Case Study: Starz accelerates digital media workflows with DataDirect Networks (DDN) GRIDScaler storage

Starz Accelerates Digital Media Workfl ows with DDN Storage Solutions

Starz, a major premium TV provider delivering thousands of movies and original series to millions of subscribers, relied on high-performance, always-on digital workflows for encoding, transcoding and broadcast delivery. Aging HP EVA storage created serious reliability, scalability and metadata problems—hundreds of LUNs, frequent corruptions, failed encodes and dropped frames—just as Starz needed to grow to more than 600 TB and add synchronous disaster‑recovery capability.

After an RFP and proof‑of‑concept, Starz deployed DataDirect Networks’ GRIDScaler (SFA) parallel file solution with DirectMon/Lustre and synchronous active/active replication to a DR site. The new platform removed workflow bottlenecks, delivered predictable real‑time performance, doubled to quadrupled transcode speeds, cut the transcode fleet from 40+ to ~20, increased capacity at a much lower cost per TB, reduced rack space and administrative overhead, and restored confidence in 24/7 broadcast operations.

Starz

Colin McGuire

Director of Infrastructure Services, Starz