IPTV headend: data-centre move and upgrades

Data-centre move (Sep 2021 to Oct 2022)

• 72 change requests, 16 of them authored by me, about 209 hours of work.
• 21 Ericsson Muse encoders in 8 planned rounds, MediaKind VSPP managers and streamers, Verimatrix DRM, Broadpeak CDN, the Halo Live packager and Proview, from preparation to turning down the old site.
• Changed the CDN origin addresses on production with the CDN vendor and the network team, with streams up throughout.
• Pre-production went first: recording managers and streamers were moved and promoted to master there, then the same order was repeated on production.
• Each encoder round ran as a two-part change.
• About 46 hours of preparation from September 2021, then 163 hours of execution from January to October 2022.
• Only 2 re-attempts in the whole programme.

Encoder and packager firmware (Mar 2024 to Mar 2025)

Cisco UCS server firmware under 41 nodes (37 Ericsson Muse encoders, 4 Halo Live packagers) in 2 phases: 61 change requests, 33 authored by me, about 126 hours. One node per change.

More IPTV work

• Implemented the headend path for the streaming-stick and iOS apps across DRM, CMS, Halo, CDN and VSPP, and planned and executed the CMS and NTP cutover (Nov 2024) with testing across DRM, LCM, set-top boxes and the iOS app.
• Moved 7 VSPP nPVR and DRM nodes to Nexus 9K switching, including the database move.
• Restored DRM after a certificate expiry.
• Rolled out Emergency Alert System support on the Halo Live packagers in 9 change rounds, and corrected channel configuration on all 4 Broadpeak EAS units for CRTC alerting.
• 31 channel line-up changes: 17 SD to HD conversions, source multicast moves, DRM clear and encrypted switches, primary and backup path moves.
• Moved news channels between primary and backup encoders, re-pointed third-party signals to new multicast groups, and switched channel sources between providers.
• Recovered encoders from high CPU with planned reboots (2025 and 2026).
• VSPP nPVR operations: disk-failure recovery with the vendor and a manager failover runbook.
• Traced an iOS TV app failure to iCloud Private Relay and put the fix in the support wiki; wrote an 8-point streaming-quality checklist for Tech Support.

All projects, year by year

Rogers in numbers (time-log analysis, Jun 2021 to Feb 2026)

Stack