Headquartered in Merida, Spain, Canal Extremadura is in the middle of a large-scale digital transformation. To make the transition from a traditional radio and TV business to a modern multimedia corporation, the company needed to upgrade its outdated and complex IT infrastructure. By adopting the Quantum StorNext File System software as part of its archive solution, it has accelerated the retrieval of media projects and achieved scalability for its rapidly growing business.

The company's existing archive had become a significant pain point. "We ran out of room in the tape library and had to migrate some video to a NAS just to free up space," said Francisco Reyes, technical chief at Canal Extremadura. Unfortunately, expanding the system was not financially feasible.

Canal Extremadura's new archive solution needed to merge seamlessly with its preferred media asset management (MAM) system from Dalet, which is at the centre of its media production and post-production workflow. Additionally, the new archive needed to enable a smooth transition from the existing large-scale environment, which contained a huge volume of old files in legacy media formats.

SCALABILITY IN THE ARCHIVE
Canal Extremadura's IT group requested proposals from multiple storage vendors, but ultimately chose Quantum based on Dalet's recommendation. This carried significant weight, especially given the importance of integrating the archive with the MAM system in order to achieve the flexibility and scalability needed.

"We tend to keep solutions for a very long time-we had been using the previous system for about 12 years - so we needed to be very confident in a new solution before making the selection," says Reyes. "The advice and technical information we received from the Dalet and Quantum teams was very helpful. They gave a very clear picture of how the solution would work and how it would be implemented."

After consulting with Dalet and Quantum, the IT group decided on a solution based on Quantum StorNext File System software with Xcellis storage servers, an Xcellis metadata array, a QXS disk storage array, and a StorNext AEL6000 tape library. The tape library, which has 400 slots, uses LTO-8 drives - a notable upgrade from the LTO-3 drives the company was using previously. The environment is fully integrated with the Dalet Galaxy MAM system.

The networking flexibility of the Quantum platform has been beneficial for the IT group in supporting a range of client systems. Specifically, the storage environment is configured to offer Fibre Channel connectivity to 10 SAN clients plus 10-GbE connections to multiple NAS clients, while the metadata network uses 1 GbE.

MAKING CONTENT READILY AVAILABLE
Thanks to the StorNext File System software and integrated online storage, Canal Extremadura's journalists, producers, and other team members can now retrieve content much faster than before.

"We have more than 100 TB of online storage from Quantum. So if someone has completed a project six months ago, it will probably still be online," says Reyes. "Adding online storage to our previous system would have been much too costly - that's really not how that system was designed. For us, the Quantum StorNext approach works much better."

Even when content has been archived to tape, the IT group can deliver it to users swiftly. "In the past, users knew they had to wait for content to be retrieved from the archive," says Reyes. "Now it's much faster than before. We have more drives and faster drives with the Quantum archive."

Transitioning to the latest LTO technology has also helped expedite retrieval. By upgrading from LTO-3 to LTO-8, Canal Extremadura can store significantly more data on each tape. Consequently, there is a greater chance that each retrieval request can be satisfied without having to load multiple tapes.

Explaining the benefit of faster archival retrieval for users, Reyes says, "Journalists might be in a hurry to assemble a new video for that day's news broadcast. With a faster archive, we can help them meet their deadlines."

GET UP TO SPEED FAST
To ensure Canal Extremadura gets the most of out of its new archive solution, Quantum provided multi-day onsite training. At the same time, the Dalet implementation team helped Canal Extremadura migrate its existing archive to the Quantum environment-a process that involved transcoding some archived content from legacy formats. "The process took some time because we had a lot of data to migrate, but it was quite smooth," says Reyes.

SIMPLIFYING SUPPORT, ENHANCING COMPATIBILITY
The StorNext File System software has helped consolidate a complex archive environment that was previously comprised of systems from multiple vendors. Collaborating with a single vendor removes some of the possible compatibility problems from the multi-vendor environment. It also simplifies the provision of ongoing support as the IT group has a single point of contact for the Quantum environment if it ever needs to address issues or make changes.

The StorNext software platform facilitates seamless data movement from online disk storage to the tape library. The integrated environment works with the Dalet MAM system to support a complete production and post-production workflow, from ingest to archiving. The new archive environment provides the long-term scalability to support the organisation's multimedia transformation.

"If we ever need to expand the archive in the future, we can simply add tapes-it's very straightforward," says Reyes in conclusion. "With a scalable archive, our company can stay focused on delivering engaging content instead of worrying about where to store it."

More info: www.quantum.com