Front Porch Digital Presentation Highlights AXF and Cloud Solutions
1. Front Porch Digital
Migrate – Manage – Market
AXF Presentation – FICAM – June 2012
2. Our DIVAsolutions Family LYNX DIVAsolutions
in the Cloud
DIVApublish
Big DIVApublish
Data Services
DIVArchive
DIVAnet • DIVAsolutions family as a
DIVAdirector hosted Service in the Cloud
Online Publishing • Service currently in beta
SAMMAsolo
SAMMArobot • IT-centric Disaster Recovery,
• Direct multi-format, multi- CSM and MAM as a Service
Content Storage platform content publishing • Provision services on the fly
Management • Leverage all CSM stored • Leverages AXF for true asset
• CSM is the heart of the file content to distribute and protection
based facility market content • High SLA, limitless scalability
Analog to Digital • DIVArchive is the CSM • Simple end user access to
first and globally distributed
solution with full AXF support all file based assets • Big Data centric service for a
• Legacy film and video tape asset
migration/preservation • Interface to ALL media devices • Most efficient and scalable fraction of the typical costs of
• Fastest, most cost efficient and storage technologies enterprise class workflow S3, Azure, etc.
• Full SD and HD support
• Preservation and mezzanine • 100s of Petabytes currently
formats generated in parallel under DIVArchive management
• Global facility connectivity and
distribution via DIVAnet
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3. What is AXF?
• AXF is a fully self-contained, self-describing file storage container
– think of it as advanced “ZIP”
• AXF does not overlap with MXF or other “media wrapper”
approaches as these are simply files inside an AXF Object
• AXF is based on an innovative “file system per object” approach
which fully abstracts the underlying operating system, storage
technology and file system
• Standard support for all storage technologies – now and into the
future!
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4. What is AXF?
AXF Object
Metadata Essence Files
Essence Files Ancillary Files
Ancillary Files
Structured
Asset
or Unstructured
Collection
Components Proprietary
Open
OAIS Access
Provenance Fixity Context Reference
Control
File System Universal Storage Agnostic File System
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5. AXF and Storage
AXF is Storage Technology, Operating System and File System Agnostic.
It can store objects to various storage technologies, formats and devices
Future Storage???
Spinning Disk Holographic
AXF Object
Solid State
Blu-Ray
Disk
USB Flash LTFS
Data Tape DVD
Media Data Tape
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7. AXF Technology
• AXF Objects can scale to any size and encapsulate any number of
files with full support for media spanning
• No need to upgrade existing systems as AXF does not rely on
modern tape functionality such as partitioning
• AXF guarantees long term compatibility and resiliency with self-
describing features for both AXF Objects and AXF Media
• AXF is an IT-centric implementation and is not limited to media files
alone (metadata, documents, image files, etc.)
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8. What About TAR?
• Tape ARchive (TAR) format has been around for many decades
• Despite following established standards there is no true
“standard” TAR implementation
• TAR is an archaic format which cripples the core value of the
CSM solution as it does not allow timecode based partial restore,
etc.
• TAR does violate most of our key storage goals (e.g. Open
Archival Information System features such as fixity, provenance,
reference, no resiliency features, etc.)
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9. What About LTFS?
• The Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is basically that…a simple
file system for linear data tape
• LTFS relies on modern data tape partitioning functionality and
makes data tapes appear as “removable USB drives”
• LTFS does not offer preservation features such as those defined
in the OAIS model
• There are no standards bodies which endorse LTFS
• Useful for the physical “transport” of file based content as a video
tape replacement but not for long term storage or preservation
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10. Key LTFS Limitations
• LTFS has no concept of media encapsulation forcing users to rely
on rudimentary folder hierarchies to form important asset
relationships and context
• LTFS cannot scale as it has no support for spanning across storage
media limiting file collection sizes
• LTFS is a data tape based technology which does not apply to disk
or other storage formats – not universal!
• Unfortunately neither LTFS nor TAR help us realize our long term
storage and preservation goals
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11. AXF, TAR, LTFS at a glance
AXF TAR LTFS
Simplifies file management by encapsulating files
(encapsulation of any file)
Scales to tens of millions files per object. Allows
limitless object and file sizes.
Maintains on-media catalog for content stored
Supports any storage technology (Spinning Disk,
Solid State Disk, Flash Media, LTFS Data tape, Data
Tape, etc.)
Supports any generation of LTO, IBM TS11xx, Oracle
T10000x, Sony SAITx, etc.
Includes resiliency features allowing media catalogs
to be recovered.
Includes long term preservation features as defined in
the OAIS model.
Supports Multiple Operating Systems.
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12. AXF? LTFS? Both?
• Despite many limitations, LTFS does have a valid place as a file
based asset transport mechanism.
• LTFS can be used to move assets between remote systems and
advanced Content Storage Management (CSM) solutions such as
Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive system but it is not viable as a
long-term archive technology.
• DIVArchive leverages the Archive eXchange Format – or AXF – to
ensure long-term accessibility, transportability, protection and
preservation of your most valuable assets.
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13. OpenAXF.org
• OpenAXF.org is the community portal for the AXF initiative
• The website includes news, documentation, videos and
whitepapers providing technical details on AXF
• This is the focal point for the AXF community – please sign up
now!
• Front Porch Digital has contributed our AXF intellectual property
to SMPTE and is actively working on its standardization
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