High Availability for Enterprise Video
When an enterprise makes the decision to adopt an enterprise video platform for IPTV, there are a number of key factors to consider prior to choosing the solution. For instance, are the IPTV channels mission-critical, or primarily for employee info & entertainment. Are you also looking to live stream internal company broadcasts or webcasts? If so, how many concurrent users need to watch simultaneously? Across how many office locations will live video be streamed? Will users be watching from outside the firewall? What about digital signage? And for all these functions, is streaming to the desktop suitable or should there be TV screens powered by set-top-boxes?
Another factor to consider is the tolerance level for video platform downtime, especially for when IPTV channels provide information that are deemed critical to business success (breaking news, financial information, weather, and so on), or for live streaming important internal events such CEO all-hands presentations.
For some organizations, availability of video streams is critical, but not all enterprise IPTV video platforms are designed to ensure availability of streams even in the case of system failures. When video streams are considered to be “mission-critical”, you need to look for a platform that provides reliable guarantee of performance – known as high availability.
What is high availability?
The term high availability refers to a characteristic of a system that makes it robust and likely to operate for a long periods without downtime, often through the incorporation of redundant components into the design to overcome failures. For many organizations, reliable delivery of IPTV video to employees behind the firewall is a critical component of business success – world events may have major business significance – and access to IPTV channels are an important part of day-to-day operations. Even temporary video downtime can have significant adverse effects. Enterprise IPTV video platforms that support high availability help mitigate the risk.
Generally speaking, cloud-based video platforms have scalability built in and can offer highly available levels of service provided that there are no internet service outages. However, with cloud-based systems, some risk managers are concerned about private information data breaches, and in many cases, the answer for these organizations is to keep their enterprise video platform on the premises, behind the firewall, where there is tight security governing who can access the data, and where network performance is assured.
How can I ensure my enterprise video platform is high availability?
In the case of on-premises server-based systems, or even in hybrid on-premises/cloud approaches, not all enterprise video platforms are designed for high availability. The guarantee of true high availability is dependent on system designs that take into account all aspects of the end-to-end live video workflow: reliable encoding and stream contribution, edge server redundancy, endpoint robustness, RAID-protected storage, and a failover mechanism for the core system (including power supply and servers), which is ultimately critical to ensure database integrity for managing content and metadata synchronization, as well as respecting user permissions.
Haivision is a recognized leader in IPTV and enterprise video with Haivision Media Platform and offers high availability as an option for organizations that have mission-critical video requirements. So if you are searching for an enterprise video platform that can securely and reliably distribute live video, video-on-demand, and IPTV channels to screens throughout your organization and you need assurances of high availability for some or all of your video content, download the Haivision Media Platform datasheet or get in touch with our video experts to discuss your needs and get a demo.
