Disk Archive Corporation RaceTech Case Study Backed by 70 years of technical innovation and research, RaceTech provides outside broadcast and regulatory technical services to the horse racing industry. Supplying complex and industry advancing solutions, RaceTech are world leaders in Photofinish technology. Key to horse race broadcast requirements is having an optimised media archive capability that provides ease of access and usability for race officials and broadcasters. The traditional video archive flow was limited by slow physical tape processing, and a limiting production asset management (PAM) system integration. RaceTech selected the combination of a Disk Archive Corporation ALTO archive system and the Squared Paper Designs’ Busby ESB system, to provide a new generation solution to meet the demands of race officials and broadcasters. Disk Archive and Squared Paper worked with RaceTech to deliver a customised broadcast archive solution for horse racing. ALTO’s capability to scale and safely store assets, and then restore them within seconds, is providing industry professionals with instant web browser access to multiple views of over 250,000 assets spanning a 10 year archive. The Challenge RaceTech’s existing technologies meant that clients experienced inefficient workflows, limited by a slow tape-based archive. Users needed prompt archive searching and sharing, remote web access, multi-angle frame syncing, and collaborative PAM connectivity. Horse race broadcast requirements meant designing a practical and deliverable system for RaceTech, working with selected partners to deliver a perfect-fit solution with scope for future archive expansion and software development.

The Solution RaceTech partnered with Square Paper and DAC to design an end-to-end archive management system, incorporating ALTO archiving technology, CATDV asset management, and RaceTech’s existing software. Squared paper built a custom Busby broadcast Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and web application suite to align archive process and improve workflow efficiency. An ALTO III was deployed with two expansion enclosures (see photo), fully populated with disks ranging from 8TB to 16TB. The ALTO archive has allowed RaceTech to transfer over a quarter of a million HD clips and metadata files with instant access to content. Why choose Alto by Disk Archive? Disk Archive offers an affordable, secure and cost-effective technology for archiving and cold data storage. ALTO is a high-density offline data archive platform that’s enterprise-class and has been created to replace RAID storage systems and clumsy robotic tape libraries. ALTO offers easy-to-use, scalable capacity, and security through a user-definable replication level. Based on fully spun-down disks, ALTO has ultra-low power consumption and triple digit extended disk life . ALTO allows for both on-line and offline data storage. It uses individually managed commodity disks that can externalize for vault storage or bank-like security. ALTO is compatible with the best media management applications and supported by more than 30 industry-leading Media Management and Archive Management Technology Partners. ALTO can easily scale up or down to meet changing business needs. ALTO-based archives can be started as one device in a one place and expand without restriction to, increase security, geographical diversity, or scale. ALTO uses the latest data protection strategies and has the unique ability to add disks from any vendor as needed. ALTO scales up to 1EiB (1.024PiB), and does not require costly or time-consuming migration. This makes it a future-proof solution for storage needs that are growing rapidly. Prometheus, our disk management software, allows for the shutdown of idle disks. This saves power and provides a “Century-class” data life. ALTO data can be protected with transparent encryption and bulk end-of life erasure. An ALTO archive made of Helium-filled disks is completely immune to pollutants and atmospheric humidity, unlike data tape. It can be used in hostile environments and no-go areas.