Blackmagic Design is striving to democratize shared storage and edit collaboration with the introduction of the Blackmagic Cloud and the Blackmagic cloud storage product line. Let’s focus on storage first, which in spite of the name is very much earthbound.
Blackmagic Design’s cloud storage product line-up
Blackmagic Cloud Store (starting at $9,595 USD) sits at the top end. This is a desktop network-attached storage system engineered into the same chassis design that was developed for Blackmagic’s eGPUs. It features two redundant power supplies and an M.2 NVMe SSD drive array, which is configured as RAID-5 for data protection in case of drive failure. Cloud Store integrates an internal 10G Ethernet switch for up to four users connected at 10Gbps speeds. It also supports port aggregation for a combined speed of 40Gbps.
Cloud Store will ship soon and be available with 20TB, 80TB, or 320TB capacities. If you are familiar with RAID-5 systems, you know that some of that stated capacity is unaccessible due to the data parity required. Blackmagic Design has factored that in up front, because according to them, the size in the name, like 20TB, correctly reflects the useable amount of storage space.
Cloud Store Mini ($2,995 USD) is an 8TB unit using Blackmagic’s half rack width form factor. There are four internal M.2 flash cards configured as RAID-0. It sports three different Ethernet ports: 10Gbps, 1Gbps, and USB-C, which uses a built-in Ethernet adaptor. Lastly, the Cloud Pod ($395 USD) is a small 10G Ethernet unit designed for customers who supply their own USB-C storage.
All three models are designed for fast 10G Ethernet connectivity and are compatible with both Windows and macOS. Although there are many SAN and NAS products on the market, Blackmagic Design is targeting the customer who wants a high-performance shared storage solution that’s plug-and-play. These storage products are not there to usurp solutions like Avid Nexis. Instead, Blackmagic Design is appealing to customers without that sort of “heavy iron” infrastructure.
Cloud Store Mini as a storage device
The Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini is shipping, so I was able to test drive it for a couple of weeks. I connected my 2020 iMac (which includes the 10G option) via the 10G Ethernet port using a recommended Cat 6 cable. I also connected my M1 MacBook Pro on the Ethernet via USB-C port. This gave me a small “workgroup” of two workstations connected to shared storage.
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©2022 Oliver Peters
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