NetApp entered a multi-year relationship with the NFL in December that will involve the management of massive amounts of game-related data for the football league. One of the first projects was Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans, where NetApp deployed the FAS2220 storage system to manage IT operations at the NFL's temporary New Orleans headquarters, to support security credentialing on-site at the stadium, and to store and distribute hundreds of thousands of photographs taken by the NFL at the Super Bowl.
NetApp said it provided a collaborative storage environment for the NFL's broadcast compound in order to streamline the management of official NFL photography. Photos ingested in New Orleans were immediately forwarded to the NFL's main office in Culver City, CA, for use by the rest of the organization's staff. In previous years, NFL's IT department would compress all of the raw data sent to the broadcast compound, NetApp said. This year, thanks to increased capacity and built-in compression in NetApp's storage, the NFL made raw, uncompressed data available inside the stadium instantly.
Next up for NetApp as part of its overall NFL deal is a deployment of similar services to all 32 teams in the league. A pre-game blog post from the company's Jonathan Kelly has more details on the Super Bowl storage scheme.
