Resiliency and Cloud Production
Effective use of resiliency models and cloud production is based on multiple and sometimes unpredictable factors. Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Chair, Streaming Media Conferences, and CMO, id3as, talks with Jef Kethley, Executive Director/President, LiveSports, LLC about how his organization handles resiliency and cloud production in different production environments.
“Could you talk about what sort of resiliency models you're using?” Schumacher-Rasmussen asks Kethley. “Is it multiple availability zones, load balancing? How do those decisions change or how do the answers change when it's cloud versus on-prem versus hybrid?”
“There's a pain point for everybody, right?” Kethley says. “It always comes down to what does it cost, because that's where the pain point is going to start. If it just costs a little bit more, let's go ahead and make those backups in a different way for us. We're heavy in Amazon Web Services (AWS), but as everybody knows around here, AWS has some challenges at times – availability of machines, for instance. We distribute our workflow within AWS, multiple data centers, even around the world for that matter. But we're also at the same time leveraging. If it is an event [where] it matters to the client that we need that backup and they want to see that resiliency, then we'll move to multiple clouds…it's just another line item.”
Kethley emphasizes that planning on using multiple and resilient data centers is essential. “We have a proof of concept that we worked [on] with the Sienna Group…it's basically using their routers and their processing engines, where everything was tied into multiple zones back and forth and with fall-overs and everything – it was super resilient.” He says that his organization has found that proving resiliency to “old broadcast people” is essential, along with maintaining an agile approach to solving on-prem issues, especially regarding cloud production.
“In the cloud, you could build that infrastructure as far as you want to…as long as it's cost-effective,” Kethley says. “It makes sense to do it sometimes, though it's very easy to get more complex in that workflow than you need to be. So, there's always that side of it too.”
Learn more about Resiliency and Cloud Production at Streaming Media West 2022.
Watch full-session videos from Streaming Media Connect 2022.