Why HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus is the ideal video and content caching server

[AndreaFabrizi1]

The HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus system provides balanced high-density storage in a high-performance system, making it the ideal video and content caching server. Here’s how.

Everyone is consuming content online and we all want fast streaming as we do. That’s why video content delivery providers like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and more must have their content close to viewers.

To enable this kind of fast access to content, providers often locate petabytes of video content in local city or edge data centers. This also helps meet another critical goal: reducing latency and network costs.

In this blog, I’ll discuss what makes the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus server an ideal video and content caching[1] server.

First, what's a video caching server?

A video caching server is the core component of any content delivery network (CDN)[2] used to stream videos to users. Video caching performs these two main tasks:

• Storing the frequently accessed videos or files close to where viewers are located on the network to reduce latency and network costs.
• Streaming these content to the final users when requested. The video streaming allows the user to start watching the content as soon few seconds of the requested content are available on the end-user media player (e.g., TV, mobile, computer, etc.).

Video and content caching servers are considered network services, and they are typically located in edge or urban data centers.[3]

Now, what makes HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus the ideal video caching server? 

The HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus server is specifically designed to unlock the business value of data streaming at any scale with ideal economics. It’s designed for the whole spectrum of data-centric workloads – from deeper data lakes and HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plusarchives to performance-demanding machine learning (ML), data analytics, hyperconverged infrastructure, and cache-intensive workloads. It's one of the highest density storage servers in 2U space, with up to 730 TB of disks per server. The high storage density is combined with powerful computational capabilities.  And it can be configured with two third-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors Family (Ice Lake) of up to 32 cores each.

Memory configuration is rich too. The Apollo 4200 Gen10Plus can be configured with 24DIMMs slots for a max of 1.5 TB of RDIMM or 3.0 TB of LRDIMM and up to 4TB of Persistence Memory. Lastly, the Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus can be configured with several networks, security (Pensando Distributed Services), and FPGA accelerator cards.

Here's a detailed deeper dive into why the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus System is the ideal platform for video caching.

To learn more on video caching capabilities, check out this technical white paper: Video caching on the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus.

The optimal server for video streaming jobs – balancing high-density storage and high performance

With the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus System, storage can be configured to support the spectrum of video workloads from cache-intensive to performance-intensive through a broad range of media options in up to 32 Large Form Factor (LFF) with 4 NVMe-capable Small Form Factor (SFF), 24 LFF with 12 NVMe-capable SFF, or 60 SFF hot-plug drive bays.

While two third-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors of up to 32 cores each, select GPU and FPGA accelerators, 50% more memory at 3200 MT/s speed, Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory support, and six FHHL PCIe Gen4 slots in a balanced system architecture provide the performance and memory needed stream and cache videos. In addition, the possibility to use FPGA and network accelerators improve the video streaming capabilities of the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus System.

From the security point of view, the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus System implements HPE iLO 5 and HPE Silicon Root of Trust technology (for firmware protection, malware detection, and firmware recovery), HPE Smart Encryption for data at rest encryption, and Defective Media Retention Service for maximizing sensitive data control in the event of a drive failure.

What's more, the Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus can be acquired in a consumption-based IT model through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.

Want to learn more?

Check here:

• Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus overview
• Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus specs
• Video caching on the HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus white paper

[1] This article is focused on the hardware aspect of the video caching, so it doesn’t discuss either software aspects or network protocols for video streaming.

[2] A good explanation of how a CDN works is provided in the following article: How Netflix Works, Explained. A Simplified Look At How Streaming… | by Vincent Tabora | High-Definition Pro | Medium

[3] Major video content providers, such as Hulu and Netflix, actively partner with colocation providers to expand their delivery networks and bring data-intensive video streaming closer to users to reduce costs and latency.

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Andrea Fabrizi
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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