At Violin Memory, we are very excited about the big game being held in Santa Clara, CA on February 7th. With this view from our office window, it's easy to see why we're getting caught up in the excitement.

Game Day Preparations

It's interesting to think about the logistical challenges of mounting a global event, vetting and badging staff, credentialing the media and facilitating their needs, construction, housing, transportation and hospitality, broadcast requirements, the IT infrastructure… all aimed at providing the best possible fan experience. The scale and complexity of the effort can be difficult to appreciate.

Years of planning lead to months of implementation which lead to days of 'game on' when no failure, no performance glitch, can be allowed. In the case of the big game, the host team (the San Francisco 49ers for this year's event) gets displaced and the NFL takes over during this time.

As a result of a role I held with another company, I'm aware that IT professionals involved in staging the event need to create a full-blown yet temporary data center onsite. In order to do this they must integrate and test the complete suite of hardware and software months before shipping it to the big game.

The event people demand lots of 9s reliability in the IT nerve center, in the media center and in the broadcast compound, where among other critical applications, IT Infrastructure needs to be able to store, replicate, and distribute millions of photographs taken in the run up and during the big game. Running big events can carry just as much pressure as running businesses for Fortune 500 companies.

When the dust settles after the big game on February 7th, and the NFL departs, life gets back to normal for the San Francisco 49ers, as the organization regains control of its facility. At that time, things get back to normal for Violin too, as we are the official data storage provider to the San Francisco 49ers and Levi's® Stadium.

What does it mean to be the Official Data Storage Provider of the SF 49ers and Levi's Stadium? Watch this customer video then read on.

The 49ers Vision

When Levi's® Stadium opened in 2014, management aspired to provide the best possible fan experience, a model for sustainability and the most technologically advanced sports venue in the world, offering a new wireless, paperless, 21st century venue where everything from instant replay to food orders to post game traffic could be accessed from any digital device, from any seat.

Ethan Casson, Chief Revenue Officer, San Francisco 49ers recently said, 'Innovation inside of the 49ers organization is really at the core of our DNA. To build out the vision of a technology showcase we wanted to lean on some of the leaders here in Silicon Valley'.

Initially, the San Francisco 49ers installed Violin Memory's 6232 All Flash Array to store, protect and access a wide range of mission critical data, including playbooks developed every week based on opponent scouting reports, and scouting reports on prospects and potential draft candidates.

Coaches and scouts want information instantaneously, they need to access many years of historical data, aggregated into player profiles so the scouts and coaches can go to one place and get everything. On the analytics' side, the 49ers run some tools and models that are computationally intensive. They expect those applications will really benefit from Violin's performance.

Over the course of almost seven decades years, the team has also collected vast quantities of audio and video data, and needed a fast, secure storage platform to support rapid access of these important digitized assets. Image archival history, including the photographs shown in the museum at Levi's® Stadium, are now stored on the Violin 7300 Flash Storage Platform (FSP) in the 49ers Data Center for the best possible performance at the right price.

With time, the 49ers data sets grew in ways that traditional IT and business leaders outside the world of professional sports would recognize. In 2015, the 49ers IT team added capacity and data protection features available in the Violin 7300 FSP 70 Terabyte (TB), doubling the capacity of the previous All Flash Array.

In addition to integrating a wide range of data services into the operating system for performance, reliability, and scalability, the 7300 FSP offers user selectable, block-level inline de-duplication and compression to give customers like the San Francisco 49ers maximum storage efficiency. The 7300 also supports mixed and multiple workload environments across an entire range of primary storage requirements. All of this at an attractive price.

If the explosive growth of mission critical data sounds like a challenge your organization is facing, have a look at this week's thought leadership piece Research Report Violin Memory's Flash Storage Platform and register to win a football autographed by Hall of Fame Legend and former San Francisco 49er, Jerry Rice.

Violin Memory Inc. issued this content on 26 January 2016 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 27 January 2016 21:45:21 UTC

Original Document: http://www.violin-memory.com/blog/the-excitement-is-building/