Broadcast Beat Magazine 2018 NAB Show Edition | Page 109

Bare metal, VMs and container comparisons viding resource isolation at a more granular level than VMs. With VMs emulating bare-met- al OS and machine functions, applications and services can run with almost no chang- es – hence the lift-and-shift approach. While the application may be portable, special atten- tion to mapping to specialized human interface devices, con- trollers and media-specific I/O connectivity devices, are criti- cal in this virtual environment. Containers can be used for large monolithic applications without refactoring but are most effective when associated with microservices, as they’re built for lightweight and rapidly deployable uses. Decisions on which media-relat- ed processes to port to VMs and which to container are based on a range of factors: • ability to refactor existing application and services into smaller microservices • ability of the original service to cleanly startup and shut down • availability of virtualized access to specialized hard- ware the service requires • impact on performance • uptime assumptions • infrastructure availability to allow for dynamic scalability Generally, unless dedicated hardware is involved, nearly all post-production processes port easily to VMs. Existing products should be evaluated for refac- toring using the criteria above. Of course, any new functional- ity should ideally be built as composable atomic microser- vices if a platform is available to execute them. Easily transitioning existing media processes to the cloud is determined by choosing the right infrastructure hosting model, the right virtualization method, and a smartly designed software platform to make it all work smoothly together. For media production companies, with enough technology choic- es now available, the cloud is finally here. Broadcast Beat Magazine • www.broadcastbeat.com • 109