Yrf Films in India

Building a stable IT infrastructure for the Indian films business
Yash Raj Films gains archival capabilities to cater to a growing film catalogue

Customer profile

Company Industry Country Employees Website

Yash Raj Films Pvt.Ltd. Arts, Entertainment & Media Mumbai, India 250 www.yashrajfilms.com

Business need
Yash Raj Films needed a single, scalable solution to store their catalogue film footage in a digital format that would guarantee availability of content and specific footage when required by various business touch points.

Solution
The studio deployed an archival solution using a Dell™ EqualLogic storage array to ensure instant access to the studio’s entire film content in various digital formats.

Benefits
• Entertainment company secures film archive through scalable storage solution Provides protection for entire film catalogue Snapshot feature saves time through restoring specific film footage Open standards work seamlessly with film industry solutions Scales to meet the studio’s growing catalogue

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“We now have the ability to integrate the digital asset management software with our Dell EqualLogic storage solution, and this interoperability isn’t available on other solutions. Using our storage array we can automate the tagging process and eliminate what was a timeconsuming manual task. Open standards support continued innovation within our company in the content we can provide to consumers.”
Dilip Patil, senior manager, digital and systems, Yash Raj Films Pvt.Ltd

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Application areas
• • Storage Solutions Services

Yash Raj Films Pvt.Ltd. (YRF), the only privately owned Film Studio in India, started out as a film-making company in 1970. Today, YRF has India’s most enviable film catalogue, including the highest grossing movies in the India entertainment business.

“I have been in this industry for 17 years and worked with almost every technology provider. The level of support we receive from Dell is really impressive. They really take care of us through their personalized approach and go out of their way to ensure we have seamless access to our film archive.”
Dilip Patil, senior manager, digital and systems, Yash Raj Films Pvt.Ltd.

Over the years, YRF has widened their horizons into home entertainment by marketing and distributing DVDs, VCDs and Blu-ray discs around the world. Always a step ahead of the changes taking place in the entertainment industry, YRF has plans to scale up their production output every year and grow their existing catalogue of 55 films. Archiving films for future generations With YRF producing between five to eight films per year, the company’s growing archive of films was being stored on a variety of devices including servers, tape drives, and HDDs. With the digitization of content giving the company greater flexibility to expand the distribution of their films and film footage over multiple media platforms, the company needed a solution to archive their catalogue. Dilip Patil, senior manager, digital and systems, Yash Raj Films Pvt.Ltd., explains, “With the increasing number of digital platforms available through the internet and mobile technology, and growing global interest in the Indian film industry, our films are being distributed and watched more than ever before. To meet this demand we needed a single solution capable of archiving our expanding film catalogue for future audiences.” YRF considered solutions from HP, Isilon, IBM and Dell. The studio wanted a dedicated storage solution that would ensure archived films remained highly available, and deliver reliable data protection. “If we lose footage due to hard drive failure or disk corruption, then the entire film project could be lost. This would be an enormous cost to the company and detrimentally impact on our distributors and

audience. We need to guarantee to our studio that all film and film assets are protected,” says Patil. With the final film being stored on high-resolution files, all the digital assets of a film can require up to 10-15 terabytes of hard disk space. Following discussions with Dell representatives, the studio reviewed the Dell™ EqualLogic PS6500E virtualized iSCSI storage array with SATA disk drives, for archiving their film catalogue. After attending demonstrations and workshops in Mumbai, YRF realized the EqualLogic storage array was the perfect fit for their needs. Single storage solution improves responsiveness The studio now has the flexibility to access and use their archived catalogue of films for a range of media projects across platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, and iTunes. With these platforms being accessible to millions of film lovers, having an easily accessible film catalogue that is searchable down to the level of the single frame is critical for ensuring global distribution of YRF. Specific film files are delivered to dedicated workstations where the IT

Technology at work
Services Dell™ Support Services – Dell ProSupport™ Mission Critical with 4 hour Onsite Response Hardware Dell EqualLogic PS6500E Virtualized iSCSI Storage Array

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team can package the film or film clip in the appropriate format for upload, thereby ensuring maximum exposure for the entire YRF catalogue. Without a centralized archive, the studio previously found it very timeconsuming to respond to each request for film content by having to locate films storage across multiple disparate devices. Patil says, “With our films now archived within a single location, we have the ability to expand our audience for both current and back catalogue films. We can respond to requests within days now, while previously it used to take weeks, and deliver exactly what our partners and media require.” Snapshots enable restoration of specific film footage Patil explains that the ability to take snapshots and then restore specific data was a critical feature for the company. “A big advantage was the snapshot restoration feature of the Dell EqualLogic SAN where we could restore a single frame that may have been corrupted, rather than having to restore the entire film. That saves us a sizeable amount of time and ensures we experience no delays during the film’s promotion and distribution,” says Patil. Fully redundant and hot-swappable SATA disk drives means the studio has the confidence of data protection for its film files, providing the assurance that Patil needs when protecting the films produced by the studio. Previously the studio’s film archive was at risk through disk corruption and having no back up or redundancy in place for their server storage. “Having fully redundant disk drives was a key feature for us because it means that if one disk drive fails, our films remain protected and all we need to do is replace the faulty disk. This technology ensures that our film catalogue will remain to be enjoyed by our existing fans as well as new audiences,” says Patil.

Scalability meets the needs of the studio’s growing archives Due to continued technical innovation within the media industry, the increased use of computer-generated and computer-altered imagery and a greater demand for high definition (HD) films, YRF’s storage requirements will rapidly increase. Without a centralised archive, scaling storage meant the team had to predict future storage demands in advance of the need. Purchasing additional physical storage solutions increased their data center footprint and resulted in poor utilization of resources. “We need large volume storage to archive HD films. Being able to scale our current storage solution whenever we need enables us to maintain a unified platform for our film archives. That makes film management easier and means we can deliver a high level of service to our media partners who in turn receive quick access to our catalogue,” says Patil. Open standards support innovation YRF received training from Dell and found the simplified administration of the Dell EqualLogic PS6500E storage array easy for any member of the IT team to manage. Ease of management has reduced time spent on archiving from days to hours and has enabled the team to focus on new projects. For example, with Dell storage solutions based open standards; YRF can integrate the storage array with industry software to add metadata tags to their digital assets to make their film catalogue easily searchable in response to specific industry requests. Patil comments, “We now have the ability to integrate the digital asset management software with our Dell EqualLogic storage solution, and this interoperability isn’t available on other solutions. Using our storage array we can automate the tagging process and eliminate what was a time-consuming manual task. Open standards support continued innovation within our company in the content we can provide to consumers.”

Personalised level of support With a small number of IT staff dedicated to the entire film studio, the team relies on Dell ProSupport™ with Mission Critical 4 hourOnsite Response service to support their storage solution and keep the studio on schedule. Despite the expanding archive requirements and increasing demands from media partners, YRF has been able to maintain the size of their IT team. “I have been in this industry for 17 years and worked with almost every leading technology provider. The level of support we receive from Dell is really impressive. They really take care of us through their personalized approach and go out of their way to ensure we have seamless access to our film archive,” says Patil.

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