Televisión Canaria Migrates to All-Disk Archive With DAC’s ALTO-II

Televisión Canaria, the broadcasting authority for Spain’s Canary Islands, has migrated its entire archive from LTO tape to an ALTO all-disk storage system from Disk Archive Corporation.

Initially configured with 1,6PB of storage, the ALTO replaces previous archive installation based on a robotic tape library and a third-party Archive Management system.

Two ALTO-II systems with four EX-60 expansion chassis and a dual ALTO Filer, the system’s Virtual File System interface were provided by Datos Media Technologies SA to Televisión Canarias for the new installation based at the Videoreport Canarias HQs.

The ALTO storage is integrated with the broadcaster’s traffic, playout and newsroom systems through an in-house developed Media Management system. Clips are copied and transcoded using software developed by Videoreport Canarias, and each subsystem of the MAM exchanges material from the ALTO in the required format. Access to the audiovisual files is via a network folder accessed from any point in the network, making it easy for the broadcaster to implement open-ended future developments.

“ALTO is a great alternative for mass storage; it is a versatile and scalable technology that’s simple to use,” said Vicente Tetuani, system manager, Videoreport Canarias. “ALTO breaks the bonds of tape-based data systems and minimizes maintenance costs. The scalability of the system and the fact that it is based on standard commodity disks gives us the flexibility to predict and manage the growth of the archive with secure user-selectable replication for backups and DR.”

ALTO-II is a scalable, flexible and secure alternative to a tape library for media storage, offering faster access for many more users with a low capital outlay and low TCO. ALTO takes advantage of recent developments in disk drive technology and new strategies for data protection to offer performance and economic benefits for applications including media acquisition, production and distribution, archives and content libraries.

“We have many years experience working on the integration of MAM systems, and for this particular project, the archive migration was incredibly comfortable, transparent, and extremely fast,” said David Martinez, COO, Datos Media Technologies. “The ALTO system was installed and configured in three days, with the migration beginning the next day. Within two weeks we had already migrated 120TB of content and created the corresponding protection replicas.”