Every day, people on all continents watch television programs, live sports, andon-demand content prepared, managed and broadcast by Red Bee Media. Thismanaged service powerhouse relies on PixStor software-defined storage andNetApp E-Series storage arrays to efficiently and securely manage millions ofassets and complex workflows across its entire broadcast chain—speedingtime to market for its clients and ensuring audiences the richest viewingexperience on any screen.

Big Challenges, Bigger Aspirations The world’s leading media brands count on Red Bee Media to deliver thehighest quality broadcast services, adapt rapidly to meet changing needs, andlaunch new channels fast. Serving the diverse and bespoke requirements of agrowing client base alongside huge content growth and security commitmentsrequires a fast, agile, and reliable infrastructure. With ambitions to push channels to air in minutes rather than days and toprovide a commercially competitive model to the market, Red Bee needed afresh approach—both to its infrastructure and its thinking. It needed to breakfree from restrictive proprietary technology and the sprawl of complex stacksto manage file flows more efficiently and securely, while enabling the businessto scale at pace.

RED BEE MEDIA

Red Bee Media Transforms MediaManagement on a Global Scale

Case Study

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2.7 millionhours of content streamed each year

53 GBpsthroughput

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To deliver this vision, Red Bee turned to storagesolution provider Pixit Media to help transform everyworkstream— harnessing the power, flexibility andscalability of PixStor high-performance software-defined storage with NetApp E-Series storage arraysand the team’s unrivalled workflow knowledge. Withthe PixStor on NetApp E-Series solution, Red Beeefficiently and securely manages the flow of millions ofmedia assets, including high-quality, uncompressedvideo streams, and orchestrates demanding workflowsto cater to their clients' needs on a global scale.

Uncompromised Security & Business Agility As a managed services provider, security is ofparamount importance to Red Bee. It must comply withboth industry and regulatory standards as well asclients' contractual requirements, ensuring the valuablemedia assets it manages are securely protected to thehighest level. Working in close collaboration with Red Bee, PixitMedia’s development team enhanced PixStor’sarchitecture to offer secure multi-tenancy capabilitieswithin the PixStor storage fabric. Eliminating thecomplexity and costs of dedicated physically-siloedstacks, Red Bee can now rapidly deploy securecontainers for each client - all within its unified PixStorstorage environment. Containers run side by side, withno compromise to performance or the bottom line.

guaranteed sustained performance (up to 53GBpsthroughput) to ensure data is available to userswherever and whenever they need it — handling RedBee’s complex workloads with confidence even at 99%capacity. Within its new unified storage environment, Red Beecan escape the constraints of proprietary vendor lock-in and eliminates the complexity and expense of vastestates of disparate storage silos across its sites. Withthe PixStor user-friendly interface, Red Bee canautomatically orchestrate workflows as part of thestorage system. Tools and analytics accessible via thePixStor interface put Red Bee in full control ofdeployment and costs. This future-proof, scalablestorage infrastructure enables Red Bee to meetgrowing demands, on-board clients easily and launchnew channels in hours.

Delivering Data When & Where It Is Needed Red Bee’s entire media services chain—from playout,post-production, media management and QAcompliance, Video on Demand, and live streaming—issupported by PixStor. “In media environments like our own, it’s critical tohave a storage system that delivers total reliability,guaranteed speed, and real flexibility,” said StevePenney, Head of Infrastructure at Red BeeMedia. “PixStor with NetApp was the natural choice forus. It’s been designed from the ground up for the mostdemanding media workloads; it’s proven to deliverwhatever you throw at it, and it scales to keep ourbusiness agile.” With this proven high-performance storage solutiondeployed across four locations in the UK and Sweden,Red Bee can easily deliver 2.7 million hours of contenteach year and manage petabytes of data and billions offiles, all under a single global namespace for completevisibility and control. It provides enterprise-grade

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Keeping the Media Flowing Designing and delivering a digital transformation of thisscale and complexity has inevitably thrown someunforeseen curve balls at Red Bee’s project team. Thisis where the Pixit Media’s consultative approach,workflow expertise, and 24/7 solution support serviceshave proved invaluable. As Penney explains: “Whenever we hit a problem, Pixit had specialists on-hand to dive in and figure out how to get it resolved,With so many other storage companies, you just geta product force-fitted into requirements and have tofind your own solution to deliver what’s reallyneeded. With Pixit, they’ve worked with us from the start todefine and scope our requirements. Whenever we’vehit a technical issue or compromise, they have theknow-how to get us through the maze and back ontrack.” Now with Pixit Media’ team working as an extension oftheir own, Red Bee is able to free up its technicalresources and focus on its operations and clientreuqirements. Maximum system availability andminimal downtime are assured with Pixit Media’s 24/7support and rapid issue resolution with a single point ofcontact across the multivendor solution.

Steve Penney, Head of Infrastructure - Red Bee Media

Featured Technologies The PixStor ecosystem integrates technologies frombest-of-breed manufacturers into the single storageecosystem, providing complete visibility of data andprecision control of multiple varied workflows:

NetApp hardware for rock-solid reliabilityThe PixStor environment runs on 17 NetApp E-SeriesE-5760 storage arrays deployed across all sites. Thesecompact units deliver high IOPS with low latency andhigh bandwidth to support Red Bee’s data-intensivemixed workloads – offering enterprise-grade reliabilitydelivered by a trusted leading hardware provider forcomplete peace of mind.

Mellanox for uncompressed 4K streamsMellanox 100GbE networking delivers the bandwidthto support multiple streams of uncompressed 4K andUHD content managed within Red Bee’s PixStorstorage environment. Open and highly scalable,PixStor with Mellanox is future proofed to support newformats and applications, such as 4K/8K and virtualreality playback.

Excelero for blazingly fast archive to on-airExcelero NVMesh software-defined block storageprovides a huge amount of bandwidth to the storageenvironment and lets Red Bee rapidly read and writearchived content to their tape library directly from thePixStor - avoiding the extra processing and expense ofa cache. It delivers the highest sustained writethroughput and lowest sustained write latency - whenand where Red Bee needs it. Data moves in and out ofarchive faster and with “less hops” so that content caneasily be pushed on-air at the last minute.

To learn more about Red Bee Media, visit www.redbeemedia.com

For more information on Pixit Media Solutions:t: +44 (0) 345 052 3721 | US Sales: (424) 537-4948e: info@pixitmedia.com www.pixitmedia.com

Partnering for Success For Red Bee, the relationship with their storageprovider was as crucial as the technical solution itself.Chartering new territory, they wanted a partner tosupport them throughout their journey and add realvalue. Pixit Media stepped up from Day One and as atrusted partner continues to work with Red Bee toimprove working practices and manage technicalupdates to strengthen Red Bee’s compelling managedservice offering. "With PixStor, we have a proven, highly resilientstorage architecture upon which we can rely.Combine this with Pixit Media’s consultativeapproach, access to their workflow experts and 24/7support services, we also have a responsivetechnology partner to help us reap the benefits andopportunities of a fully IP media environment. Theyalways have our back and they’re a great team towork with.”- Dave Travis, CTO, Red Bee Media

© 2020 Pixit Media. All rights reserved. Images with permission of Red Bee Media. PSCSRBM20