Isilon IQ at the Vancouver Games

Isilon IQ will supply the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium (OBMC) with the main data storage for the Winter Games, helping to accelerate real-time editing and delivery of 4,500 hours of video.

Isilon Systems and its IQ storage solution will be responsible for supplying the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium with the main storage that will be used during the Winter Olympic Games that will take place in Vancouver from February 12 to 28. Thanks to Isilon technology, the consortium will be able to unify hundreds of hours of streaming into a single, high-performance, scalable storage system. This will allow continuous concurrent multi-user access to content over the Network, as well as the acceleration of real-time editing with consequent acceleration in content delivery.

Mike Kozlakowski, systems manager at CTV, the consortium that will collaborate with the OBMC in covering the Games, commented that "for users to be able to watch what they want on a multi-platform basis, what they want, when they want and how they want, a storage system is needed that provides access to highly concurrent content without sacrificing performance or ease of use. Isilon is a solution already proven in 24x7x365 operations and is intended to work in an environment as intense as the Games. Winter.”

During the Games, the consortium will use the Isilon IQ platform as a central repository for video rights owners from the broadcast portal, creating a shared storage for all content towards streamline ingestion, encoding, editing and delivery both live and recorded. With this platform, the consortium's technical team will be able to access the same content from multiple locations and protocols, making it easier for users to simultaneously use the images in real time, thus considerably speeding up the issuance of content.

CTV currently uses Isilon as the primary storage system in Canada, including integration with Harris Nexio servers for high definition content as well as all standard definition media. CTV has deployed numerous Isilon IQ clusters to provide its users with unrestricted access to highly concurrent content, eliminating the inefficiency and data fragmentation inherent in its legacy SAN storage system. With Isilon IQ, CTV is utilizing 95 percent of its storage capacity without performance degradation, maximizing its storage investment and increasing workflow productivity.

The CTV consortium will offer a total of 4,500 hours of coverage in English, French and other languages ​​during the 2010 Winter Games.