SAN for video is poised to become a key market.  Innovation in this space will affect data compression, content delivery, and other major storage and file sharing concerns.

Here’s a brief review of four popular integrated solutions for high performance video editing as well as other large file sharing applications such as broadcast media, film, and medical imagery:

Global SAN: http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product.php?pci=10

Workgroup ability to edit audio/video projects and large files directly over RAID-protected storage.  High-throughput iSCSI/IP SAN.    Advantage:  Avoiding the expense of Fibre Channel storage, cards and switches.

Avid Unity: http://www.avid.com/products/unitymedianetwork/

AVID’s experience in Video Editing is reflected in their high number of high end global installs.    AVID Unity’s advantages  are support for collaborative HD workflow, huge storage capacity of up to 40 TB, and support for both Windows and  Macintosh.   Another Avid SAN advantage is this active online forum community:
http://community.avid.com/forums/p/13609/76665.aspx

Apple Xsan 2: http://www.apple.com/xsan/
At $999 Apples’s Xsan 2 offers low cost and high performance. Key features of Xsan2 for the Macintosh are
Powerful collaboration tools and pooling of storage resources to increase capacity.   Also, Apple’s Spotlight search feature allows users to search *within* video files for content relevant to their query.  This type of video search will be increasingly important to SAN environments as the number of video files skyrockets.

Metasan: http://www.rorke.com/av/metasan.cfm
metaSAN is designed for heavy bandwidth workgroup environments such as those found with film editing and healthcare applications.   Simultaneously access of groups of files such as video clips, satellite imagery, medical data, and CAD files.