Ever wondered about the IT infrastructure
satellite TV channels have at the backend? Here we present an up close view of
one of leaders in sports entertainment: ESPN-Star Sports (ESS). Over the years
the channel has revolutionized sports broadcasting. ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50
joint venture between two of the world's leading cable and satellite
broadcasters, ESPN and STAR.
ESS also has extensive on-line portals such as espnstar.com,
espnstar.com.cn, and espnstar.com.tw to interact with millions of users
providing them with in-depth sports news, results, and competitions. This
multilingual, online platform is closely integrated with ESPN and STAR Sports on
air networks and has established the sites as the number one on-line sports
destination in their respective markets.
At a Glance |
Issue: Benefits
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ESPN had setup its complete Web applications and database
servers at two data centers in the US and Hong Kong respectively. Interestingly
close to around 80% of the Internet traffic was from India, but despite that
ESPN out of concern of quality of service and Internet bandwidth in India had
decided to place its setup at the US and Hong Kong. In time ESPN found it
difficult to manage and maintain its sites as the setup was hosted in two data
centers. Making matters more complicated is the company's development team
based out of Bangalore. So facilities spread across geographically was a key
challenge.
As we take a closer look at the IT set up, ESPN STAR was
running their online Web and application servers on three Dual CPU, 500 Mhz, 1
GB RAM Intel systems. All these servers were load balanced to take care of huge
Internet traffic. At the backend, Oracle Database was running on two Sun-402-R
Quad CPU, 2 GB RAM machines. Further 5 Sunfire V240 servers were used to run
other applications and Oracle Database. ESPN was incurring huge cost in getting
managed service support from these data centers coupled up with traveling cost
of its own people for important meetings and activities.
ESPN considered the option of migrating complete setup from
US and Hong Kong to India, but were looking at a service provider who can
provide high uptime, server with complete managed support, high quality Internet
bandwidth, and host of other managed services. Objective was to have more
control and ease of operation, better service experience to end-users, and at
the same time reduce high cost of hosting in the US and Hong Kong.
After doing a due diligence of various vendors, ESPN STAR
chose Reliance Infocomm-IDC. To this end Reliance provided all the hardware to
run Web/Application and Database setup. Meanwhile on the server side multiple
Sun Fire V440 Servers for Oracle 8i / 9i database, and Six Sun Fire V240 Server
with Solaris 8 Operating System for other applications were deployed. All the
servers are provided with complete managed support with high up time guarantees.
For the purpose of security, Reliance has offered all the services and support
to ensure highest safety.
Some of the added benefits ESS accrued are the isolated VLAN
of the servers and managed firewall with customized policies of customer thus
giving the benefit of a virtually dedicated firewall. Network based Intrusion
detection service is provided to monitor all the traffic coming to / going from
customer's server for preventive detection of attacks / misuses. For secure
access to servers through Internet, Reliance has configured a secure IPSec VPN
tunnel at its VPN concentrator cum firewall box, and has provided the IPSec
client to ESPN, which can be installed at their end PC. ESS also made use of
other managed services offered by the vendor and created a pro-active IT
infrastructure backbone.
Shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in