86 Friday 13.09.13 theibcdaily
Making the hybrid cloud work for broadcasters
By Bram Tullemans, project manager, EBU
In the current climate broadcasters can’t afford to have capacity sitting idle. This is why the cloud and the virtualisation of services offer so much promise. But to fully meet the needs of broadcasters, solutions need to integrate scalability in a private cloud setting and the possibility of extending virtualised services to the public cloud. While there are solutions out there, they’re not optimised to meet broadcasters’ needs. Virtualised and cloud services
are beneficial for both production and distribution. More and more actors in the production domain work from different locations connected via third party (fibre) networks. We are not talking about fixed location only but also, for example, ENG crews uploading live feeds via cellular networks. This decentralised model
creates new requirements. In the ENG case one could imagine a cloud service providing editing functions for a journalist in the field. Temporarily installing this cloud- based service in the network of the local access service provider would optimise the latency and data provisioning requirements.
If latency is not a bottleneck the cloud service could be provided from a media gateway close to well-connected hubs or even from the broadcast facility. The decision to use a private, public or hybrid cloud setup rests on the need to optimise data flows with regard to latency, sustained bandwidth and transport costs. We could imagine a distribution use case where a single broadcaster needs to efficiently allocate resources for
three activities: encoding a constant content flow of live and on-demand files; serving a variable number of concurrent users accessing this content via broadband platforms throughout the day; and the transcoding of an archive library for on-demand services. The first operation requires a constant capacity; the second typically peaks during the prime viewing period in the evening; and the third is not a daily routine but more a one-time effort with a separate allocated budget. While it’s relatively easy to allocate resources to a constant, predictable process, it doesn’t make sense to install permanent servers for a one- time activity or to handle traffic peaks.
Elastic change The use of public clouds for distribution can also bring the benefit of a better connection with certain ISPs (Internet Service Providers), resulting in improved Quality of Service for the end user. Normally broadcasters deliver their content via (private or public) peering and/or CDNs. Nowadays one can add Amazon's connectivity to the equation by using their cloud (CDN) services to upscale distribution nodes. Imagine the possibilities if content providers can themselves temporarily install caching nodes deep into third party networks close to the end user.
Distribution will take on a whole new meaning, as the up- and down-scaling of caching at specific locations could be automated on the basis of realtime information about what part of the internet network is congested and how expensive
‘We in the EBU have also been working on a prototype cloud infrastructure’
it will be to use alternative online delivery routes. This again is the promise of Service Defined Networks (SDNs) and it is expected that also CDNs in the future will be able to deliver these kinds of 'cloud' service. So we can see that the virtualisation of services using a hybrid cloud setup could optimise resources and minimise operational costs by elastically changing the amount of encoding or distribution
can make costs more transparent as capacity can be allocated to specific projects rather than to the infrastructure as a whole. There is a growing demand for integrated services that help broadcasters to create their own application environment in the cloud that can be rolled out elastically throughout the internet, optimising data flows that arise from a temporary need. We are not talking about
‘We are not talking about a virtualised encoder anymore but a whole cloud infrastructure that can connect to other interoperable cloud environments’
nodes in a private and public cloud. The hybrid scenario is attractive as there is a payoff when choosing wisely between temporarily rented and structurally allocated capacity. The flexibility of the cloud
approach also allows a broadcaster to adapt to the sudden growth of popularity for a service, as one can temporarily upscale the capacity. At the same time it
a virtualised encoder anymore but a whole cloud infrastructure that can connect to other interoperable cloud environments. This is not a scenario from the distant future. Indeed, parts of this approach have been realised already. On one hand we have pure
R&D projects, while at the same time we see some broadcasters rolling out real production environments and larger
decentralised cloud setups. One example is SWISS TXT who, for the Swiss public broadcast umbrella organisation SRG SSR, have built a private cloud setup using two well- connected media gateways located in Zurich and Biel. From these locations common services will be provided for all four of the organisation’s broadcasters in the different language regions. We in the EBU have also been working on a prototype cloud infrastructure, based on entirely on open source software, both for the services themselves and the virtualisation of those services. This work, which is demonstrated at IBC (10.F20), has revealed many potential use cases as well as architectural and technical solutions that would be of interest to broadcasters and service providers.
The total constant capacity of the private cloud can be used by different virtualised services throughout the day. The public cloud is used only for offloading distribution peaks or cost efficient upscaling of transcoding jobs.
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