Canadian Broadcaster Dougall Media Selects JetStor

Dougall Media, a regional broadcaster in Thunder Bay, Ontario, modernized its entire virtualization and storage stack by moving from legacy VMware systems to a Proxmox cluster.

With dual JetStor SANs, RAID-60 arrays, Lenovo M5 blade servers, and Aruba 5400 switches, the new setup delivers full redundancy, blazing performance, and nonstop availability for their media operations.

This new infrastructure delivers reliable performance and full redundancy. With continuous VM expansion, RAID-60 fault tolerance, and scalable architecture, the platform is built to support demanding virtualization workloads.

• SSD-powered storage for production workloads
• Redundant RAID-60 arrays for data protection
• Scalable Proxmox cluster for future growth

The client was operating on outdated VMware infrastructure with aging storage and growing risk of failure. With an always-on broadcast environment and increasing digital demands, they needed a rock-solid, redundant architecture and a fast, seamless migration path without disruption to daily operations.

To modernize its environment, Dougall Media migrated from VMware to a Proxmox-based virtualization platform supported by fully redundant JetStor storage. One XS3324S unit was configured with SSDs for production workloads, while the other used high-capacity HDDs for backup. Both systems run RAID-60 with active replication and are configured for failover using multipath I/O. Installed in separate areas of the building, they provide site-level resilience and integrate with Lenovo M5 blade servers and Aruba 5400 switches to ensure VM migration, HA, and long-term scalability.

Technical Overview

• Primary Storage
  • JetStor XS3324S
    24×1.9TB SAS Kioxia SSDs 4U 24-bay  RAID-60  iSCSI
    Delivers low-latency performance with active replication
• Backup Storage
  • JetStor XS3324S
    24x24TB SAS WD HDDs 4U 24-bay  RAID-60  iSCSI
    Supports offsite recovery from isolated location
• Virtualization and Infrastructure
  • 12-node Proxmox Cluster
    Lenovo M5 Blade Servers Aruba 5400 Core Switches
    Configured with MPIO for storage path failover

“I’m happy to say we have both JetStor SANs up and running in a redundant pair with 2 massive RAID-60s as the backend for our 12-node Proxmox Cluster. The level of redundancy is insane, second only to JetStor performance,” said  Chris Dorota, director, engineering, Dougall Media.