British Board of Film Classification

Story Details

Established in 1912, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is legally obligated to archive copies of all videos and DVDs classified in the United Kingdom. The organization was created by the film industry as an independent entity to classify films and today manages a library of approximately 160,000 recordings. The BBFC is based in London and has 70 employees.

Unfortunately, decades of recordings stored in the BBFC board vaults in London were slowly degrading over time. In addition, the playback devices were obsolete and would no longer be supported by manufacturers. To ensure longevity, the BBFC decided to create a digital video archive for long-term storage.

In 2006, the BBFC sent out RFPs to approximately 40 vendors and eventually narrowed the field to four serious contenders. After a rigorous evaluation of each vendor’s design over the next year, the BBFC chose Sun Microsystems because it was the best choice for replacing its analog tape system with high-performance disk-to-tape storage and an easily managed solution. “Although we might have a high profile, we’re a comparatively small organization with a small support team,” says Dave Harding, assistant director at the British Board of Film Classification. “The solution that Sun put forth would be easy to manage and modify without having to cope with many complex, proprietary interfaces.”

The digital archiving infrastructure is based on a Sun Open Storage solution and includes a 35 TB Sun StorageTek 2540 Array, Sun StorageTek Storage Archive Manager software, a 494 slot Sun StorageTek SL500 modular library system with three StorageTek LT04 tape drives, and a Sun Fire X4500 Server with Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors.

After data is ingested and digitized by a proprietary system from PebbleBeach running on a Windows Server operating system, it moves to a second tier that includes a Sun Fire T2000 Server running Open Text Artesia digital asset management software on the Solaris 10 Operating System. Data next passes to the array, where it is copied to the tape drives in high-resolution MPEG-2 format and to the SunFire X4500 Server in a low-resolution Windows Media format. In addition, the low-resolution files are mirrored to another Sun Fire X4500 Server in London. In London, open-source Samba software provides file services between the Sun Fire server and employees using Windows XP clients.

The Solaris 10 OS is an important component of the solution for BBFC. The organization had been using the Solaris 10 OS to support its business processes in London, and it was eager to take advantage of features such as Solaris ZFS (Zettabyte File System) for its digital archive. Solaris ZFS integrates devices, storage, and file systems into a single structure that combines high data integrity with simplified administration.

After a lengthy planning phase, which included setting up a new office outside London, the BBFC began deployment in January 2008 and went live with the new solution in August of the same year. Several partners, including Ascent Media, helped with the deployment, and SunSpectrum Support services for storage provides ongoing assistance.

The BBFC has converted approximately 7,000 tapes to digital storage so far and is processing approximately 700 more each week. Not only are its valuable recordings now protected, but management is easier and more efficient too with Sun StorageTek Storage Archive Manager software. Before, when another vendor managed the BBFC’s external storage vaults, the video tapes had to be manually labeled and retrieved. Now, the BBFC can manage its own library, and automated storage and retrieval helps ease the management burden and reduce error.

In addition, the BBFC will no longer need to pay for costly storage of bulky analog tapes. As a result, it expects to cut archive costs by more than 90% — from £100,000 to £8,000 a year. With a scalable digital archiving solution from Sun, the BBFC can easily preserve its ever-growing library for years to come.