The company develops and operates digital services for the Mediengruppe RTL, such as TV NOW, channel websites and verticals. RTL interactive is responsible for expanding the core business of Germany’s leading video content provider with digital video for all screens – from entire shows for time-shifted viewing to videos produced specially for the internet.

Solution Components

Technical architecture

• 8 HPE Proliant 380p servers
• One Scality RING for production and one for backup
• ARC erasure coding to ensure resilience for large video files and replication for small files
• Sparse file technology to divide very large video files into parts that are stored on multiple nodes
• Adobe Media Server access to data via Scality SOFS FUSE connector
• Web services access to the RING using Scality CDMI (HTTP/REST) connector
• Write access to the RING from video encoding applications via SCP
• Linux/Ubuntu OS

Scality RING enables 1 billion views a year at VOD provider RTL interactive

Revamped with Scality

Based in Cologne, Germany, RTL NOW delivers more than 1.19 billion video views annually. Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland experienced tremendous growth in its VOD business and needed a way to scale beyond traditional storage solutions, looking to Scality for a much-needed revamp.

“Although Object Storage itself wasn’t the goal for us, this technology offers us the scalability, reliability and performance that we need, as well as the ability to easily integrate storage into our existing infrastructure.”

André Knegt Head of Infrastructure at RTL interactive

Seeking: massive scale and performance

RTL needed to scale storage for their VOD service easily, quickly, cost-effectively and reliably. Within 18 months following initial installation in 2014, the storage solution managed approximately 22,000 movies and television series, and 16,000 hours of video. RTL interactive continues to grow its Scality RING and add data.

In addition to scalability, other key requirements included:

• Extraordinary performance
• Exceptional data resilience and disaster recovery provisions
• Efficient handling of very large files
• Multiple file access methods

“With Scality RING we believe that we will be able to deploy more storage capacity, in a shorter time frame. This allows us to introduce new products and features to the market sooner”

André Knegt Head of Infrastructure at RTL interactive

Why Scality was chosen

Based on a successful Proof of Concept prototype and the experiences of other storage teams within the RTL Group, the infrastructure team determined that Scality RING provided the best fit.

• Scalability: Scality RING easily scaled, successfully handling large numbers of files, including very large files.
• Resilience: Scality RING never lost data when system failures occurred at disc, server or network levels.
• Compatibility: Scality RING proved compatible with a range of existing applications.
• Performance: Even at very large scale, Scality RING was able to maintain the necessary IOPS for customer needs.
• Cost efficiency: Scality RING works on any x86 platform, letting RTL interactive choose the best hardware vendor to meet their needs.

Scality RING supports the storage powering VOD services for six television channels, all with growing numbers of viewers, with an expected annual capacity growth of 300%. Storage capacity is expanding rapidly as both the number and size of files increases and the number of viewers and individual video views also continues to grow.

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