The Customer​

nachtblau GmbH, a Hamburg Germany-based media, IT, and broadcast services provider and Loxoll customer, develops and produces television content for broadcasters and publishers through an integrated mix of production, graphics and IT services.

RTL Nord, a nachtblau customer and affiliate of the $22 billion RTL Group, provides local TV news coverage and daily broadcasts to northern Germany. To produce and broadcast RTL Nord Magazine, a half-hour, evening news program, RTL Nord relies on nachtblau for production and IT services as well as selection of its IT infrastructure.

Challenge: High-Availability Access and Protection for Digital TV Production Operations

Meeting the demands of news production and broadcast is no small task. Digital video content must be uploaded from cameras, digitally edited, and then sent to play-to-air systems from which they are broadcast. Ensuring on-time, uninterrupted broadcasts requires skilled production and workflow management as well as ensuring performance and availability of systems for digital editing, ingest and playout of news content — all part of nachtblau’s central value to its customers.

For this reason, nachtblau’s systems administrator Hans-Martin Grau began a search for a better high-availability solution for RTL Nord. The existing Apple-based infrastructure consisted of 20 Mac OS clients and servers, six Windows servers, backed by 50 terabytes of asynchronous replicated storage.

To ensure the availability of broadcast content, RTL Nord’s data was mirrored across different locations within the same building. HansMartin’s had growing concerns, however, that the performance of the existing HA replication system was too slow and would reduce productivity and broadcast capabilities as digital media resolution and streaming rates demands increased. Not only that, but the proprietary design of the replication servers would limit future storage system choices.

HA-AP engines can be clustered over Fibre Channel to create local or remote mirroring. Single engine appliances may also be located in separate physical locations and connected via FC link, creating a single, logical appliance to mirror over distance for local disaster recovery applications.

Solution: HA-AP 8G – High-Performance, High Availability Data Access and Protection

After reviewing options that would fit the new Linux-based infrastructure consisting of 20 Linux servers, 14 Mac OS editing stations and a 120 terabytes storage system, Hans-Martin found Loxoll’s HA-AP highavailability appliance. As an open-SAN solution, Hans-Martin found that Loxoll was an ideal answer for his HA requirements. The appliance achieved immediate compatibility and transparent failover with RTL Nord’s systems, and most impressive of all, raised mirrored I/O performance to 10 times that of the existing HA system. Hans-Martin also liked Loxoll’s retention of data in its native (unmodified) format on disk — if ever needed, direct storage system access could be restored by simply removing Loxoll from the data path.

Benefits: Affordable Business Continuity Backed by Excellent Service and Support

With testing completed, Djawed Sadat, nachtblau CEO and IT manager, said, “I am very happy with our choice of the Loxoll Appliance, and we are eagerly looking forward to delivering high availability with better performance and simpler management to our customer.”