MLB Network Hits Home Run with Active Archive
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CHALLENGE: When MLB Network launched on January 1, 2009, the MLB Network production team needed an IT Major League Baseball’s 24/7 Cable TV Network infrastructure capable of cap- turing and preserving high-definition video content for use in producing television programming. MLB Network Hits Home Run SOLUTION: with Active Archive Tape-based active archive In 2013, MLB Network recorded over hours of live video content per day. consisting of: 2,500 games, with as many as five This generates petabytes of informa- • Oracle SL8500 Tape Library different video feeds per game. MLB tion annually. Additionally, Major Network show content was also record- League Baseball looked to utilize the • 1,500 slots in the Tape Library, ed and catalogued. All of this content same IT infrastructure to digitize a vast expanded to 3,000 in 2010 translated into over 6.5 petabytes of historical videotape library represent- • LTO-4 Fujifilm Tape Media – stored content. In 2014, MLB Network ing the history of baseball, as well as Currently consuming over recorded as many as seven different capturing and logging all MLB Net- video feeds per game, and exceeded work original programing content. 8,000 tapes per year 2013’s storage consumption. • Front Porch DIVArchive The main objectives at the Starting with the 2009 season, MLB outset were to: management software Network needed every pitch of every 1. Within six months, design and imple- • Fujifilm Tape Environment game played to be captured and ment a data storage network capable catalogued, enabling the advanced Analysis (TEA) and Archive of recording, archiving and managing tagging of events along with other Verification Service (AVS) live, high-definition content. descriptive data, such as the camera • Grass Valley video server angle. MLB Network, along with other 2. Devise a flexible infrastructure that system MLB partners, undertook the internal could support the migration and development of a custom logging archive of historic video footage from RESULTS/BENEFITS: system, referred to as the DIAMOND legacy videotape technology to a digital format. • Significant operational System. Today, DIAMOND is utilized to capture and catalog more than 500 “Our goal was to archive the game of savings compared to baseball, preserve it, and mine that videotape workflows information in order to produce com- • Highly optimized tape pelling programming,” said Tab Butler, systems capable of handling director of media management at MLB 400 to 500 hours of daily HD Network. “We needed a solution that content and consuming 25 could help us meet our high-volume data storage needs while at the same to 30 TBs of LTO-4 tape time provide us with quick, easy access storage daily to the data when we needed it.” • High availability, partial To meet the requirements of the real- file restore of video content, time HD content and historical digital reliability archiving projects, the team designed and deployed an active archive system to support both goals on one common platform — an Oracle SL8500 LTO-4 tape library with Front Porch DIVArchive set by the archive software’s policies. This management software, which ties into a policy-driven data approach optimizes Grass Valley video server system. For MLB Scalability is absolutely the active archive’s tiered storage plat- Network’s storage needs, they estab- essential because we will form, and delivers cost savings while also lished a three-SAN system — utilizing be archiving the history of enabling MLB Network to quickly access two, 70TB high-performance disk arrays baseball for many years to the data when needed. to record content, and a half-petabyte From an environmental standpoint, stor- SATA near-line disk drive storage system come, and this archive needs ing data on tape utilizes far less energy as a temporary “parking lot” for project to be transportable from one than storing data on spinning disks that work and game highlights. generation to another. are constantly consuming power and To maximize the IT network’s perfor- generating heat. This results in a signifi- mance and to ensure the integrity of cant increase in energy savings over disk- the recorded data in the archive, MLB based solutions. Additionally, the cost Network selected Fujifilm to implement per terabyte of tape storage is signifi- a tape monitoring solution leveraging cantly less than spinning disk storage. its Tape Environment Analysis (TEA) and “We consume tape very rapidly. An ac- Archive Verification Service (AVS), both tive archive provides an ideal way for us of which are powered by the Crossroads to effectively and efficiently cost manage ReadVerify Appliance (RVA). the tremendous volume of content that MLB Network has standardized on is recorded and produced,” said Butler. Fujifilm LTO tape stock. With its live game “We could not do all of this on spinning captures, studio production recordings, disk, for it would be exorbitantly expen- and the massive archiving project, MLB sive. With tape, we get high reliability, expects to consume more than 8,000 LTO efficiency and data integrity at a much tapes each year for the next 5 years. lower cost.” MLB Network has adopted a high-avail- Accommodating Future Growth ability model for protecting its archive Today, MLB Network records over 5,200 materials. The content written to the LTO In addition, MLB Network has the ability hours of content per week, and its data tape is recorded onto two or more to create complex searches within DIA- yearly consumption of tape has grown LTO tape cartridges. One LTO copy is MOND and mine and retrieve this infor- by 25-30% per year for the last four years. stored off-site at a disaster recovery facil- mation quickly. They can request content There are currently over 24,000 tapes in ity, while other LTO copies of the content from the library and have it within 2 to 3 the library, which is equivalent to 19.2 are stored on-site at the MLB Network minutes for on-site content and within petabytes of content. facility for daily use. an hour for the deepest off-site archives. The active archive environment enables MLB Network is looking to expand its Efficient Storage active archive in the future with both LTO and Quick Access to Content these accelerated data access times, which previously would have taken and an enterprise-class environment. In this new digital environment, MLB hours or days. They are planning for a much larger Network can quickly move content, log library and will migrate from LTO-4 to the it, store it, and retrieve it for video high- Cost Avoidance latest generation tape format for daily lights and producing television shows. By implementing a tape-based archive, ingest, record and retrieval. As an example of these capabilities, MLB MLB Network was able to deploy a lower “Scalability is absolutely essential be- Network is able to search an archived cost alternative than a disk-based archive. cause we will be archiving the history of 4-hour game recording, select only the The active tape archive easily accom- baseball for many years to come, and this footage they want to use, and perform a modates MLB Network’s large-scale data archive needs to be transportable from Partial File Restore within a few minutes, growth by migrating infrequently ac- one generation to another,” said Butler. enabling the video editor high speed cessed data to the most economical stor- access to only the content they need, age. The data stored in the active archive providing a more streamlined, and ef- is proactively moved between storage ficient use of the archive storage. platforms to meet storage requirements .