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High Density, Low Cost, Fast Access: The Advantages of Hybrid Cloud Archives
Learn How WGBH Boston Built a Hybrid Cloud Active Archive to Accelerate Media Workflows and Leverage Metadata for Fast Search.
Public media powerhouse WGBH Boston produces more than 50% of all PBS programming. The station’s many production teams shared a common archive, which strained the IT team’s ability to keep pace with the growing rate of ingest. Media retrieval time and data protection was a challenge as well. WGBH’s research led them to object storage — HyperStore from Cloudian — which offered what WGBH needed.
WGBH’s Hybrid Cloud Active Archive allowed fast access to data, limitless capacity, modular and easily-managed growth, high density, metadata tagging to facilitate search, and low cost.
Watch this archived presentation to learn how WGBH achieved:
- Accelerated media workflows
- Limitless capacity
- 90% space savings vs tape
- Hybrid cloud with automated DR
- Rapid offload from Tier 1 storage
See It On Demand
“With Cloudian, DR became automatic. We store data to the archive and it’s automatically replicated to the cloud. That’s a lot simpler and more reliable than managing tapes. – Shane Miner, Managing Director of Technology, WGBH
Speakers:
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| Shane Miner Senior Director of Technical Services WGBH |
Jon Toor CMO Cloudian |
In the search for a new solution, the WGBH IT team first determined that a cloud-only archive solution would not meet their needs, largely due to workflow requirements. Downloading a large file from the cloud would consume time, in effect adding another step to the workflow. Cloud access charges would also add cost for this busy archive.
The WGBH team decided instead that a hybrid cloud approach would best meet their needs. A hybrid cloud environment combines on-premises storage and public cloud storage: on-prem for the working copy, plus public cloud for a disaster recovery copy. This would combine the immediacy of an on-prem system with simplicity of cloud-based DR.
This left open the question of what to use for on-premises storage. WGBH considered storage area networks (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS), but eliminated them from consideration because of cost, scalability, and their inability to handle capacity WGBH expected to store without suffering performance issues. They also lacked the ability to tag files with the detailed metadata WGBH desired to facilitate search.
Eventually, WGBH’s research led them to object storage — specifically, HyperStore from Cloudian — which offered what WGBH needed: fast access to data, limitless capacity, modular and easily-managed growth, high density, metadata tagging to facilitate search, and low cost. The initial deployment consisted of a three petabyte cluster, housed in three 4U-high appliances. Consuming just 21″ of rack height, this cluster consumes less than 1/10 the space of the equivalent tapes and library facilities.
