefetch is utilized for the image sequence playback. The following white
paper describes how to enable these access strategies on OneFS: Isilon filename based prefetch
5 Dell EMC PowerScale™ F200 for Ultra HD Video Workflows | H18441PowerScale F200 Ultra HD video edit architecture
1.1 Compressed media playback
Multi-stream compressed video playback.
Most media workflows deal with compressed video. There are a wide range of compressed video formats with
technical or creative reasons driving the format choice.
For the purposes of this paper, Apple’s ProRes™ 422 codec is used for compressed media playback. The
ProRes files are Ultra HD resolution (3840x2160) at 30-frames per second with a stereo audio track at 24 bits
and 48khz. The total throughput of each ProRes stream in this instance works out to approximately 70MB/s of
compressed video and audio.
Each of the client systems in the testing for this architecture can sustain ten simultaneous streams of ProRes
422 UHD video playback. With 10x simultaneous streams, the CPU on the client systems began to reach the
85% utilization. Playback of compressed media is taxing on the client system because those systems must
decompress that media as it is being read off the storage in real time. Adding additional video streams further
taxes the CPU of the client workstation and causes frames to drop during playback on these client systems.
Thus in this architecture, the limits of the client systems are reached before the limits of the PowerScale
storage cluster.
As mentioned above, the directories with the ProRes422 media in them have the streaming access and layout
strategy applied.
Aggregate Stream Count of UHD
Simultaneous Client Count 3-node F200 Cluster Throughput
ProRes422 30 fps
1 10 700 MB/s
2 20 1400 MB/s
3 30 2100 MB/s
4 40 2800 MB/s
5 50 3500 MB/s
6 60 3600 MB/s
7 70 4900 MB/s
8 80 6400 MB/s
6 Dell EMC PowerScale™ F200 for Ultra HD Video Workflows | H18441PowerScale F200 Ultra HD video edit architecture
Compressed video playback stream counts.
1.2 Uncompressed media playback
Uncompressed video playback
Color grading and finishing workflows typically deal with image sequence based uncompressed media
formats such as DPX. These formats are less taxing on client systems since the frames do not need to be
decompressed during playback (with the downside being that they take up more storage space). As such, it is
possible to drive storage performance without running into client system bottlenecks.
The DPX image sequences in this architecture are Ultra HD resolution (3840x2160), 16-bit color depth at 24-
frames per second. Each frame is approximately 50 MB in size which works out to 1.2 GB/s per image
sequence at this frame rate. The PowerScale F200 cluster can sustain 2x of these DPX image sequences per
node or 6x image sequences across the three node cluster.
As mentioned above, the directories with image sequences have file-name prefetch access strategy applied
to them.
UHD DPX Image Sequence
3-node F200 Custer Throughput
playback at 24 fps
1 1200 MB/s
2 2400 MB/s
3 3600 MB/s
4 4800 MB/s
5 6000 MB/s
6 7200 MB/s
Uncompressed video playback performance
7 Dell EMC PowerScale™ F200 for Ultra HD Video Workflows | H18441PowerScale overview
2 PowerScale overview
PowerScale and OneFS are an ideal match for Media and Entertainment applications. The system allows for
the creation of a single file system that can handle video edit, VFX, animation, render, transcode, ingest, and
playout operations. PowerScale gives content creators an easy path to integrate industry-leading OneFS into
their workflows.
PowerScale is the latest revision of hardware that runs the OneFS network storage operating system. As with
previous Isilon hardware, PowerScale is a node-based scale-out storage platform. A PowerScale node
consists of storage, compute, and memory resources. The nodes cluster together to create a single OneFS
file system.
A PowerScale cluster starts with a minimum of three nodes. PowerScale nodes can be part of a new cluster
or be added to existing Isilon OneFS storage clusters. Adding additional PowerScale nodes increases both
the capacity and aggregate performance of the OneFS storage cluster with no downtime or manual
rebalancing required.
Additional information:
PowerScale
OneFS for Media and Entertainment
OneFS Technical Whitepaper
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