{"id":76,"date":"2021-08-03T08:56:25","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T14:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/?p=76"},"modified":"2021-10-18T20:12:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T02:12:42","slug":"medca-lays-out-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/2021\/08\/03\/medca-lays-out-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"MEDCA Lays Out Mission, Stresses Importance of a Good Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The critical role of data centers took centre stage 21 July, during the VFX & Data Centers breakout session \u201cAn Introduction to the M&E Data Center Alliance (MEDCA)\u201d at the inaugural, all-virtual Entertainment Evolution Symposium (EES) event.<\/p>\n

During the session, MEDCA laid out its mission, which is to provide continuing education, information and best practices to develop a good foundation for the explosive growth in M&E data centers that is expected coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/span>
\n\\\u201cWe need data centres because there is a significant amount of compute required to do [many] tasks,\u201d according to Matt Allen, VP of engineering and pre-construction services at IES Communications. \u201cEverything from liking a cat picture to post production of an animated short \u2013 all these things require massive amounts of data and compute,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Therefore, compute environments are kept in very specific places that are \u201cessentially giant warehouses full of computers, kept at the proper temperature, kept in the proper environment in order to ensure that they run at their most efficient and for the longest period of time that they can,\u201d he said. \u201cWe bring giant pipes full of data back and forth between those out to smaller data centres, within regions, within municipalities and within studios.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also \u201cvarious versions of data centres,\u201d he said, noting \u201cprivate cloud is often a small data centre located on a premise and then that goes out to a public cloud which can be varying levels of distance away from [the] end user.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the \u201cbig buzzword these days is the edge, so we\u2019re pushing these compute environments as close as we can to our end clients,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

There are multiple types of data centres used in the media and entertainment space, Sean Tajkowski, technical design and planning consultant, pointed out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think of data centres as more of what we call hyper scale: aisles and rows in those big block houses or very large warehouses \u2013 but that\u2019s not really the case,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

A data centre is actually \u201ceverything all the way down to a single server\u201d in just a 25 rack unit (RU) or even in a 8 U (server rack unit) \u2013 \u201canything basically that\u2019s in a rack that\u2019s serving data,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll start to hear a lot more about edge\u201d also, he predicted.<\/p>\n

Data Centres Used in the M&E Space<\/p>\n

Hyper scale: public clouds and\/or private co-location cages<\/p>\n

Edge: On-prem solutions along with remote public or private cloud solutions); medium (smaller on-premise data centres, like Fox has<\/p>\n

Small: A few racks within a facility or a single 25RU rack, which is what you can expect to see in a typical visual effects house<\/p>\n

Touring Rack: On-set or near set<\/p>\n

Tactical: Hardened cases and equipment<\/p>\n

Noting that we are starting to see data centres become required on sets, Tajkowski said: \u201cIt\u2019s funny. About 10 years ago, I couldn\u2019t even get a computer on set practically and now we\u2019re seeing, with virtual production, this explosion of on-set materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why MEDCA?<\/p>\n

Using a construction analogy, Tajkowski said: \u201cIf you were building a house, you would not build your stick frame or your metal frame building and then do the dry wall \u2026 and then put the concrete. You have to build from a foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he explained: \u201cOne of the things that we find in the entertainment area is we\u2019re always concentrating on process and not necessarily the foundation. The foundation is last\u2026. That\u2019s like building a facility and putting the foundation last. It\u2019s very, very important and it\u2019s actually part of the [Open Systems Interconnection Model] (OSI), which is the computer model [and] an industry standard worldwide.\u201d It starts with what\u2019s called layer one, the physical infrastructure, which serves as the foundation, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t have a good foundation, the rest of the process most likely won\u2019t work,\u201d he warned. \u201cJust like if you built a building and you didn\u2019t put a foundation under it, most likely it would fail.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you build a building, the client goes to an architect, who has to deliver those plans to the city, he noted. At that point, governance comes into the picture. After all, \u201cit\u2019s very important when you build something that you do it to a standard and you do it to a code because it will catch up to you\u201d otherwise, he warned, adding: \u201cIf you\u2019re building for today and it\u2019s working, that\u2019s great. But you\u2019re not building for tomorrow and you\u2019re going to find that out at the wrong time.\u201d<\/p>\n

MEDCA is not a standard; it\u2019s an industry position, according to the group. On tap as its first deliverable is a draft standards document made up of a collective of best practices and codes that pertain to the M&E industry within data-centric processes. The document will be validated and approved by subject matter experts who will provide a positioning paper that is written and validated by the various manufacturers who sit on the telecommunications and data centre governance committees.<\/p>\n

The Entertainment Evolution Symposium event was produced by the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), Pepperdine\u2019s Graziadio Business School, and MESA. The event was sponsored by Whip Media, PacketFabric, 5th Kind, Qumulo, EIDR, Klio and the Trusted Partner Network.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The critical role of data centers took centre stage 21 July, during the VFX & Data Centers breakout session \u201cAn Introduction to the M&E Data Center Alliance (MEDCA)\u201d at the … Continue reading MEDCA Lays Out Mission, Stresses Importance of a Good Foundation<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.medcaonline.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}