DAM United

Customised digital asset management – delivered via OVHcloud

DAM United AG has locations in Berlin and Essen and focuses on services in the field of digital asset management (DAM). Digital assets refers to all of a company's digital assets that are integrated into product websites or online shops, such as videos or images. DAM United offers a broad portfolio of services in this area, ranging from consulting to the development of its own software products and interfaces to and from DAM systems, to the hosting of customers' DAM systems or its own SaaS solution DAMlivery, which can be used to centrally deliver assets in various sizes, formats, sections and quality levels.

While DAM United supports many DAM systems that run on its customers' servers or those of their service providers, the company also offers its customers the option of having their systems hosted directly by DAM United, especially in-house developments such as DAMlivery. The DAM specialist uses OVHcloud's dedicated bare-metal server for this purpose. The advantage is that OVHcloud servers give DAM United high computing power, storage capacity and bandwidth with maximum freedom to realise its own technical ideas.

The goal was to achieve powerful server infrastructure for own software ideas

Digital asset management is becoming increasingly important In addition to traditional applications in e-commerce, for example, DAM systems are being used in more and more industries. These include construction companies that manage their construction sites digitally or museums that digitise their exhibits for virtual museum tours. "The requirements for DAM systems are becoming increasingly complex," says Andreas Fink, Board of Directors at DAM United. "There are more and more channels that need to be supplied with assets in the right format. At the same time, DAM solutions are also becoming more powerful and smarter."

The demands on the IT infrastructure on which these DAM systems are hosted are increasing accordingly. In order to guarantee its customers a reliable, smooth and, if required, quickly and flexibly scalable provision of their digital assets in the future, DAM United needs a server infrastructure with sufficient computing power (CPU), storage (SSD memory) and a high bandwidth of 10 Gbit/s or more for the connection between the individual systems. And all this needs to come at an affordable price. As many customers also attach great importance to data protection for their most valuable company assets, a server location in the EU that is fully compliant with GDPR is absolutely essential.

Initially, DAM United rented several small servers from various hosting providers, including OVHcloud in some cases. Over time, however, this multi-track approach no longer met the growing requirements as the systems ended up running on too many servers, which caused confusion and high administration costs. In addition, the requirement for an expandable and scalable service could not be realised with this small-scale setup. There were also few options for customising management solutions or rescue systems, for example.

The result was the dedicated bare-metal servers from OVHcloud

Even though DAM United had already occasionally used OVHcloud servers, a recommendation from a partner company finally gave them the idea of relying entirely on OVHcloud for hosting. DAM United found that the decisive advantage over other providers was that OVHcloud provided the servers, but otherwise they had complete freedom to set up their systems without the cloud provider having to help them. This was an important point for a highly specialised provider with clear ideas like DAM United. DAM United took a step-by-step approach to the migration, initially renting four smaller servers on a trial basis. As the results were convincing, the decision was finally made to consolidate all existing servers and migrate them completely to OVHcloud.

Since then, DAM United has been using five dedicated bare-metal servers from the High Grade range. This is OVHcloud's most powerful dedicated server range, which is optimised for critical workloads. DAM United deliberately opted for this large server size to ensure high scalability and reliability. These servers are complemented by an Advance STOR-2 dedicated server for backup. They are all interconnected by the vRack solution from OVHcloud.

In the beginning, it took a few attempts before the optimal setup was found. The initial idea of operating the servers at different locations in the OVHcloud data centres in Limburg (near Frankfurt) and Roubaix (France) in the interests of geo-redundancy had to be abandoned after initial tests because the bandwidth and latency for the planned operation of a Kubernetes cluster led to a bottleneck. However, this problem was quickly resolved by transferring all five servers to Limburg – separately in different server rooms – and keeping only the backup servers in Roubaix.

Equipped with these extensive resources – servers with a lot of CPU and memory as well as high connectivity between the systems – DAM United was able to set up and operate a high-performance, scalable Kubernetes cluster. This allows the IT service provider to create a scalable solution with fixed, predictable costs without having to constantly rent new hardware. Nevertheless, the solution remains expandable if necessary because additional hardware resources can be quickly and easily booked with OVHcloud.

The focus of the Kubernetes cluster is on hosting DAM United's in-house developments. This is because it is particularly important for their SaaS solution DAMlivery to be able to deliver images and other assets quickly and reliably from any source (DAM, PIM, file server and others) to websites, shops or PIM systems, for example, and to be able to store the assets in the cache. DAM United also uses GitOps to manage the Kubernetes cluster, which further automates and accelerates provisioning; if required, a server can be ready for customers in two minutes.

The result

Fast and smooth provision of digital assets

The migration to OVHcloud had an immediate impact on DAM United in terms of cost savings thanks to lower administration costs. The company can also respond more quickly to customer requests for hosting as there are always sufficient reserves, memory and CPU available. The use of the Kubernetes cluster in conjunction with GitOps has also significantly reduced the deployment effort.

What stood out most for DAM United, however, was the freedom that OVHcloud offers them with its bare-metal servers. "The most positive experience for us was that we were able to realise what we wanted to do under our own steam and with our own resources exactly as we had outlined it," confirms Andreas Fink, Board of Directors at DAM United. This means that DAM United will continue to be ideally positioned to grow with its customers' requirements and drive innovation in digital asset management.

    "For the hosting of our DAM solutions, we were looking for servers that meet our requirements in terms of computing power, storage capacity and connectivity, as well as offering the necessary freedom we need to realise our vision of an optimal IT environment. We were able to use OVHcloud's dedicated bare-metal servers to fulfil both objectives without having to compromise."

    Andreas Fink, Board of Directors, DAM United