Broadcast Media Creation as a Service: Dynamically Scalable Environments Powered by Infrastructure-as-Code and the Public Cloud

摘要

Traditionally, the infrastructure required for broadcast media creation has consisted ofspecialized GPU workstations, high-performance storage arrays, complex networking, and videowiring; all of which are capital intensive and costly to maintain. Over the past year, NBCUniversal hasbeen evaluating a cloud infrastructure model, to provide on-air media creation as a service to itscreative teams. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technology has been around for years, butbecause of media specific challenges (GPU utilization, frame rate, color representation, etc.), it has notbeen fully adopted in media workflows, until now. Utilizing GPU-enabled cloud-based virtual machines,dynamically scalable high-performance cloud-native storage, and infrastructure-as-codemethodologies, we are now able to provide full end-to-end media production workflows in the publiccloud. The infrastructure-as-code philosophy treats compute, storage, database and network systemsas software, prioritizing automation, efficiency, versioning and reusability. Closely aligned,configuration management tools allow us to deploy software and specialized configurations to manysystems simultaneously. Using an automation-forward approach, we know exactly what is going to beapplied, how it will propagate through the infrastructure, and what dependencies are involved. Elasticscalability of compute and storage eliminates over-provisioning (and its related capital investments),and provides the ability to dynamically add/remove resources as necessary. Additionally, the use of IPvideo technology enables devices and applications to share audio and video across the network.Through configuration examples and system diagrams, this paper will highlight the technical details of this programmatically reproducible solution, as well as the challenges and benefits of media creation inthe cloud. Critically, we seek to offer the broadcast community an insight into “non-broadcast”technologies and tools which are fast becoming crucial to our industry. Key data points and discussiontopics include network bandwidth and cloud connectivity requirements, performance metrics for cloudstorage solutions, scalability factors and user experience – can creatives tell the difference betweentraditional workstations and cloud virtual machines?