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iN DEMAND Networks’ daily tasks include ingesting and editing content for On Demand programming. Responsible for diverse video content including promos for Major League sports packages, Hollywood movies, high profile boxing and mixed martial arts PPV events and complete editing and post-production for Howard Stern’s Howard TV On Demand channel, the amount of ingest and post-production occurring was approaching the limits of their old storage area network (SAN). At any given time, the potential for twenty simultaneous editors using the SAN to capture and edit a number of DVCPRO HD and Apple ProRes content was a possibility. After five years of using original release of Xsan and discontinued Xserve RAIDs from Apple, Keith Koby, the Head of Engineering, was in need of an upgrade to meet the growing demands of iN DEMAND’s workflow.
To assist with the replacement of their SAN, Koby turned to one of iN DEMAND’s trusted resellers, Tekserve, an Apple reseller located in New York. “We feel like we have a good partnership with Tekserve. They have been with us for many years,” said Koby. The solution presented to iN DEMAND by Tekserve was to install an Xsan 2 storage solution with Apple qualified Promise VTrak E-Class 4Gb Fibre Channel subsystems in the backend. The current setup includes the use of 154TB of usable storage. Koby said of their current solution that “it’s a very solid system now. When configured properly, dropped frames are non-existent.”
Shortly following their initial setup, the need to continue to grow the capacity of the SAN at iN DEMAND Networks was apparent as the amount of content grew. Having the ability to increase the capacity of their storage volume through Xsan and using Promise VTraks as the storage, Koby went ahead and purchased more VTrak subsystems. What they discovered during the upgrade was the extreme ease of adding storage and Promise’s commitment to support their customers to the end.
“To us, the quality of the support from Promise is as important as the product itself. The fact that they offer 24x7 customer support included in the product purchase is amazing,” stated Koby. “Nobody else in the industry does that.”
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“To be able to call up support at Promise anytime was invaluable because their staff is so knowledgeable. It is reassuring to have them available to work with us on configuration ideas, provide suggestions and confirm our choices. With their help, our scheduled overnight downtime for the upgrade was held to under an hour instead of
an entire night. I can’t think of another example of calling a vendor and getting that kind of response, that fast. It is simply amazing.”
“We made it to the Promised land,” said Koby. “It’s been a fast and dependable storage solution since we set it up. This is what we have always hoped for.”
iN DEMAND Networks is a jointly owned venture of Comcast iN DEMAND Holdings, Inc., Cox Communications Holdings, Inc., and Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership.
For more information about iN DEMAND Networks, visit
http://www.indemand.com/.
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