• Home
• Articles Archive
• Features List

• Media Pack
• Contact Us
• Subscribe

C5 EMBRACES THE BIGGER PICTURE

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 7, Issue 4 - June 2007

Following a comprehensive review of its rapidly expanding storage needs, Channel Five implemented an enterprise-class solution from EqualLogic

UK national broadcaster Channel Five, which runs three television channels, plus successful TV-on-demand service, Five Download, has established a powerful reputation for mainstream programming, with hits such as Home and Away, and CSI (Crime Scene Investigation, pictured above) pulling in big audiences.

But such burgeoning success carries its own burden - namely a massive increase in data. The increasing demand from viewers for easily accessible digital media content made it critical for the company to have a scalable storage and server infrastructure. The shift in user demand from analogue to larger, digital files caused an explosion in the volume of data that Five needed to house and have available, which was a burden for its IT department to manage.

Also, Five was launching two new channels at the time when CIO Ken Davis was evaluating storage solutions, making the deployment of a scalable storage infrastructure even more urgent. Due to the 'always-on' nature of the media and entertainment industry, Five's data had to be highly available for viewers to access at any time. From an internal point of view, the company's data needed to be protected and easy to recover in a disaster recovery situation.

Five was working with direct attached storage (DAS), which made it difficult to share data between servers or to back up data efficiently, since each machine had its own dedicated disk storage. Five also had network attached storage (NAS), but expanding this would not provide the centralised management capabilities and flexibility for disaster recovery that Five required. As its data continued to grow rapidly, the broadcaster needed a more advanced storage solution to meet its business requirements. At the same time, it had to be conscious of the company's IT resources and skill sets.

"Our storage requirements are vast: we need to store company data, as well as have digital content available for viewers to access on demand," says Davis.

 "However, as a relatively small IT department, we could not afford to have staff resources dedicated solely to supporting a SAN. To solve this problem, we chose EqualLogic's PS Series storage arrays, which offer us a cost-effective solution that requires little on-going manage- ment. Our IT team can now focus on other priorities, including the continual enhancement of content and appli- cations, which is critical for our success as a business in the digital world."

Following a comprehensive review of SAN products, Five implemented an enterprise-class, iSCSI-based, SAN solution from EqualLogic. This consists of four EqualLogic PS400E storage arrays, providing more than 30 terabytes of storage capacity. One of these arrays is used for general content management of both internal and consumer-facing data, while the second manages a data warehousing project that called for high performance and redundancy.

The PS400E's auto-replication feature, standard in each array, ensures protection of the company's important data. "We had already proven the efficiency and performance of the PS400E array in our IT environment, so our warehousing project was easy to tackle. Upon receiving the SAN, we were able to plug it in and connect it overnight, saving significant amounts of time and money. This type of near-zero configuration is unheard of with other iSCSI players in the market; it's clear that EqualLogic operates on a customer-driven level," comments Davis.

Five runs two more PS400E arrays at disaster recovery sites. The PS400E's auto-replication capability provides point-in-time periodic replication to the remote site for restore points and application-consistent copies of data. In the event of any issue, critical data can be restored within minutes. With EqualLogic, the company is able to achieve affordable disaster recovery without expensive add-on software or costly staff training.

Five is also taking full advantage of EqualLogic's virtualised storage architecture, which allows for automatic load balancing of all application demands throughout one centralised pool of storage. This improved data availability and response times throughout the company's IT infrastructure. "Being able to trust the automatic management and performance optimisation of our PS Series SAN allows my IT team to focus on other priorities, including the continual enhancement of content and applications. This is critical for our success as a business in the digital world," adds Davis.

The shift in user demand to larger, digital files caused an explosion in the volume of data that Five needed to house and have available. An example of this is the large repository of still shots of the latest programmes hosted on Five, which are used on a daily basis by journalists for inclusion in TV listings. To meet publication deadlines, it is essential that journalists receive these digital media files at any given time.

Due to their critical nature, these stills are hosted on the EqualLogic SAN, which ensures that they are highly available. As the number of stills increases with the addition of new channels and TV programmes, Davis can easily add more PS Series arrays to the SAN to meet this demand.

"In the past, we've had issues regarding capacity and disc space when storing our still shots, which affects how quickly users can retrieve this rich data. By basing our storage strategy on EqualLogic PS Series arrays, we have a scalable infrastructure in place that is extremely cost effective and easy to manage. As the amount of digital content that we need to store grows, we can literally connect additional arrays overnight, saving us significant time and money."

Five is using EqualLogic alongside server virtualisation from VMware to centralise management capabilities and improve availability throughout the company's IT infrastructure. By operating in a completely virtualised environment, Five is able to shift virtual machines around the network based on user demands without administrative intervention or manual tuning, eliminating the need to spend additional resources on new servers or add-on software. As Steve Muddiman, EMEA marketing director, VMware, points out, this will also allow Five to ensure business continuity throughout the company's operations by eradicating downtime.

"The flexibility offered by server and storage virtualisation is essential as Five continues to deliver content to viewers,” adds Davis. “IT is central to keeping Five on air and the ability of my team to replicate data and server images in real-time to our disaster recovery sites allows us to ensure business continuity and eradicate downtime. EqualLogic and VMware help keep us on the air."

The PS400E's auto-replication capability provides Five with point-in-time periodic replication to its remote site for restore points and application-consistent copies of data. In the event of any issue, critical data can be restored within minutes. "EqualLogic was the most cost-effective option on the market. The cost of storage per terabyte for an EqualLogic SAN compared to the cost of tape backup was incredible. There were no hidden costs involved in the purchase, which further solidified our decision to implement the PS Series."

Operating in real time and with automated load balancing software, the EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN optimises access to Five's most popular applications, including the latest programme downloads from the Internet. Each PS400E ensures Five's maximum capacity and optimal performance with a virtualised array of 14 750-gigabyte SATA drives; a fully configured chassis delivers 10.5 terabytes of raw storage capacity in an enterprise-class iSCSI SAN built on fully redundant, hot-swappable hardware. Self-managing and expandable online, the PS400E maintains 99.999% application and data availability.

All in all, Five looks in good shape to handle its ever expanding data needs, with further investment in storage likely to follow soon as the broadcaster seeks to maintain its position in what is a fiercely competitive world. ST