The Associated Press Deploys Isilon N and X

EMC Corporation announced that The Associated Press (AP), one of the world’s largest sources of independent news gathering, has deployed Isilon scale-out NAS to support its HD video production and archive workflows.

By implementing a single EMC Isilon system and software, AP has boosted the performance of copy and transfer rates, streamlined storage management, improved reliability, and lowered its video archive storage costs. Although Isilon was initially deployed specifically for AP’s video editing workflow, the news organization soon began using Isilon to archive content as well, realizing significant cost savings.

Customer Benefits:

• Simplified IT management: allows AP to aggregate all storage assets into one pool, assign users appropriate levels of service, and perform other storage management tasks; is also enabling AP’s transition from four storage tiers to two (object-level and block-level).
• Accelerated content access: delivers a 6X video copy and transfer rate performance increase over AP’s previous tape archival system.
• Increased reliability: provides 99 percent reliability vs. AP’s legacy tape-based system, which failed 10 to 15 percent of the time.
• Easy scalability: scale-out architecture and management software will enable AP to scale from about 800 terabytes today to about 2.5 petabytes by mid-2013 and add capacity and boost performance as needed.
• Lower storage and IT costs: AP is realizing savings of up to 45% per terabyte of HD video content, compared to the tape-based archival system it had been using.
• Ease of use: IT staff required no training to deploy Isilon.

Customer Challenges and Solution:
As news gathering organizations continued transitioning to HD video in 2011, AP needed to upgrade its standard-definition video content offerings. However, the tape-based video archival system AP had deployed for standard-definition video was not up to the task of handling more performance-intensive HD content. The tape system had a high per-terabyte cost, sluggish access and transfer rates, and failed 10 to 15 percent of the time. In addition, every few years tape technology changes, requiring organizations to convert existing tapes to make them compatible with the latest standards.

Having previously implemented Isilon for its video editing workflow, AP expanded its use of Isilon into video archiving as part of a complete video infrastructure revamp to support the HD video upgrade, from camcorders to servers to storage. AP deployed EMC Isilon NL-Series and X-Series platform nodes in its New Jersey and London data centers to support its video production and archival system. The Isilon OneFS operating system, and SmartPools and SmartConnect software enable AP to aggregate all storage assets into one pool, assign appropriate levels of service to individual users, and perform other storage management tasks. It enabled AP to transition from four storage tiers to two (object-level and block-level), and to unify multiple content archives in one infrastructure, further simplifying IT management and reducing storage costs.

Don Merrick, storage and backup services manager, Associated Press, said: "As part of its multimillion-dollar upgrade, the AP is transforming its video business by switching its entire news gathering, production and distribution systems to HD, forming the largest rollout of HD by any news agency globally. As part of a complete production environment transformation, we deployed EMC Isilon to take our video storage capabilities into the next generation. Now we don’t have to compromise capacity for performance – we can grow both at the same time. With EMC Isilon we’ve made content access much faster for our clients, and we’re gaining a competitive advantage over other content providers."

Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing, EMC Isilon, said: "Media organizations around the world depend on the Associated Press for timely content, whether it’s video, still images, or news articles. Every second counts in the news gathering process, and EMC Isilon is helping AP deliver the fastest possible video content access to its customers while also helping AP reduce storage costs and simplify IT management."