CUBIK MEDIA
ALACRITECH CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

Alacritech Improves Performance of VoD, Transaction Processing and Other Web-based Services for Cubik Media

• Industry/Market:
  » Media
  
• Challenge:
  » Provide seamless online video streaming, transaction processing and other Web-based services to dozens of clients
  » Maximize revenue by meeting aggressive service level agreements and avoid costly refunds and charge backs
  » Protect corporate reputation as a company that provides highperforming, highly available Web solutions to customers
  » Improve server utilization and get the most out of the server infrastructure to minimize expenditures
  
• Solution:
  » 12 Alacritech iSCSI Scalable Network Accelerators
  
• Benefits:
  » Up to 20 percent decrease in CPU usage for processing VoD and transaction-based services
  » Customer complaints have decreased by 25 percent along with requests for refunds and charge backs, preserving revenue, improving the company’s corporate reputation and encouraging repeat business
  » Higher availability of content on customer Web sites has resulted in less downtime and a more reliable and robust customer service
  » The increase in performance enabled the consolidation of dozens of rack servers to four virtual servers, reducing cost, space and management pain
  » Improved server utilization extends the life of hardware, saving on future server expenditures as well as management, power and cooling costs

Business Overview:
Cubik Media is a multi-media organization providing Video on Demand (VOD) and Web solutions for various sites and enterprises. The agency’s clients include E*Trade, Pacific Gas & Electric, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Gamespot, SF Performances and the US Potato Board.

Business Challenge:
Cubik Media provides Video on Demand (VoD), transaction processing and other Web-based services to a variety of companies, organizations and non-profits throughout the U.S., ensuring that these services are always available to consumers on the Web and other online portals. Aggressive service level agreements (SLAs) are put in place with its clients that—if not met—trigger refunds and charge backs, creating financial incentive for Cubik to make sure customers can access these services seamlessly and easily.

In order to meet the strict SLAs, Cubik needs to deploy a powerful server and storage environment that can serve data quickly and efficiently to the company’s Web-based, customer-facing applications. Cubik recently shifted from Direct Attached SCSI and SATA storage to an iSCSI SAN in an effort to boost performance while reducing daily maintenance and improving scalability. However, while the IP storage solution solved the manageability issues, customers continued to complain of slow data processing and video streaming.

“Even with the upgrade to iSCSI we just weren’t getting the throughput we needed for our VoD services,” said Greg Lindberg, CTO, Cubik Media. “We couldn’t run the risk of triggering refunds and charge backs because of a lack of performance.” Unfortunately, simply adding servers to boost performance is not always the best solution, since any performance increase can be cancelled out by additional network complexity and the added cost of procurement, load balancing and management software.

“We knew that the most efficient way to boost performance was to improve the utilization of existing servers,” Lindberg said. “We needed to squeeze every drop of compute power out of our server environment.”

“The Alacritech accelerators allow us to meet the aggressive SLAs we’ve put in place with our customers, eliminating costly charge backs and refunds. The boost in performance acts as protection for our revenue stream.”

Network Accelerators Boost Server Performance 10 Percent
On a recommendation from NetApp, Cubik Media deployed Alacritech iSCSI Scalable Network Accelerators in its server environment, dramatically improving VoD streaming, transaction processing and other Web-based services. The network accelerators are deployed on eight SuperMicro dual-Xeon processor servers (two file servers, two SQL servers and four virtual servers), boosting the performance of an already powerful server environment.

The Alacritech accelerators take the TCP processing burden off of the processor, allowing the server to focus exclusively on application processing and data serving. Since installing the accelerators, Lindberg has seen a 20 percent increase in CPU performance, allowing the video to stream faster. At the same time, online transactions and other Web-based services are more reliable, creating a better, more pleasant customer experience.

“The 20 percent increase makes all the difference in the VoD world,” Lindberg said. “Our video is streaming faster and it’s more reliable and more robust. When you are physically viewing something—and it’s not choppy or cutting away—you can definitely tell the difference.”

Cubik Media was able to install the Alacritech network accelerators within minutes, making the server upgrade process much easier. An administrator can simply pop the cards out of the old server and plug them in the new system, transferring the performance and availability benefits to the new systems. As the company continues to grow its business and customer base, it plans to leverage additional Alacritech network accelerators in future server expansion projects, an easy proposition given Alacritech’s ease of deployment and scalable architecture.

Lindberg was also able to take advantage of Alacritech’s performance increase to consolidate 40 rack-mounted servers to four virtual servers running dozens of applications from Exchange email filters to load balancing to blogging software. Without the increase in server performance due to the scalable network accelerators taking the TCP load, Lindberg said that the virtualization wouldn’t be possible due to the huge shared storage requirements of the virtual machines. As a result, each virtual server is able to host more applications, enabling the impressive consolidation.

By consolidating servers, Cubik Media is able to further reduce capital and operational costs associated with deploying and managing its server environment. The four virtual servers are much more costeffective to purchase and maintain than 40 rack-mounted servers, and the fully optimized systems are more resilient, further decreasing the need to procure more equipment.

Meeting Aggressive Performance and Availability SLAs
As a result of boosting server performance with the Alacritech iSCSI Scalable Network Accelerators, Cubik Media is able to provide seamless VoD, transaction processing and other Web-based services to its clients. Customers are now able to reliably purchase tickets or other goods online and view video on demand without long buffer times or choppy content. According to Lindberg, customer complaints and trouble tickets have declined 25 percent since migrating to the new iSCSI storage environment.

“The Alacritech accelerators allow us to meet the aggressive SLAs we’ve put in place with our customers, eliminating costly charge backs and refunds,” Lindberg said. “The boost in performance acts as a protection for our revenue stream.”

Cubik Media customers have seen a marked improvement in the service they receive. Music lovers are able to visit SFCM.org to order tickets to an upcoming performance, foodies are able to order organic products at planetorganics.com and amateur directors can share their latest shorts on DV.com. Cubik Media won the Business Achievement in the Arts award from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce for its work with San Francisco Performances, a Web site offering patrons streaming video of recent chamber music, vocal and instrumental recitals, jazz and contemporary dance. The quality and availability of the video played a large role in developing the user-friendly site.

Beyond the customer experience, the Alacritech iSCSI Scalable Network Accelerators help Cubik Media keep IT costs low while still meeting performance and availability SLAs. The higher server utilization decreases the physical number of systems by 10 to 1. The smaller infrastructure also saves on power and cooling, helping to lower the company’s electricity bill and reduce its carbon footprint.

System Configuration: