Livestream Deploys Isilon

EMC Corporation announced at the
NAB Conference that Livestream LLC, a
provider of live event coverage, has deployed EMC
Isilon scale-out NAS to support the Big Data demands of its rapidly growing
live broadcasting operations.

By implementing an Isilon system and software, Livestream has been able to
scale with growing storage demand and automate data-retention policies to
reduce IT management time and lower operating costs.

Customer Benefits:

• Scalability: The company is now able to scale
  performance and add capacity as needed.
• Reduced costs: Has reduced storage operating costs
  by 29% despite its growing storage needs.
• Simplified IT management: Isilon OneFS operating system provides the levels of automation and
  ease-of-use that allow Live stream’s operations staff to focus on
  business-critical projects instead of managing their storage environment.

Customer Challenges and
Solution:
Livestream is dedicated to providing a platform
that allows anyone to broadcast live events – from conferences, music events to
movie premieres – so the rest of the world can experience them virtually.
Livestream manages 500TB of customer data, with traffic to the site more than
doubling in the last year. Currently, over 1.5 billion minutes of video is
streamed every month by the site’s tens of millions of monthly visitors. This
soaring popularity translates to over 80TB of raw video data consumed
per month, an amount its previous managed storage infrastructure was simply
unable to support.

Prior to deploying Isilon, Livestream’s storage solution comprised
Linux boxes and open-source software that required merging hundreds of disks
across disparate systems. This storage system adversely impacted system speed,
scalability and reliability and was difficult to manage, requiring hours of
manual administration each week.

Livestream needed a way to handle its growing video library. The
company evaluated multiple solutions from storage vendors to more
‘self-serve’ solutions. Livestream selected Isilon for
several reasons: the system’s density allowed to reduce power,
cooling and footprint data center requirements; the ease of management cut administrative efforts; and the much-heightened capacity
enabled to scale up without sacrificing performance and disrupting
the user experience.

As Livestream continues to grow, the need for storage capacity
continues to accelerate. Isilon architecture allows Livestream
to plan for the future and add nodes to its NL-Series and X-Series systems to
increase capacity while improving performance. With the OneFS operating
system, it has automated management tasks that previously required
dedicated effort to manage. The company relies on Isilon SmartQuotas,
SmartConnect, and SnapShotIQ to track resource usage, provide optimal node
utilization, and protect customers’ data.

Nicholas Tang, VP, development operations, Livestream,
said: "We’re a fast growing startup,
so it’s critical that we choose a storage product that can meet our needs
within a startup’s budget. EMC Isilon was a perfect choice – not only did the
product lower our operating costs, but it enabled us to seamlessly scale with
user demand. And it’s so simple to use. It just works."

Sam Grocott, VP of marketing, EMC Isilon, said: "Event organizers, content owners,
celebrities and artists around the world use Livestream’s broadcasting tools to
engage and grow their audiences on the Web. With EMC Isilon, Livestream can
continue to deliver this content by providing them with a storage environment
nimble enough to keep up with user demand for content storage, access, and
sharing."