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As a video sharing Web site, the Content Distribution Network (CDN) architecture is at the core of 6.cn's technology platform. The CDN maintains multiple locations with copies of the same content, and ensures requests for content are directed to optimal nodes chosen either for their location or optimized cost, improving response speed for users accessing the 6.cn Web site.

During its initial development stage, 6.cn relied on the third-party partners for CDN services. With its rapid business development, annual storage requirements were increasing by 1000% per year. 6.cn decided to establish its own CDN architecture to improve response speed, video quality, and ultimately, user experience.

Within CDN architecture, the storage system is the core technology. As a Chinese Web 2.0 company providing user generated video content, 6.cn need a storage platform that would support its phenomenal projected growth. Response speed and stability of the system is critical, with 6.cn needing a solution that was reliable, highly scalable, and easy to manage to reduce management complexity and administration costs. In addition, the system needed to demonstrate a favorable price/performance ratio.

At first 6.cn deployed equipment from a professional storage company. The stability was satisfactory, but due to the price of the system, 6.cn discontinued its use. Low-cost vendors did not provide a better option, with storage systems unable to meet the capacity demands of 6.cn. In mid 2007, 6.cn successfully tested a Sun Fire X4500 server and purchased a single server due to its favorable price/performance ratio, stability and high performance. To address the powerful service delivery and storage requirements of 6.cn, Sun supplied the Sun Fire X4500 server with Sun's Solaris 10 Operating System. The Sun Fire X4500 server combines Sun's Solaris 10 Operating System with ZFS software to deliver maximum data integrity, and can reduce downtime by more than 50 percent. 6.cn has now deployed five Sun Fire X4500 servers to provide a solid foundation for growth.

Li Yifeng, R&D Director, 6.cn, comments, “6.cn has a strong focus on technology. Video data content is massive, and so storage products are critical to our business. The Sun Fire X4500 combines server and storage technology, occupies a small space in the equipment room, and provides powerful performance and high throughput. It can be quickly deployed within a short time, satisfying our service requirements.”

6.cn adopted an open source environment. Sun's open storage approach (open source software with industry standard hardware) offers enterprise-class quality, reliability and scalability at one tenth the cost of closed, proprietary storage. By integrating the industry standard server and storage technologies in an open architecture, the Sun Fire X4500 server delivers the remarkable performance of a four-way Opteron server, with two to three times the density, 30 to 50 percent power and cooling savings with incredibly high throughput at half the cost of a traditional server and storage array.

During deployment, Sun provided technical consulting and support services to tune the performance of the Nginx software on the X4500. 6.cn is built on MySQL Community Edition.

Sun Fire X4500 server architecture includes the pre-installed Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM), a system management firmware. ILOM enables 6.cn to actively manage and monitor components installed in its server system by viewing hardware configurations, monitoring system information, and managing system alerts. ILOM will continue to run regardless of the state of the host operating system, making it a “lights-out” management system.

6.cn continues to build its China video sharing platform and new business model – TVC 2.0. With the help of Sun technology 6cn is providing improved response speed, video quality, and user experience, supporting its future growth.

 
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