Qatar's AlRayyan TV Adopts OceanStor Pacific All-Flash Scale-Out Storage for a Close-Up Digital Success

A Sharp, Clear Focus

However one chooses to describe AlRayyan TV, its core mission is unchanged: to promote Qatari heritage and values by delivering quality digital content to its viewers. AlRayyan TV is a forward-thinking and innovative media and entertainment (M&E) organization. From immersive entertainment productions to interactive news-oriented shows, it's always at the forefront of M&E innovation in the digital and intelligent era.

Challenges Behind the Camera

The media landscape has now evolved to a point where high-definition video is the norm, and non-linear editing and media asset management are also driving growing pressure on data storage systems in the industry. As such, AlRayyan TV found it necessary to upgrade their storage systems to accommodate the ever-changing IT demands:

Boosted performance: Ultra-HD video editing posed higher I/O performance requirements on the storage system. AlRayyan TV wanted a new storage system to provide faster read and write speeds, thus ensuring efficient editing and rendering.

Agile scalability: In light of the ongoing development of services, AlRayyan TV required a flexible and scalable storage system that could adapt to changing requirements in the future.

Like a seasoned artist seeking the finest tools, AlRayyan TV, yearned for more advanced data storage solutions to keep pace with their vision for media innovation and excellence.

Huawei Scale-Out Storage Steals the Show

As a cornerstone of visual storytelling and creative communication, non-linear editing is key to AlRayyan TV's business applications. This involves meticulously trimming clips, creating smooth transitions, layering effects, and syncing audio to craft compelling narratives. To support the work of transforming raw footage into captivating content, a reliable, high-performance storage system is essential.

Huawei's OceanStor Pacific stands out as the industry's only all-flash scale-out storage system that can handle 36-layer ultra-HD editing, pack a jaw-dropping 4 PB/2U, and run with industry-leading energy efficiency at 0.25W/TB. It empowers AlRayyan TV to build advanced ultra-HD data lakes, supporting the entire workflow—from ingestion and editing to broadcast, storage, and management—while efficiently unlocking data value. Thanks to its seamless multi-protocol interworking, the Huawei solution can fit diverse business with a single system, improving resource utilization. And with a unified management platform, operations and maintenance (O&M) becomes simpler, faster, and more stable.

Furthermore, OceanStor Pacific provides two powerful technologies: intelligent prefetching and automatic tiering of hot and cold data.

The intelligent prefetching predicts what users will need next, preloading audio and video resources into a high-speed cache, and uses adaptive prefetch length mechanism to save the cache space. It optimizes the performance in complex multi-layer editing scenarios to expedite video editing workflows, guaranteeing smooth playback without frame freezing.

If intelligent prefetching fuels the video editing process, then automatic tiering of hot and cold data optimizes storage management. By dynamically distinguishing between frequently accessed (hot) and infrequently accessed (cold) data, this technology efficiently allocates resources. Hot data is stored on high-performance storage media, while cold data resides on more cost-effective options. This strategy helps AlRayyan TV unlock the full value of its data while also reducing its storage footprint and lowering energy consumption. The blend of all-flash nodes for editing and HDD nodes for asset management ensures the perfect balance of performance, cost-efficiency, and scalability throughout the data lifecycle.

Think of Huawei's OceanStor Pacific scale-out storage solution as a thriving tree—deep-rooted, growing, and full of life. Unlike other solutions that force customers into disruptive rip-and-replace cycles every few years, OceanStor Pacific grows with you, without the need for painful migrations or system overhauls. This ability to expand seamlessly and upgrade has helped AlRayyan TV not only preserve but also increase the value of its investment. Storage evolution is smooth and business runs without interruption, while costs in time and manpower are dramatically reduced.

And Huawei doesn't just hand over a solution, it continues to support the organization with full-stack, end-to-end services. Whether it's drawing up a blueprint, rolling out deployment, fine-tuning performance, or supporting with spare parts, the Huawei team is always available. More than a provider, Huawei acts as a digital partner, making sure AlRayyan TV can negotiate intelligent transformation with ease and keep ahead of its competition.

Mohamad AI-Said, Director of Engineering and Operation, AlRayyan TV

During proof-of-concept (PoC) tests, Huawei's solution outperformed competing products by 50%, perfectly balancing speeds and costs. Impressed by the performance and efficiency of the Huawei solution, Mohamad AI-Said, Director of Engineering and Operation, shared his thoughts, "The Huawei OceanStor Pacific storage system strikes the perfect balance between performance and cost, fully meeting our needs for both video editing and media asset management. We have complete confidence in our decision to adopt this solution for our storage needs."

Framing the Future

AlRayyan TV is deeply committed to Qatar's National Vision, driving sustainable development through its core functions of development, awareness, and entertainment. The channel plays an integral role in educating and empowering different groups within the community, thereby promoting societal growth.

This partnership between Huawei and AlRayyan TV strengthens AlRayyan TV's ability to support Qatar's National Vision. Huawei's advanced storage technology not only enhances AlRayyan TV's current operations, it also equips it to meet future demands, ensuring sustainability and long-term growth. Together, Huawei and AlRayyan TV are poised to continue driving innovation, pushing boundaries in the media industry, and creating meaningful, impactful content for generations to come.