Cloud Streaming Workflows for Encoding and Disaster Recovery
Why create a hybrid event stream? Nadine Krefetz, Consultant, Reality Software, Contributing Editor, Streaming Media, asks three leading industry figures about the best use cases for making cloud-based hybrid events versus events that are fully on-prem.
“What are some of the specific things that are done in a hybrid environment?” Krefetz says. “What kind of [media-related] use cases do you we have here?”
Loke Dupont, Solution Architect, TV2, says that encoding is a good media-related use case for hybrid events. “A lot of companies will encode video that are just regular run of the mill, and they'll budget for that and have on-premise equipment for that,” he says. “And then suddenly you might license a new content catalog, and you need to ingest that within a certain time period. In that case, you can run it through your normal process, but it might take a long while because you don't necessarily have spare capacity. It's a relatively easy workload to burst into a cloud environment and run it there and then return it back to on premise. It's also one of the solutions that I think is very well supported by a lot of the encoding vendors…they can send you a physical box, you can plug in and rack somewhere and also the software will handle that automatically and move some of that workload of transcoding video into the cloud. Because it's such a good scenario for something that you do in a batch way, you have all this stuff that you run through and then once you're done with it, you can forget about it, just tear down all the cloud infrastructure and everything is fine. I think that's definitely one of the classic use cases for that.”
Andy Beach, CTO, Media & Entertainment, Worldwide, Microsoft, says that disaster recovery is a common use case regarding workflow management systems for the cloud. “So if you're running 10 to 15 channels of content regularly, and they run 24/7, stand them up, run them in an on-prem environment,” he says. “But that becomes a single point of failure for your content going out. So you would typically set up some sort of secondary site and source, and it's very easy to make that the cloud so that if the signal goes down on the first facility, you get an outage or there's a disaster in that area, an earthquake or something else, then the systems switch over automatically to that secondary space if it's in a cloud. Infrastructure is only spun up for the time period that it's needed until you do the recovery and revert back to your primary sources.”
John Jacobs, Field CISO, Fortinet, remarks, “That is probably the most digestible use case right there. We've seen so many people that just say, ‘We're not going to spend this for a disaster recovery scenario,’ that it's perfect. It's there, it's available in cloud…from the first instantiation, it's on when you want it and then just off.”
Krefetz says, “So for disaster recovery, is it more common to go multi-cloud or single cloud?”
Beach says, “It’s a great question, and it really depends on the comfort level of the engineering group or the ops group. Often people will start with one, and then there will be an outage in that cloud because even clouds have outages at times. And so they will make backups for the backups. And so it becomes a scenario where you likely start with an individual one, but over time you have as many backups as possible. There's a reason I have four keys to my house strategically placed where I know where to find them. I like to have backups!”
Learn more about encoding, hybrid, and cloud streaming workflows at Streaming Media East 2023.
Related Articles
One concern with migrating streaming infrastructure and content storage from on-prem to the cloud is ensuring that your content assets are just as accessible via remote data centers as when you had them all stored in physical proximity on-site. CBS' Sports' Corey Smith, Signiant's Rick Capstraw, Telestream's Richard Andes, and IntelliVid Research's Steve Vonder Haar discuss the attendant challenges and how to overcome them in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
10 Jan 2024
One of the popular arguments in favor of cloud migration for streaming producers concerns the economics of scalability. CBS Sports' Corey Smith, Intellivid Research's Steve Vonder Haar, and Loke Dupont of TV2 in Denmark discuss the key benefits of moving to cloud streaming workflows in this clip from their panel at Streaming Media Connect 2023.
06 Dec 2023
Securing cloud-based streams is a critical issue, largely different from securing on-prem streaming architecture. Fortinet's John Jacobs discusses the critical challenges and explains how it's done in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
07 Apr 2023
Where is the edge when it comes to streaming? Experts from Disney Streaming and Amazon Web Services offer their take in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
17 Mar 2023
Netflix's Andrey Norkin discusses challenges Netflix has faced rolling out AV1 support given persisting hardware and device issues in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
15 Mar 2023
LinkedIn's Dan Swiney and Lockheed Martin's Eric Hards discuss how their organizations' approach to events and internal meetings has evolved since the pandemic's start in this panel from Streaming Media West 2022.
17 Feb 2023
090 Media's Alex Lindsay discusses the challenges of engaging remote streaming audiences with hybrid events and the advantages of digital-first productions in this clip from Streaming Media West 2022.
16 Jan 2023
Microsoft's Andy Beach and LiveX's Corey Behnke discuss best practices for delivering effective hybrid and virtual events using streaming technology in this clip from Streaming Media West 2022.
11 Jan 2023
Hosting a successful hybrid event means understanding how to create the best virtual and in-person event strategy while ensuring that event organizers prepare for all possible variables.
24 Aug 2022
With its lightning-quick action and intense high-motion graphics, livestreamed esports presents unique encoding challenges for outfits like Activision Blizzard that need to delivery top-quality streams to mass gaming audiences all the time. In this clip from Streaming Media Connect, Blizzard's Corey Smith explains how they do it and what they prioritize along the way.
29 Mar 2022
Streaming Learning Center's Jan Ozer explains how Netflix's shot-based works and explains its benefits in this clip from his presentation at Streaming Media Connect 2021.
12 Mar 2021
Companies and Suppliers Mentioned