Major broadcaster reduces resource contention and improves performance

Upon implementing Turbonomic, the BBC Studios team quickly rectified what proved to be a storage caching issue at the root of most prevailing performance issues. Applying Turbonomic automation, the team enabled VMs to migrate freely to the server and storage nodes that would best meet performance requirements.

For the first time since Porsche’s arrival, the team had a full-stack view of their environment. This allowed them to better understand what was causing performance problems and identify where they could execute resizing or placement actions to bring their environment back into a maximally efficient and performant state. Not only did Turbonomic provide specific actions to take, but it also predicted the impact each action would have before being executed.

The team began by manually executing Turbonomic’s resizing recommendations, significantly reducing end-user complaints and eliminating downtime in the process. Once they saw the results of manual resizing, the team automated scheduled resizing on a select set of mission-critical applications, proactively and holistically assuring application performance.

In the years that followed, the BBC Studios team continued to rely on Turbonomic to optimize their environment, but an unintentional shift occurred once the COVID-19 pandemic began. When the lockdowns started in 2020, and the team went from working collaboratively onsite to working from home, a tendency to overprovision new machines emerged. When deploying new services, the team granted application owners whatever resources they requested in the spirit of expedience and risk mitigation. Unfortunately, as pandemic challenges mounted, the team did not always have time to reassess overprovisioned allocations. While their process pleased application owners, it led to high CPU ready values and an over-provisioned environment.

When the pandemic slowed, it provided an opportunity to streamline, and the team established a monthly maintenance window during which the Turbonomic solution automatically resized these workloads. This shift enabled the team to reclaim 228 GB of memory and 22 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) in one month alone. Because of Turbonomic, the team can now be confident they are using their existing resources as effectively as possible, and they can free themselves up to focus on strategic initiatives rather than fighting fires or searching for resizing opportunities.

In a new effort to streamline, the BBC is now in the process of migrating BBC Studios onto its infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platforms. Though they will no longer be managing their own data centers and will instead be migrated onto the broader organization’s data centers, the BBC Studios team will be bringing Turbonomic with them to support their mission to minimize cost while maintaining compliance and assuring performance 24x7.

Since its founding in 1922, the BBC has aimed to “to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.” Today, the BBC provides a range of television services, digital services and radio networks that serve over 300M consumers across the world. Their programming includes BBC World Service and BBC World News, as well as a range of commercial services including but not limited to BBC Studios (link resides outside of ibm.com). This story focuses on BBC Studios, which is the principal commercial arm of the BBC. The organization crafts over 2,500 hours of premium quality award-winning programs and content every year, and it reports annual revenues of approximately GBP 200 million.