St. Petersburg TV channel completed upgrade of DWH

On December 20, 2016 it became known of system implementation of storage of video content on the platform of storage systems NetApp FAS8020, E2760, E2712 and FAS2520 by request of St. Petersburg TV channel. Supply of equipment and project works were performed by Netapp companies of m IT-GRAD.

Project Tasks

In 2013-2014 technical services of TV channel brought up a question of transition to tapeless production - modern video cameras make record on a flash memory, studios work with data in a digital form.

Replacement of videotapes by memory cards accelerated processing of the finished shooting materials and preparation of television programs, nullified the record defects cases inevitable at use of film technologies. At the same time, the professional memory card is much more expensive than the tape cartridge therefore tapeless production means copying of the finished shooting materials right after shooting on the server for use of the memory card for the following shooting after its formatting^[1].

Advertizing of St. Petersburg TV channel, (2014)

Taking into account the increased requirements to reliability, scalability and performance of storage of video records IT specialists of St. Petersburg TV channel in 2014 made the decision on acquisition of the disk array of a corporate class for replacement of outdated servers of storage. Such implementation will allow to improve reliability of storage of video files and performance of all IT infrastructure of the channel, to lower storage costs due to use of deduplication and also to implement technologies of virtualization on the basis of a failover cluster.

Project Progress

At a preparation stage specialists of St. Petersburg TV channel compared products of different producers DWH and selected systems NetApp FAS8020 as the platform for the main storage, and systems NetApp E-2760 and E-2712A for the organization of archive data storage.

Our company is not able to afford to use compromise solutions, so far as concerns data storage. When choosing main system first of all we needed the solution which completely would conform to our requirements for a technical component and, of course, based on the ratio of price/quality. We are very glad that helped us to find Netapp an optimal combination of these parameters, and as a result we received the excellent tool allowing us to solve all current problems and not to worry about how tomorrow to start the new project. Ilya Osichev, technical director of St. Petersburg TV channel

As the partner of Netapp in project implementation on TV channel the IT-GRAD company integrator acted. Specialists of the company offered FAS8020 configuration, it provided required performance level and scalabilities.

All storage systems of Netapp are installed in 2014-2015. Process of installation and a commissioning which was held by the staff of IT-GRAD took place in cooperation with specialists of TV channel. During installation they mastered the interface of the administrator of DWH.

Project Results

In two years from the moment of installation, FAS8020 configuration was expanded, having connected additional disk regiments to a system. For December, 2016 the physical capacity of DWH reached 256 Tbyte.

Total physical capacitance of the archive systems E2760 and E2712A 384 Tbyte. Use of function of deduplication DWH of Netapp will allow to reduce the need for capacity by 11 — 39% depending on data type that taking into account large volumes of data gives to TV channel significant savings of storage costs.

Replacement of servers of storage provided to St. Petersburg TV channel higher level of reliability of storage of materials thanks to what transition to work on disk DWH underwent smoothly and without stopping productions of telecasts. Powerful computing resources of FAS8020 allowed to apply a system to storage not only video files, but also images of virtual servers.

For TV channel there are no data more expensively than the video files recorded by cameras of journalists, servers in studios, the mobile television station. Often material has a unique component and it cannot be finished shooting once again therefore it is necessary to be sure for 100% that the result of work of a large number of people will be saved and to it there will be continuous online access. Ilya Osichev

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