Dutch Public Broadcasting Agency Selects Nexenta
DUTCH PUBLIC BROADCASTING AGENCY SELECTS ENERGY EFFICIENT DATA STORAGE BY INPROVE POWERED BY NEXENTASTOR
NexentaStor Open Storage Solution Helps Video-on-Demand Provider Deal with Massive Data Growth at Lower Costs
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 20, 2010 — NPO ICT, the IT department of the Dutch Public Broadcasting Agency NPO (Nederlandse Publieke Omroep), has selected Inprove’s Open Storage solution, powered by NexentaStor software, for storing and delivering television programs available via the website of www.uitzendinggemist.nl. UitzendingGemist (‘MissedBroadcasts’) is now capable of managing data that continues to double annually at a lower cost.
UitzendingGemist is one of the most data intensive websites in the Netherlands, with very dense Internet traffic. The website has existed for over 10 years and has approximately 80 terabytes (TB) of video available to Internet users who want to watch previously broadcasted television programs. During an average evening, between 10 and 20,000 people stream data, adding up to over 10 GigaBytes (GB) in capacity.
“Our record is 25GB,” said Wietse Muizelaar, hosting team leader, NPO ICT. “All of this data must be stored and readily available as it continues to grow every day, and in more formats. Think mobile for instance—to manage this environment, a robust and scalable infrastructure is essential. This infrastructure also must be cost effective, as NPO should spend public resources in a prudent way.”
The storage solution NPO ICT was using reached its capacity, so it began looking for new Media Streaming Storage for UitzendingGemist and other websites. Requirements for a new solution included: high availability, scalability to an annual data growth of over 50 percent, competitive costs per TB, low power consumption, and 24x7 first-class support.
After a process that involved multiple vendors, NPO selected the Inprove’s Open Storage solution, based on NexentaStor. “The two deciding factors were performance and price, as the alternative vendors did not compare to Inprove’s performance, and were more expensive per TB. We looked into the total cost of ownership, not just the purchase cost, but also operational elements such as support and power. We have worked with the system for several months now, and uptime is 100 percent so far.”
Another important aspect is that power consumption is significantly lower than that of competing products. Dick Snippe, Internet manager, NPO ICT explains: “The Open Storage solution offered by Inprove is based on Nexenta with the ZFS File System. This not only provides high scalability but also a smart middle layer of energy efficient Solid State Disks (SSDs) for fast reading of data. This allows Nexenta to run large, slowly rotating storage disks that consume little power.” As Nexenta is based on open standards, industry standard components such as hard disks can be used. This also makes the solution very cost effective.
“NPO ICT required a leading-edge solution to serve the fast-growing streaming television needs of the Netherlands; NPO did a thorough evaluation, and we are extremely pleased that NexentaStor has been selected on the basis of superior performance as well as TCO savings with special emphasis on large power savings,” said Evan Powell, CEO of Nexenta. “With Inprove’s ability to tune and expand the system over time and Nexenta’s ever-growing product line (viewable at www.nexenta.com), NPO ICT will be able to scale to meet demand for years to come.”
Inprove has NPO ICT equipped with an NXA Nexenta Storage Cluster System with 192TB of storage drives and a high-performance 1.9TB SSD read cache, all powered by the ZFS-based NexentaStor Unifed Storage solution. Inprove created the configuration, implemented the solution, and agreed with NPO ICT on a four-year Gold 24x7 on-site support contract.
About NPO ICT
NPO ICT is responsible for all facets of automation within the NPO, and acts as an Internet Service Provider (ISP) for the entire public broadcasting system. NPO provides ICT including web hosting, email, streaming media and workplace facilities such as computers, telephones and mobile solutions. In other words, ICT is the NPO 24x7 ICT service provider by and for the public broadcasters (www.npoict.nl).
About Inprove
Inprove is the rapidly growing supplier of IT infrastructure solutions based on open standards. With enterprise open storage systems and professional services, high-quality solutions at competitive prices are realized. Inprove works for Nokia, SARA, NPO, UniServer and the Municipality of Veenendaal (www.inprove.nl).
About Nexenta Systems
Founded in 2005 and privately held, Nexenta Systems, Inc., has developed NexentaStor(TM), the leading Open Storage enterprise class hardware independent storage solution and sponsors NexentaCore, an Open Source operating system that combines the high performance and reliability of OpenSolaris with the ease of use and breadth of applications of Linux. Both solutions leverage the revolutionary file system ZFS. With more than 20,000 total users and more than 975 license sales, Nexenta’s mission is to make enterprise class storage available for everyone.
More information about Nexenta Systems, Inc. and free trials of the ZFS based NexentaStor can be found at www.nexenta.com or call: (877) 862-7770.
Contacts:
Merrill Freund or Christine McKeown
Schwartz Communications
(415) 512-0770
nexenta@schwartz-pr.com