OSSI Develops a Storage System that Zooms for PictureVision
The Challenge: Serve Billions of Images...and Fast
Kodak's PictureVision subsidiary gives 40,000 photo labs the ability to scan photos, burn images to CD, and upload them to the web. Through Kodak PhotoNet and AOL's "You've Got Pictures" service, PictureVision anticipated it would go from handling a mere 500,000 images to one billion images in a year.
The company would need the ability to serve thousands of low-resolution images over the web, while simultaneously delivering high-resolution images to photo labs for printing. The network would not only need to be available 24/7, it would need to constantly download new images from photo processors.
The Solution: Focus on Usage Patterns
The OSSI team noticed that the newest images were the most often requested. Therefore, a Sun StorEdge A3500FC RAID disk storage array was installed to house images from the past month. The array is configured as RAID5, which stripes files across multiple disk platters to increase I/O throughput and is attached via Fibre Channel to an Enterprise 5500.
After 30 days, the images are automatically moved to a high-speed Qualstar AIT-2 tape jukebox which is configured to deliver archived images to the end-user in less than 30 seconds.
Results: Room to Grow
The server and storage infrastructure not only satisfied PictureVision's existing demands, it can scale as the service grows. PictureVision can expand storage capabilities just by adding arrays or tape libraries, and all without bringing down the live system. The extensible storage system positions PictureVision to keep up with demand and stay ahead of competition.