World Wrestling Entertainment With Isilon

Isilon Systems, Inc. announced that World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) has deployed Isilon scale-out storage to power its audio post-production.

Using Isilon’s X-Series, featuring its OneFS operating system, WWE has consolidated its leading-edge audio post-production pipeline onto a single, shared pool of storage, simplifying content management and accelerating project completion times. With Isilon, WWE can provide its audio engineers with concurrent access to hundreds of thousands of small audio files, enabling seamless, real-time collaboration to deliver quality audio productions in less time and at less cost, while reducing the risk of downtime due to equipment outages.    

"The inherent redundancy of an Isilon cluster was very appealing to us. We’re broadcasting new content year-round, so we simply can’t afford any downtime," said Lionel Hightower, Vice President of Engineering, WWE. "Without a central storage system, a project created in a specific audio suite remained in that suite, putting that project at risk if the suite went offline. Isilon enabled us to consolidate our entire audio editing workflow, allowing audio engineers to access any project from any audio suite."

WWE is an integrated media organization delivering original content 52 weeks a year in more than 145 countries and 30 languages, reaching more than 500 million homes worldwide. Prior to using Isilon, WWE didn’t have a central storage system in the audio post production group, forcing its audio engineers to manually migrate audio content back and forth between workstations, which limited both production quality and workflow productivity.

"We have a very fast-paced schedule with a high benchmark for quality and creativity, so losing content isn’t an option," said Chris Argento, VP of Post Production, WWE. "Before deploying Isilon, I doubted that any system could keep up with our workflow, but Isilon proved me wrong. We went as far as to pull the power plug on a node while recording 48 channels simultaneously and didn’t lose any content. That’s pretty amazing."

Working with Isilon channel partner Tekserve Corp., WWE deployed Isilon’s X-Series to unify its audio editing operations, enabling the playback of up to 96 audio tracks and one track of high-definition video simultaneously across four Fairlight Xynergi audio production suites, a significant increase in concurrent data performance. Using Isilon’s SyncIQ software application, WWE can seamlessly replicate content between its two X-Series clusters, ensuring its critical audio content is always secure and immediately available. With Isilon scale-out storage, WWE can manage its entire audio post-production pipeline from a single storage resource, reducing storage management to less than one-third of one full-time equivalent.

"WWE is a worldwide leader in entertainment, having set the standard for live-action television and gamesmanship over the past five decades," said Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing, Isilon. "Today, they’re setting the standard for best practices in storage and IT by using Isilon to eliminate complexity and accelerate productivity for their high-definition audio post-production."