Eleventh Hour RAID

A makeshift RAID (redundant array of independent disks) threatened to foil Pixelon's big online broadcast that was just hours away. nStor used teamwork and ingenuity to provide a RAID system that worked.

Watching video on your computer screen is novel, but often quite disappointing. The picture is small, jerky, and blurry. Pixelon (San Juan Capistrano, CA) decided to change that. On October 29, 1999, it launched the first online broadcast network featuring full-screen, TV-quality video, and stereo-quality audio. Pixelon.com debuted with a Las Vegas concert by the Who.

Pixelon, founded in 1998, offers full-screen broadcast capability. Its technology solves the problem of inferior video broadcasting over the Web and opens the door for broadcasting existing and live-event video programming. In exchange for co-casting rights to content, Pixelon provides its services to organizations interested in broadcasting audio and video over the Web.

Pixelon was preparing to broadcast the live concert and to become the largest broadcaster on the Internet. As a new organization, it was about to introduce the largest independent, totally flash-driven Web site in history. Pixelon developed its own patented player that streams video, on demand, over the Net.

Redundancy Was A Crucial Element
Data storage was a critical element in successfully completing the Who broadcast. Pixelon's new RAID system was not up to the task, though. The previous integrators had taken a nonentity enclosure, dropped some drives in it, and tried to run it with a questionable RAID controller.

"Just three days prior to launch, two systems crashed," said Charles Pittmann, Pixelon's director of network services. Pixelon focused its attention on the condition of its RAID. A tape library sales presentation that Richard Shaw, senior account manager of nStor (Lake Mary, FL), had planned would have to be postponed. In a follow-up telephone call, Shaw found out about the RAID problem. He reminded Pixelon that nStor specializes in RAID arrays.

Pixelon had just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on new IBM hard drives and a makeshift enclosure and controller. But, it also had invested $10 million in a launch that might never happen, unless data could be stored redundantly. "Pixelon wanted us to get our firmware (software that is read-only) to work with the hardware that was already installed," explained Shaw. "nStor prefers to provide the entire solution for quality control and complete system integrity. But, we wanted to prove to Pixelon (a potentially new account) that we would provide support. We wanted to find out if the IBM drives they currently had would work with the firmware we use."

While all this was happening, one of Pixelon's Web technicians burst into the conference room. "We just lost an entire RAID array in New York," he said. That was the last straw. Pixelon offered to give the entire job to nStor if it could get the RAID system up and running in time for Pixelon's broadcast.

The Key Was Teamwork Between Newly Merged Companies
"During this time, we were facing our own set of challenges," said Shaw. nStor had recently merged with ANDATACO (San Diego). "Shaw was in San Diego, and most of the equipment was still being manufactured in Lake Mary, FL. Through teamwork between the two merging companies, nStor delivered and installed six of its GigaRAID/LS Fibre Channel storage systems within 48 hours. This helped Pixelon avoid disaster.

Besides providing Pixelon two GigaRAID/LS units at its San Juan Capistrano location, nStor installed units in four co-locations across the country within two days. The systems have been in operation since the initial broadcast, and Pixelon has added a seventh system with an eighth on order.

The GigaRAID/LS provides bandwidth transfer rates for streaming video applications and thousands of I/Os (input/outputs) per second. It works well for OLTP (online transaction processing) environments like Pixelon's. It exceeds the demands of UNIX and Windows NT platforms. The GigaRAID/LS uses several RAID levels to increase throughput and data protection. It has the ability to be monitored from a remote or local site with nStor's AdminiStor storage management software.

Being in the right place at the right time, and not being afraid to ask questions, resulted in a sale for Richard Shaw. Being able to work through the challenges of communications and operations of a newly merged company made the whole solution work.