RSI doubles its capacity and halves delivery time of HD video

Customer
RSI, abbreviation of the Radiotelevisione Svizzera di lingua italiana, is a Swiss public service Company with headquarters and production centres in Lugano and Comano. RSI produces and distributes radio and television programs throughout the territory of the Swiss Confederation, and is incorporated as a subsidiary of SRG SSR.

RSI offers three radio networks with different characteristics respectively generalist, cultural and youthful. The three networks are also listenable via Internet streaming. Some programs are distributed as a podcast. Since December 2005, the RSI also provides transmission onto DAB.

The scenario
RSI adopted a new system to archive audio-visual assets since 2004, aimed to provide a unified digital archiving solution for both radio and television. Chosen as system integrator and technological supplier from its very first beginning Discovery Reply has constantly supported RSI to extend the system with additional features, integrations and technological upgrades.

The need of storage space, to cope with the increasing rate of new and historical material, has been the main driver to upgrade the near-line archive with a capacity planning in mind covering the forthcoming years. Performances were perceived as a key issue as well.

The solution
To cope with the increased need for capacity, the archive facility has been extended with an additional library, and is now made of two Oracle StorageTek SL3000 Tape Libraries. Each of the two libraries have a total capacity of 4000 LTO slots. The new library has been furthermore equipped with LTO6 drive technology, bringing to 11 LTO4/LTO6 drives the overall capability to work in parallel for archiving operations.

The Tape Library management system is built on Discovery Storage Manager (DSM) that controls both the Tape Libraries. The DSM solution supports automatic rotation of exhausted tapes life cycle, and also features the automatic management of off-line backup tapes and hot migration program management. Moreover the system grants the capability to rebuild the entire archive with information collected from tapes after a severe outage (disaster recovery).

Reply value
Discovery Reply further consolidated its more than ten-years collaboration with RSI, proving its ability of guidance on the adoption of cutting edge technologies, along with a very deep understanding of the RSI's internal processes. The expertise on the archiving infrastructures and solutions, in collaboration with Oracle StorageTek, were combined with the deep knowledge of the video MXF standards and played as key factors for the success of the project. Discovery Reply is continuing to act as technological partner for RSI, bringing the know-how and expertise to design architectures with high technological innovation.