Return to Blog
September 8, 2021
2 min read time

Store Terabytes of Video at the Edge of your Network

Ian Vaughan
  • Varnish Massive Storage Engine
  • video streaming
  • streaming video bandwidth
  • Top Ten Features of Varnish

    • How do the biggest video-streaming platforms in the world manage to store so much video and serve it so fast to such vast, global audiences? These questions stump even some companies that need to deliver high-performance streaming.

     

     

    And the answer is: by making full and efficient use of storage at the edge of the network. With globally distributed edge points of presence (PoPs), the client fetches the video data from the edge PoP, not a distant origin. 

    For global companies with a central store of video content, it should also be clear that network bandwidth isn’t free - so you won’t want to make any of those long-distance trips back and forth to the origin. As much video storage and serving as can possibly done at the edge should be done. It makes both logical and economical sense.

    Circumventing the edge-to-client cost of bandwidth 

    Network bandwidth between the edge and client costs something every single time the content is requested and sent. How can you mitigate or reduce these costs? One way is to put your edge caches in the data center of your ISP, which will save a lot of money. It means you’re not paying for storage, and the ISP also saves by having a big cache with terabytes of storage on hand, translating into a reduction in the bandwidth demand on the ISP. 

    How can you optimize video storage and delivery in this way? With the help of Varnish Enterprise and Massive Storage Engine (MSE), of course.

    Varnish Massive Storage Engine at the edge

    With the Massive Storage Engine, video segments are not stored as files on a file system but rather inside the MSE itself. MSE combines the speed of memory and reliability of disk to offer the ability to cache terabytes of data on a single Varnish server. MSE is generally used to build custom CDNs and, as is the use case described here, to accelerate OTT video platforms. Storage is one of the hidden conveniences of ubiquitous streaming video. The instant-delivery possibilities obscure the requirement for efficient, smart storage and caching when delivering high-performance video distribution.

    Ready for more detail? Watch the webinar on-demand.

    New call-to-action