Streaming gear and most production gear have inherent points of failure. While we cannot mitigate every single type of failure in a system, we can engineer for most situations. The main vulnerability for streaming is the internet connection at the studio for which the hub of the connection is made. If the internet connection goes down, unless there is a backup that has a totally different cable path and connection type, that stream will go down. There are ways to back that up, but when dealing with a large number of people presenting in a stream, you have to think about in-and-out delays and internet hop points.
To solve these two issues, we now have the ability to be completely virtual and in the Cloud. We can spin up a streaming service in a data center that is regional to the cluster of presenters or viewers for your event. If your presenters and attendees are mostly West Coast, we spin up a system in a data center on the West Coast. If they’re East Coast, we do the same on the East Coast, and so on. On top of the Cloud virtualization we can spin up main and backup servers, graphics machines and MV units to again mitigate as many failure points as possible. No stream or show is perfectly 100 percent backed up, but what we can do to get us as close as possible is an effort that is worth the time and money.
