Imagine Communications Michael Rebel explains why replicating a primary playout centre in the cloud can helps broadcasters if disaster strikes
By Contributor
Published: September 16, 2021
Imagine Communications' Michael Rebel explains why replicating a primary playout centre in the cloud can helps broadcasters if disaster strikes
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Every major broadcaster acknowledges that they have to consider disaster recovery. Apart from meeting audience expectations, if a channel is off air, it cannot transmit commercials. Without commercials, it has no income. Getting the station back on air-and broadcasting commercials-is clearly vital.
But, given today's very reliable technology, a large investment in replicating the primary playout centre could be seen as wasted money: a lot of hardware (and real estate) that will never go to air.
The question, then, is how to ensure business continuity through a disaster recovery site that gets the channel on air in the shortest possible time, that can be operated from anywhere, and involves the least amount of engineering support to launch? And the answer that broadcasters are increasingly turning to is the cloud.
On demand Start-up costs aside, it can be extremely cost-effective to keep a standby system in the cloud: ready to start when you need it; dormant when you do not. For many, cloud-based disaster recovery serves as a good, practical first experience of media in the cloud.
Whichever provider you choose, what you buy from them is access to effectively infinite amounts of processing power and storage space. We have worked extensively with AWS and other cloud suppliers, but AWS also offers some media-specific services (through their acquisition of Elemental) like media processing, transcoding and live streaming.
It is important to bear in mind that moving to the cloud is not an all or nothing, irreversible decision. The very nature of the cloud means it is simple to flex the amount of processing you put there, so if you should decide to back away it is simple to do so.
The cloud is an element within the IP transition-you decide when and how to make that transition, and when and how much to use the cloud. For many broadcasters, disaster recovery is an excellent way to try out cloud services.
Keeping it familiar With today's software-defined architectures, systems should perform identically whether they are in dedicated computers in the machine room, virtualised in the corporate data centre, or in the cloud. Consistent operation is especially important in disaster recovery deployments; if disaster strikes, the last thing you want is for operators to scrabble around trying to make sense of an unfamiliar system.
That does not mean that the primary system and the disaster recovery site must be identical. But with a well-designed cloud solution, you should be able to emulate the same user interfaces. This makes it easy for the operators to switch back and forth between the two different environments.
It also means you can set resilience and availability by channel. You might want your premium channels to switch over to disaster recovery in seconds, for example, while some of your secondary channels can be left for a while. That is a business decision.
Content is still king
One of the common misconceptions about cloud playout is that synchronising content between premises and the cloud demands a lot of bandwidth and potentially high costs. This need not be the case.
Faced with the imminent obsolescence of video tape libraries, and wary of the eternal cost of maintaining an LTO data tape library, many broadcasters are looking to archive in the cloud. You load the content once, confident that all the technology migration and maintenance will be carried out, flawlessly, by someone else.
You may have collaborative post-production by hosting content and decision lists in the cloud. Content-programmes and commercials-can be delivered direct to the cloud.
Playout, archiving, post and traffic may be managed as separate departments, but if you combine them content is only delivered to the cloud once. It is then available for playout without the high egress costs, and is securely stored at significant cost savings.
Outsourcing security Broadcasters have traditionally sought very high availability from the technology delivering premium channels. Five nines used to be regarded as the gold standard-99.999 per cent up time. Even that, though, is equivalent to about 5 minutes of dead air a year.
AWS offers its broadcast clients unimagined availability, up to maybe nine nines-effectively zero downtime. And it achieves that without any maintenance effort on your part: no disk replacement, no routine cleaning of air conditioning, no continual updates of operating systems and virus protection.
If the disaster is that your building has to be evacuated because of detected cases of a communicable disease, playout operators can work from home with exactly the same user interface and functionality as if they were sitting in the MCR.
If you want hot standby (complete parallel running in the cloud for almost instantaneous failover), then the technology allows it, if you choose to pay for the processing time. Alternatively, pick your own level of cold or warm standby, confident that, even from cold, loading and booting the channel playout instances can be accomplished in just a couple of minutes.
Cyberattacks are becoming an all-too familiar headline. Other industries have seen crippling incursions and software systems held to ransom. Developing a business continuity strategy that protects from such attacks is paramount.
Again, the cloud is the right solution. A good cloud provider will deliver better data security than you can do yourself. AWS has thousands of staff with the word securi
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
David Dvir, 2D founder (left), Sundeep Reddy (center), and Jean-Marc Bouchut (right), both of Zeiss...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang today visited the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to commission an NVIDIA DGX GB300 system - bringing one...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
Imagine Communications Michael Rebel explains why replicating a primary playout centre in the cloud can helps broadcasters if disaster strikes
