United Broadcast Facilities, part of the Euro Media Group (EMG), has selected Brocade to deliver it an end-to-end data centre networking solution based on Ethernet fabric technology and its 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) core routing platform.
The company said its aim with the deployment is to provide the performance, elasticity and resilience needed to support high traffic and daily data volumes in its video production environment, which are approaching 16 terabytes.
It added that the Brocade network will reduce operational cost and complexity for United’s IT department, while providing a seamless, cost-effective path for high-density deployment of 100 GbE technology.
United provides onsite broadcast facilities for large sporting events, including the FIFA World Cup. It manages almost half of all Dutch TV productions and works with international broadcasters such as NBC, Warner and ESPN by providing post-production services that include audio-visual rendering and trans-coding for multiplatform delivery.
“In our line of work, managing huge data volumes is nothing new. However, over the past two years it had become all too apparent that our disparate IT environment was no longer fit for our constantly evolving business needs,” said Marc Ruesen, business development manager at United.
“Coming at the same time as a planned move to a new facility by consolidating four buildings into one, we knew that the time was right to make a wholesale change to our data centre network, radically improve performance, and also take an innovative approach to its design,” he added.
Specifically, United turned to Brocade VCS technology and the Brocade VD 6720 Data Center Switches. Brocade Ethernet fabrics are designed to improve network utilisation, maximise application availability, increase scalability and dramatically simplify network architectures in highly virtualised data centres.
At the network core, Brocade MLXe Series core routers provide the breakthrough 10 GbE performance and scalability to support the firm’s rising application traffic demands and deliver reliable services using less hardware, vastly improving operational efficiency and driving down capital cost, United said. Additionally, the Brocade MLXe provides a seamless, cost-effective path for high-density deployment of 100 GbE technology, it added.
“This was an ambitious project, but one that I am delighted to have taken on. Having used Brocade SAN solutions in the data centre for many years, we knew that Brocade offered class-leading performance. The new Ethernet fabric-based environment gives us a far stronger proposition to take to market as we have the performance and flexibility to deal with anything our clients ask of us,” Ruesen said.
