Automated Deployment of CBC/Radio-Canada’s Media-Over-IP Data Center

CBC/Radio-Canada is finalizing its new Internet Protocol (IP)-based production center in Montréal. During the design and early deployment of this major facility, it became clear that the staging and configuration of the thousands of media devices should be automated and managed in a fashion similar to an information technology (IT) data center. In fact, these new devices require thousands of parameters to be configured, and there are more frequent updates than for conventional devices. Moreover, once the system is in place, business continuity imposes careful management of system changes to minimize the risk of technical regressions and human errors. The good news is that the IT industry has solved the problem of operating huge data centers that require high availability. Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices have proven track records for operating data centers throughout their lifecycle, from configuration and provisioning, updates and changes, to sanity checks and monitoring. Tools such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), domain name server (DNS), IP address management (IPAM), and configuration management tools are mature and widely used. This paper presents the architecture and implementation of CBC’s automated deployment workflow. We cover requirements on endpoint devices and the technical and human-factor challenges we encountered during our journey putting in place the novel approach for the media facility. We believe that these tools and methods will be applicable as a way forward to many media-over-IP projects at all scales
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