Migration Made Easy

Original source: Limelight Networks

Got a library of content? If so, you know that migrating content from one system to another can be time-consuming and expensive. Kind of like flapping your wings for weeks or months to travel thousands of miles.

That’s why so many people are excited about Intelligent Ingest. It makes migrating content from your current storage fast and easy. Kind of like flying first class.

Limelight Origin Storage is 90-200% faster than ordinary cloud storage. It’s optimized for content delivery network (CDN) origin storage workflows, with automation and management tools to make life easy. You’ll get the fastest end-to-end delivery automatically, with replication to multiple regions at no extra cost, retrieval from the fastest location, and transit over a private fiber backbone. You’ll also get exceptional performance in multi-CDN environments.

Intelligent Ingest is now available to help customers easily migrate their content libraries to Limelight Origin Storage.

Let’s look at how customers have used the two modes available in Intelligent Ingest to solve their content migration challenges.

Intelligent Ingest

Easy Migration from Current Origin

Two Modes:

Load On Demand Mode

Audience Demand determines which assets to migrate

Manifest Upload Mode

List you generate determines which assets to migrate

Customer #1: Online Video

A large online video delivery service chose Limelight Origin Storage for its performance, reach and affordability. They needed to quickly and efficiently migrate their massive content library from their current origin storage solution to Limelight.

Challenges Migrating Content

The customer’s content library included over 500,000 files totaling hundreds of terabytes. Their legacy CDN provided their previous storage solution, but it didn’t have the needed performance. Their business requirements for quality and scale had outgrown the old storage solution. They considered using traditional methods to migrate their content to Limelight’s state-of-the-art storage. However, spending time manually uploading the content via FTP or changing the application code to write to a new API would require them to spend significant time and valuable resources. In addition, it would take far too long to use a single-threaded process like FTP to transfer their large content library. They needed to control the migration process so it didn’t impact the user experience or overload their current storage solution.

How Intelligent Ingest Solves Large-Library Migration Issues

The Manifest Upload mode of Intelligent Ingest provided the simplicity, control and performance the job needed.

Manifest Upload Mode of Intelligent Ingest

In Manifest Upload mode, you provide a list of files to migrate -- from an entire library to a subset. You can set the total migration time, adjust the transfer rate based on network availability and capacity, and upload any number of objects.

Limelight worked with the customer to make the process easy. The first step was to generate a file that listed all the assets and locations to be migrated. The migration parameters were quickly configured, and migration commenced. Once migration began, parallel upload made the process dramatically faster and more efficient while keeping the parameters within the guardrails.

The operational result was a fast, smooth, efficient content migration, much faster than traditional processes, allowing them to achieve their deadline for the transition. The consumer result was improved user experience due to the high performance, availability and automation of Limelight Origin Storage.

Customer #2: Online Retail

A large multi-platform retailer was expanding overseas and needed to ensure it delivered an optimal performance in the new geographies.

Challenges Expanding Overseas

Initial trials in the new geographies with the customer’s existing storage system indicated that performance was unacceptable when retrieving from origin storage.

CDNs improve performance by caching popular content in multiple locations at the network's edges. When a user requests an asset, serving it from a nearby edge cache site will be fast. However, when the asset is not found in the edge cache, it must be retrieved from origin storage. If origin storage is thousands of miles away and requires transit over the open internet, performance can be unacceptably slow.

To successfully expand into the new regions, excellent performance was required across their content portfolio. However, response time for content not in the cache was far slower in the new regions than the benchmark response of the existing core markets. To expand successfully, the customer needed to fix the performance problem.

How Intelligent Ingest Solves Multi-Region Performance Issues

The Load on Demand mode of Intelligent Ingest automatically accelerates multi-region performance innovatively.

Load-on-Demand Mode of Intelligent Ingest

In Load-on-Demand mode, when a user requests content that isn’t in the cache, it’s automatically retrieved from legacy origin storage and delivered over Limelight’s private fiber network – and stored and replicated in Limelight Origin Storage for future requests. This process migrates files over time and requires no human intervention. Customers can specify maximum concurrency and bandwidth.

End-user demand triggers automatic migration of the exact content that users value. Content is then placed close to users, including users in new regions, with cost-free automatic replication based on a menu of multi-region policies.

Operationally, Load-on-Demand is painless. Just set it up and switch it on. Load-on-Demand takes it from there, automatically migrating requested content to Limelight’s fast-distributed storage. End users will see superior performance as content is automatically migrated and replicated in new regions.

Summary

Limelight Origin Storage is the ultimate CDN origin storage solution. Now migrating content to this superior solution is easier than ever.

Limelight’s new Intelligent Ingest, featuring both Load-on-Demand and Manifest Upload modes, automates migrating your content. Whether you choose to migrate automatically based on user demand or a manifest list of files, it’s the definition of migration made easy.