Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

TechTV REAPS PRODUCTIVITY BENEFITS WITH NEXSAN ATAboy2

In the daily crunch of creating and producing a full schedule of entertainment programming, there is constant work to digitize and store individual shows to put to air. TechTV, available in over 40 million homes in 70 countries, reuses content throughout their shows and faced the challenge of finding near-line storage to hold this digitized content for days and weeks. The option of using additional video servers was just not cost-effective for the cable channel. To resolve this challenge, TechTV turned to Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Nexsan Technologies, a leader in innovative storage solutions, for an affordable, reliable solution.

Because of storage limitations on the TechTV video server, the channel was forced to digitize content for shows prior to air, load and use the content, and then remove it to make way for new material. When earlier content was needed again in subsequent airings, it had probably been removed from the server (due to limited storage space on the server), requiring TechTV to redigitize the earlier content yet again, and load it back onto the servers for broadcast. The options to solve this problem were simple: either purchase an additional video server or choose a redundant, cost-effective storage solution for digitized content. They chose Nexsan's ATAboy2 to provide near-line storage.

"There was a lot of duplication of time and effort in having to digitize, delete and re-digitize content, and buying additional video servers for storage was an expensive alternative," Don Davis, system administrator, TechTV, said. "Choosing Nexsan's ATAboy2 as our near-line storage solution allows us to digitize once and store the content, and use it once, twice, or as many times as needed over a period of weeks, saving us valuable production time."

TechTV selected Nexsan's ATAboy2 with just under two terabytes, and installed the unit as a trial in November 2002. After seeing the results the product delivered, TechTV rolled the initial unit into production and bought additional ATAboy2 systems for in-house TV graphics use (and to provide storage for TechTV.com, a site that sees 1.5 million unique visitors a month) and for corporate use.

"The ATAboy2 delivers excellent throughput, excellent built-in redundancy and alerting features at one of the best price points in comparison to any other redundant product," continued Davis. "The ATAboy2's interface was very intuitive, allowing quick configuration, setup and then you're off and running. The ATAboy2 is a great, compact unit at a great price."

About ATAboy2

Nexsan's InfiniSAN line of disk-based storage solutions delivers the latest in form and function now. The InfiniSAN ATAboy series provides enterprise-class features and functionality in a low profile, correct-cost expandable package. The ATAboy2 provides unlimited flexibility in an advanced ATA disk-based solution. Unquestioned reliability results from utilizing redundancy and the latest advancements in RAID technology, while Nexsan's Extreme Intelligence Software, NexSCAN, provides sophisticated centralized management and monitoring of all Nexsan subsystems.

Nexsan's ATAboy2 ATA disk-based technology provides "next generation" performance, reliability and high data availability for the industry's most demanding storage and data delivery applications. Utilizing storage virtualization, the InfiniSAN ATAboy2 ATA disk-based systems scale from a correct-cost, entry-level solution while providing unchallenged expandability and superior fault tolerance supporting the storage industry's most demanding midrange to enterprise-class applications.