SKY Italia, a digital satellite TV platform owned by News Corp., has purchased FlashNet content storage and archive management software from Software Generation (SGL).
SKY Italia has integrated FlashNet in a multiple control system architecture for the transfer of data into and out of the archive at the highest possible speeds, under the control of TMD's Mediaflex asset management system and Harris ADC transmission automation. The SKY Italia configuration includes six FlashNet cluster nodes that run identical software driven by a Microsoft SQL database. Each node can perform any task and is connected via switch to Omneon's MediaGrid content storage system. In the SKY Italia configuration, MediaGrid provides 100TB of mirrored (50TB usable) storage with 28TB allocated for the nearline archive. The library is a SpectraLogic T950, which includes six LT04 tape drives.
The project was developed to archive from a number of locations including, Omneon Spectrum servers (for transmission and ingest) and Thomson Grass Valley Profile servers. Following initial archive to disk, data is transferred to tape under the control of SGL's StorageManager, a component of FlashNet that allows SKY Italia operators to apply lifecycle rules to move, copy and manage material within the archive storage hierarchy, based on their specific business requirements.
For more information, visit www.sgluk.com.
