Rai selects Arista Networks for major Avid virtualisation project

As part of its move to a highly virtualised and private cloud-based production environment, Rai – Radiotelevisione Italiana – has upgraded its legacy network with an Avid-certified solution from Arista using a spine and leaf-based design, offering enhanced performance, reliability and scale while supporting open standards.

Rai, the national public service media company of Italy, has recently completed the implementation and is currently carrying out rigorous testing with a view to going live in the coming months.

The broadcaster has been a major Avid customer for over 10 years using Avid editing, newsroom and asset management systems to create, deliver and distribute content across its major network channels. As the Rai investment in Avid technology across its extensive production environment has grown, so has the amount of physical equipment it needs to manage. Today, Rai runs over 200 physical servers and, as part of its desire to reduce its data centre footprint as well as increase flexibility for remote working, it is undergoing a multi-year project to move to a virtualised Avid architecture for its integrated production system.

The initial phase of the project is focused on its national news production systems serving millions of viewers on-air and online across five Rai channels: Rai1, Rai2, Rai3, Rai Parlamento and Rai News 24. The transition will reduce its current 200+ server estate down to just 28 virtualisation hosts which, alongside improvements in reliability and security, will help Rai to meet its sustainability ethos by reducing energy consumption for its IT estate by around 60%.

Antonino Garaio, head of news system engineering for Rai, explained: “We are effectively creating a hyper converged architecture and building a private cloud in Rai data centres that will not only serve our needs today, but also help us in the future to evaluate potential migration or scalability towards a mix of private and public cloud.”

However, Rai’s legacy network architecture, operating as a three-tier design with links of between 1Gbps and 10Gbps, did not provide the performance needed for its virtualisation and private cloud strategy. This limitation prompted Rai to look at various options to upgrade the core network. In the past, to ensure reliability, Rai only deployed networking equipment across its extensive infrastructure that had been formally certified by Avid, but this only included a limited number of networking suppliers.

“That changed last year when Avid began certifying additional network vendors,” explained Alessandro Sciullo, Rai project manager responsible for managing the deployment of the virtualised environment. “This gave us the opportunity to create a broader public tender and consider other options for the upgraded network layer needed to deliver this project.”

The tender was developed through a technical specification with very stringent requirements due to the needs of the Avid application layers. “We looked at and tested several options and we were very impressed with the Arista proposal,” said Lorenzo Annibali, head of IP network engineering, Rai. “Arista met and often exceeded all the requirements stated within the technical specification. The design underpins each virtualised cluster with a simple but effective spine and leaf topology, capable of delivering all the throughput required by the application.”

“Arista also fits successfully into an enterprise context where other established network technologies are present. Its support for open standards and the IS-IS protocol unlocks more potential to explore a wider range of technology options as we move forward,” he adds.

Rai has worked extensively with a team from Arista on the first phase of the project at its main campus in Saxa Rubra, Rome, and over the next year will transition the legacy network to the new Arista architecture.

The project has implemented a spine and leaf, layer 3 network using highly resilient 7260X3 Series fixed configuration switches. These offer a flexible arrangement of 10/25/40/100GbE ports with up to 12 terabits per second throughput and ultra-deep packet buffer. The network leaf layer uses mostly 7050X3 Series switches, offering an ultra-low latency 1RU platform to serve different requirements around 10G, 25G and 100G connectivity. All Arista 7000 series products run the same Arista EOS software and binary image, simplifying network administration with a single standard across all switches.

“Rai is a public service media company focused on the adoption of open standards. Thanks to the introduction of Arista technology, we have been able to complete the new virtualised architecture which has been successfully integrated with what already existed in our production infrastructure. We are steadily moving towards a full IP environment,” explained Ubaldo Toni, technology director, Rai.

“The new network architecture also has the potential to help in the future transition of baseband signalling to video-over-IP which is a fundamental part of our longer-term strategy.”

“Arista has been supportive during this project, and we look forward to working with the team as we transition more of our production infrastructure towards virtualisation and embrace the benefits of private cloud,” Garaio concludes.