StreamGuys, Inc., a streaming media and content delivery provider, is bringing more virtualization to the streaming media world. The company is establishing a transparent virtualized platform that delivers true quality of service and an economical path to 100gbps host clusters.
“Virtualization and cloud computing have officially entered the lexicon of everyday discussion in the business world,” said Kiriki Delany, president of StreamGuys. “These are two very different concepts often confused as one-and-the-same. Our goal is to bring the benefits of virtualization to our existing customers, and expand to a true cloud-based computing service. We believe that the tangible benefits of virtualization, combined with our renowned service and support, will enable StreamGuys to offer better services to our customers in broadcast, worship, government, e-media and other markets.”
StreamGuys launched its Streaming Virtualization service to provide a next-generation environment for mission-critical content delivery and multimedia streaming. Virtualization separates the hardware layer from the services, offering improved redundancy and scalability, enhanced storage and recovery options, increased streaming capacity, advanced monitoring and reporting capabilities and reduced management. Costs are also decreased through a more efficient rack space footprint and a greener use of operating resources such as power and cooling.
Availability of service is a key feature for streaming media customers such as broadcasters that need 100 percent uptime. According to Delany, StreamGuys is taking advantage of virtualization to support high service availability and fault tolerance.
“We are building clusters of physical nodes on top of VMWare ESXi at the host level,” said Delany. “Abstracting the hardware layer from services allows us to modify architecture and adapt organically with demand. We also offer services with varying levels of redundancy and availability. This means we can more closely design and price solutions based on customer requirements.”
In terms of network capacity, StreamGuys is enabling a path to 100gbps services by standardizing on 10gbps network connectivity all the way to the physical host servers, allowing its customers to very easily scale for large events and bursts of traffic. The company is also expanding its data centers by implementing VMWare’s vSphere Hypervisor architecture at its Dupont Fabros (DFT) Data Center in Chicago, as well as in Amsterdam and other data center locations around the world.
The Streaming Virtualization service is also ideal for short-notice events, allowing StreamGuys to more rapidly provision services to meet custom demands than what is possible on physical systems.
Delany added that the company’s plans for cloud computing will grow out of its virtualization efforts, with a focus on maintaining a high quality of services through transparent, private clouds.
“Too often, the cloud becomes a fog where it’s difficult to understand the resources within,” said Delany. “Cloud computing at its best should provide a transparent, consolidated environment that improves resource management without sacrificing quality of service. The StreamGuys virtualization platform allows us to enhance engineering and architecture to meet professional quality of service and performance expectations.”
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