arc productions reduces storage system workload, returning performance enhancements to artists

Arc Productions Reduces Storage System Workload, Returning Performance Enhancements to Artists

CASE STUDY

Arc Productions

Industry: Media & Entertainment

Stats: 250+ artists/technical directors

Location: Toronto, Canada

Website: arcproductions.com

Background

Arc Productions is one of the longest running successful CG animation and

visual effects companies in Canada with a well-earned global reputation

for quality, efficiency and reliability. With over 250 artists and technical

directors, Arc Productions brings the vision of both major Hollywood studios

and independent producers to life in a wide array of formats including

theatrical features, television, DVDs, shorts, and game cinematics.

The Systems and Infrastructure group are responsible for running the

technology that keeps the creative team efficient and productive. It is

this team’s job to innovate as new technology becomes available, driving

continuous productivity improvements for the business.

Overtaxed compute cluster

A couple of years back, with a number of important projects on the go and

nearing deadlines, Arc Productions ran into serious performance issues. The

file system that houses all of the important assets that let the artists create

their magic was slowing down to an unacceptable level. The file system was

so overloaded that the artists faced

long wait times to save work and

experienced regular crashes in the

system. Any downtime is costly for Arc

Productions – “instead of submitting

renders to the render farm and getting

it back 3 or 4 times during a day, the

delays were causing the process to

drag out to 3 or 4 days instead, taking

too long for artists to get their shots

approved,” said John Hickson, Head of

Systems Engineering and Rendering at

Arc Productions.

S c a l a r D e c i s i o n s I n c .

CASE STUDY: ARC PRODUCTIONS

“Instead of submitting

renders to the render

farm and getting it

back 3 or 4 times

during a day, the

delays were causing

the process to drag

out to 3 or 4 days

instead, taking

too long for artists

to get their shots

approved.”

Objectives

• Reduce long wait times improving artist productivity

• Eliminate the need to turn off the render farm during business hours

Solution

• Avere FXT Edge cluster

Results

• 50% drop in load on the filers

• Immediate reduction in wait times for artists

• Elimination of system crashes

Solution

File system caching

Scalar sat down with Arc and started

mapping out a couple of different

solutions to the problem. “One way

to solve the issue would have been to

add more server heads, disk trays and

spindles to increase our throughput,

but this is very expensive,” said Terry

Dale, Vice President of Systems and Infrastructure at Arc Productions. Instead

the team took a closer look at Avere, an appliance that provides caching

to key file systems. The Avere appliances sit in front of Arc’s render farm,

accelerating the access to data. The caching device recognizes “hot files”

over time and will load those files into the cache so render farm can pull them

up quickly, thus reducing the load on the master filer considerably.

Proof of concept and rollout

Given the sensitivity around downtime, the IT team at Arc Productions

customarily test new technology for several months before putting it into

production, however, the Avere technology went very quickly from proof of

concept to rollout. “Upon setting up the new caching system, our problems

were eliminated immediately - the performance benefits were significant and

instantaneous, dropping the load on the filer by about 50%,” said Dale.

The entire installation process took very little time. It was racked, powered

up, configured with data cached through the appliance in a matter of just

a few hours. “Within the span of a morning, we had this up and running

and by the afternoon we had feedback that the artists noticed a substantial

improvement,” said Hickson.



“ Upon setting up

the new caching

system, our problems

were eliminated

immediately - the

performance benefits

were significant and

instantaneous, dropping

the load on the filer by

about 50%.”

Side benefits

Visibility into workflow anomalies

An unexpected side benefit of the

Avere installation was the visibility

the Arc Productions team now has into

the stream of data that comes into

the filer and into the compute cluster.

This visibility into a previously invisible

stream alerted the team to an anomaly

in one of the toolsets that was caught

in a continuous loop. “It was requesting

files thousands of times more than it

should have,” said Dale. “We were

able to identify an issue that would

have previously gone undetected, and

optimize our process,” he continued.

Looking into the future

Scalar and Arc Productions enjoy a long running collaborative relationship

that promotes a healthy dose of learning on both sides. “I have been very

happy with my relationship with Scalar. They are knowledgeable about their

products, they want to learn about me as a customer and understand our

business so they can bring their expertise to the table, augmenting our in

house team. It is fantastic that Scalar now has representation on both the

hardware and software side; it is an ideal complement,” said Dale.

For more information, please visit http://www.scalar.ca For the latest news, visit our blog at http://blog.scalar.ca


“ I have been very

happy with my

relationship with

Scalar. They are

knowledgeable about

their products, they

want to learn about

me as a customer

and understand our

business so they can

bring their expertise

to the table,

augmenting our in

house team.”


arc productions reduces storage system workload, returning performance enhancements to artists

Technology