A new document from the EBU will help Members to design and test specialized media storage systems. Tech 3362 Media Storage Performance - Design Considerations and Benchmarking is the result of testing done by the BBC, who explored the impact of various different parameters and techniques on the performance of media storage systems.

Media storage is still expensive and very specialist, with a few suppliers providing high performance network storage solutions to the industry. Specifying, selecting and configuring storage is very complex, with technical decisions having far reaching cost and performance implications.For EBU Members who are purchasing and integrating media storage systems to meet their demands, Tech 3362 identifies a range of considerations.

The BBC developed an open source software tool called Media Storage Meter to conduct the tests. They studied two different methods based on specialized high performance solutions and compared them to a generic OEM solution. By comparing the performance of these different systems they were able to expose the complexity of networked storage.

EBU Tech 3362 is freely available for download. It provides a benchmarking test methodology that can be adapted and used for evaluation of system performance.

The document also identifies a number of areas in which further work is required. The EBU has already begun work to add features to the Media Storage Meter software to enable that work to be carried out.

Photo: An image from EBU Tech 3362, which includes an introduction to networked storage fundamentals.