ENTERTAINMENT
BlueArc Storage Plays the Role of Super Hero
BlueArc Corporation today announced that San Francisco, California-based visual effects studio, The Orphanage, deployed BlueArc's Titan Storage System to better serve the demanding requirements of both their artists and large render farm. Titan accelerated the studio's storage infrastructure -- enabling enhanced quality visual effects through more iterations, reduced artist wait-times and ensured critical deadlines were met for Warner Brothers' movie, "Superman Returns." The movie has grossed in excess of $200 million in box office revenue worldwide to date. 
An intensive Windows environment, The Orphanage often encountered bottlenecks and slow-downs with their storage infrastructure prior to implementing BlueArc. This caused long artist wait times, reducing the creative focus and limiting iterations, which are critical for improving effects quality. The storage bottleneck also limited the productivity of their renderfarm, as their existing storage could not keep up with the CIFS-protocol data requests, causing delays in rendering frames and dropped jobs. The storage issues also kept the IT staff busy responding to issues as they attempted to minimize the impact on the production. Implementing Titan in their environment allowed The Orphanage to improve their workflow and focus on creating ground-breaking effects for "Superman Returns" and other ongoing productions. With faster open, save and render times, artists were able to focus on their creative efforts, with fewer delays and distractions. Titan was able to service all CIFS requests by render nodes at higher throughput levels and without delays. This enabled faster rendering and increased productivity by their existing render nodes and even allowed The Orphanage to add more render nodes for greater productivity. With fewer storage issues, the IT staff at The Orphanage was also able to focus on other areas such as applications, network, and servers to continually improve their workflow. In preparation for one of the studio's largest projects to date, consisting of more than 140 shots for the epic "Superman Returns" film, The Orphanage purchased a BlueArc Titan after evaluating a host of competing network storage offerings. Performance was one of the key criteria used in selecting BlueArc's Titan, due to the system's leading performance. Other important considerations were industry leading scalable capacity and simplified storage management. The Orphanage was able to leverage The Orphanage's existing SAN storage by having Titan virtualize it as a shared network storage resource, using the system's open SAN back-end. Titan has become a critical component of the studio's technology infrastructure, and has delivered dramatic performance improvements to The Orphanage, enabling the company's nearly 160 artists to focus on their creative work, even through peak periods, without slowdown. "For a project like 'Superman Returns' the work demands fast iterations as we develop the look of the visual effects," said Dan McNamara, VP of Technology for The Orphanage. "The move to Titan greatly improved the time for artists to navigate the file system as they juggled shots and loaded scenes. BlueArc enabled us to maximize the performance of our existing storage. The move to the Titan was a total win." "By eliminating the storage bottleneck, Titan has helped leading companies like The Orphanage to deliver cutting-edge effects and animation, while improving their ability to take on more and larger projects," said Steve Daheb, vice president of marketing and business development for BlueArc. "The incredible effects of 'Superman Returns' highlight the creative talent of The Orphanage and we are pleased to be part of their digital workflow ensuring they can focus on creativity, delivering the best quality on-time and on-budget."
An intensive Windows environment, The Orphanage often encountered bottlenecks and slow-downs with their storage infrastructure prior to implementing BlueArc. This caused long artist wait times, reducing the creative focus and limiting iterations, which are critical for improving effects quality. The storage bottleneck also limited the productivity of their renderfarm, as their existing storage could not keep up with the CIFS-protocol data requests, causing delays in rendering frames and dropped jobs. The storage issues also kept the IT staff busy responding to issues as they attempted to minimize the impact on the production. Implementing Titan in their environment allowed The Orphanage to improve their workflow and focus on creating ground-breaking effects for "Superman Returns" and other ongoing productions. With faster open, save and render times, artists were able to focus on their creative efforts, with fewer delays and distractions. Titan was able to service all CIFS requests by render nodes at higher throughput levels and without delays. This enabled faster rendering and increased productivity by their existing render nodes and even allowed The Orphanage to add more render nodes for greater productivity. With fewer storage issues, the IT staff at The Orphanage was also able to focus on other areas such as applications, network, and servers to continually improve their workflow. In preparation for one of the studio's largest projects to date, consisting of more than 140 shots for the epic "Superman Returns" film, The Orphanage purchased a BlueArc Titan after evaluating a host of competing network storage offerings. Performance was one of the key criteria used in selecting BlueArc's Titan, due to the system's leading performance. Other important considerations were industry leading scalable capacity and simplified storage management. The Orphanage was able to leverage The Orphanage's existing SAN storage by having Titan virtualize it as a shared network storage resource, using the system's open SAN back-end. Titan has become a critical component of the studio's technology infrastructure, and has delivered dramatic performance improvements to The Orphanage, enabling the company's nearly 160 artists to focus on their creative work, even through peak periods, without slowdown. "For a project like 'Superman Returns' the work demands fast iterations as we develop the look of the visual effects," said Dan McNamara, VP of Technology for The Orphanage. "The move to Titan greatly improved the time for artists to navigate the file system as they juggled shots and loaded scenes. BlueArc enabled us to maximize the performance of our existing storage. The move to the Titan was a total win." "By eliminating the storage bottleneck, Titan has helped leading companies like The Orphanage to deliver cutting-edge effects and animation, while improving their ability to take on more and larger projects," said Steve Daheb, vice president of marketing and business development for BlueArc. "The incredible effects of 'Superman Returns' highlight the creative talent of The Orphanage and we are pleased to be part of their digital workflow ensuring they can focus on creativity, delivering the best quality on-time and on-budget."
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