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Inside The Tonight Show's Data Center

Who will prevail in the battle for dominance of NBC's late night schedule? Will it be Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien? It matters not to the 80-terabyte storage area network at the heart of the data center powering "The Tonight Show." Here's a look inside the facility.

You probably thought there wasn't a data center angle to the brouhaha over NBC's late night lineup, pitting Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien in a battle for the 11:35 p.m. time slot. At stake: whose digitized images flow into the 80 terabyte storage area network (SAN) deep in the bowels of the NBC Universal lot. Here's a look at the on-site data center for "The Tonight Show," which captures video and audio feeds as the show is taped. After some initial fooling around with Tonight Show blogger "Bley," systems engineer Matthew Cooper provides a tour of the facility. Not much time is spent on the specs, but Cooper's LinkedIn profile is heavy on Apple Xserve and Xsan administration. The biggest challenge: keeping Bley's hands off the power button. This video runs about 5 minutes, and may take a moment or two to load. (Link via Ian Beyer).

For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.