What technology does a Premiere system use to ensure reliable storage?

Kaleidescape servers in the Premiere line are specifically designed and monitored to provide reliable storage. Kaleidescape uses a variety of hardware, software, and service technologies to ensure reliable operation of the system in the event of a drive failure.

Kaleidescape developed a proprietary storage technology, RAID-K, customized for the reliable storage of movies and music on multiple disk cartridges. With RAID-K, the system continues to play movies and music even if a drive fails. Like other common fault-tolerant technologies for multiple disk drives, no data is lost if one drive fails. Unlike other technologies, RAID-K is customized for movie servers; each movie or music album is generally stored on one drive for optimal performance and additional disk cartridges (of different storage capacities) can be added later to generally increase storage.

After a drive failure, the failed disk cartridge must be replaced to restore the system to normal functionality and reliability in the unlikely case of a second drive failure. The 3U Server includes the additional feature of a hot spare disk cartridge, which is available immediately to replace a failed drive.

Kaleidescape also provides real-time services, over the Internet, to monitor the health of drives in a server. If a component is too hot, or if a drive fails certain software tests, we may proactively alert the dealer-of-record that service is required.