In Broadcast - October 2020 - 40

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 10 - Issue 10 | October 2020

InStudio

How to Build a (Simple)
Cost Efficient Storage for Media

Content storage is essential in a media workflow, writes François Pascal. The fast-paced world of content
production result in huge volumes which need to be securely stored. BCE (Broadcasting Center Europe)
answers the needs of its customers with a secure and high volume compliant solution...
The Jungle
The
market
is
overwhelmed with storage
offers. While they all
present their services as
a real solution for data
storage, the costs scheme
can be quite complex to
understand with solutions
which would result, for
the media world, in a very
expensive way to store
content.
Moreover those providers present
their services for any kind of content,
whereas it is audio files, video files,
metadata, office files, databases etc.,
the costs can vary from one type of
content to another, with no real logic,
since all content is data.
Some providers are charging
on volume, but also on the traffic
generated. A price simulator is
generally provided, but the complexity
of the results confirms the difficulty
to validate an offer. With the high
volumes generated by video data,
a simple moving of files from one
cloud storage to another can result in
unbearable and inexplicable costs.
"Before selecting our storage
solution, some of our customers had
experienced
complex
situations.
I remember this producer which
had uploaded on a cloud storage
a full season of series and decided
to reorganise the files on different
accounts. Since he had a traffic-based
offer, the customer was charged an
amount for the upload of the content
and the same amount again for
moving the files," explains Jean-Alain
Jachiet, CIO at BCE. "With the files
size the media world is dealing with,
these offers are clearly not adapted to
producers and content providers."
Working on a daily basis with
producers and content providers, such
as Fremantle, RTL or EndemolShine
France, BCE understands perfectly the
needs of the media market. To do so
BCE designed an offer focusing on five
important points namely: redundancy,
access, volumes, GDPR and of course a
realistic, yet easy to understand price.

The BCE
Datacenter

Answering the media market
Content is king and, as a result, is
highly valuable, our customer asked us
for a solution which would ensure the
safe storage of content. To do so BCE
integrated redundancy in its workflow,
giving the possibility to its customers
to benefit from content mirroring on
two separate storage sites if they have
this business needs.
Connected via dark fibres the two
BCE datacenters feature real-time
redundancy with 24x7 monitoring and
regular failover tests to ensure both
sites resiliency.
"Production companies need to
secure their daily rushes before postproduction. Usually, there is only one
copy per day of shooting, which is then
stored in one or even multiple low
cost NAS." underlines Majda Fahim,
Sales Officer at BCE. "Knowing that
most NAS storage solutions integrate
feature backup over the cloud via S3,
it is possible for all our customers to
be directly connected to our storage
solution with a transparent transfer of
data from their local site to BCE cloud."
The S3 (Simple Storage System) is
interesting because of its consistent
performance, even in case of a nonideal situations of high latency or
limited internet bandwidth.
A S3 backup agent can be installed
on any Linux or Microsoft servers to
perform backup over the cloud directly
to the S3 system. An S3 solution
combined to BCE cloud storage
solution can save any organisation
in case of incident at their premises,
such as natural disasters, fire, or
even cyber-attacks. BCE experts are

of course available to
advice its customers in
the selection of the most
appropriate S3 solution as
well as its configuration.
In addition to this
automated S3 backup,
our customers can access
their content whenever
they want, with unlimited
actions
(download,
upload, put, get, list, and
so on). When working
with large files and especially with
rushes, it is important to have the
possibility to access them immediately,
screen the video files and be able to
classify these.
The media world deals with some of
the highest file sizes, unfortunately
the server-only solutions available on
the market do not always answer the
reality of our activities. To be able to
answer to the needs of our customers,
our cloud storage solution is linked
to our 22 Petabyte digital library with
room for upgrade, giving an almost
unlimited storage capacity for our
customers.
If your company oversees its
cybersecurity through a Security
Operation Center (SOC), the logs
of all your machines need to be
centralised to a Security Information
and Event Management (SIEM) server.
The volume of logs for medium
organisation can easily reach millions
of lines per day. Having a repository
in S3 can lower the cost of storage, but
also protect the data in case of future
security research.
"Our customers are concerned about
the location of their files in the cloud.
While a cloud storage offer can be
attractive, there is no clear information
on where the content is going to be
stored." comments Jean-Alain Jachiet.
"While most European datacenters
have strict security measures, other
sites based in overseas markets do not
always meet the security levels needed
by the industry."
To avoid multiple carriers and to
keep the control over the storage
infrastructure and security, BCE

took the decision to centralise all its
infrastructure in Luxembourg.
Meeting the GDPR guidelines, our
customers have full control on their
content with a clear view on the file's
location.
With a monthly flat rate at €9.5 per
TB, BCE grants its customers unlimited
actions on their cloud storage. For
more transparency, the cloud storage
costs are not based on data traffic but
on the number of TB storage space
used in one or two datacenters for
redundancy purpose.
Room for improvement
A classical S3 environment limits one
single user having all rights. There is
no possibility of creating different user
access levels with read only or write
rights. Such functionalities are only
available if you install in front of the S3
storage a server able to control these
accesses and authorising different
users and to mount the S3 storage like
a classical file system.
For those having legal requirement
to store data during long period of
time, typically 10 years for financial
data, backup from S3 to tape are
now integrated by vendors. The only
recommendation is to make sure that
the software used for the backup to
tape in not proprietary forcing you to
stay with your S3 provider. Now, it is
common to perform backup on tape
with classical formats like TAR.GZ or
LTFS. In case of dispute or if you want
to select another vendor, with such
format of backup, you can take away
your tapes and read them with any
basic backup/restore software.
With the multiplication of video
content, it is paramount for media
companies to secure their data in
redundant and secured environments.
At €9.5 per month per TB, BCE answers
the market with a cloud storage
solution which meets the needs of its
customers at a realistic price. Storage
must stay a part of the media workflow
and BCE is looking forward to offer
to its customers
a
future-proof
solution.

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In Broadcast - October 2020

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