Five goes for iSCSI San to house digital content

TV channel Five has deployed to an iSCSI-based storage area network to store digital content and company data.

The broadcaster has installed four PS400E storage arrays from iSCSI storage vendor EqualLogic to provide more than 30TB of capacity for the company's storage needs. Demand by viewers to access digital media content prompted the move by the channel to roll out storage and server infrastructure.

Each storage array holds 14 750GB SATA drives in a virtualised array and a fully configured chassis contains 10.5TB of storage capacity in an enterprise-class iSCSI San built on fully redundant, hot-swappable hardware.

According to Ken Davis, chief information officer at Five, decided to go for an iSCSI-based infrastructure rather than going down the traditional Fibre Channel route as he decided that EqualLogic's platform provided cost-effective, enterprise-class performance and flexible management capabilities.

"Our storage requirements are vast: we need to store company data as well as have digital content available for viewers to access on demand," said Davis. "However, as a relatively small IT department, we could not afford to have staff resources dedicated solely to supporting a San."

He said that Five chose EqualLogic's PS series storage arrays as it offered a cost-effective solution that required little ongoing management. "Our IT team can now focus on other priorities, including the continual enhancement of content and applications, which is critical for our success as a business in the digital world," he said.

In addition to deploying a PS400E array for content management, the broadcaster bought another array when a data warehousing project needed additional capability and redundancy. The channel has two more arrays at disaster recovery sites.

"We had already proven the efficiency and performance of the PS400E array in our IT environment, so our warehousing project was easy to tackle. Upon receiving the San, we were able to plug it in and connect it overnight, saving significant amounts of time and money," said Davis.

The company is using the storage array alongside server virtualisation from VMware to centralise management capabilities and improve availability throughout the company's IT infrastructure. Davis said the San infrastructure allow the broadcaster to new services and content to viewers in the future.

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