Media Workflows Nice Shoes operates a 24x7 highly collaborative environment and needed to enable users to work in real-time. ddn.com.

Transcription

1 DDN Case Study Accelerating > Media Workflows Nice Shoes operates a 24x7 highly collaborative environment and needed to enable users to work in real-time DataDirect Networks. All Rights Reserved.

2 Our high-performance DDN system meets our most stringent requirements with ease, and it saves us time and money. Robert Keske CTO and CIO of Nice Shoes Challenges Explosive growth of resolutions, file sizes and performance requirements Tight deadlines, complex workflows & multiple stakeholders Inefficient file transfers & storage islands wasting valuable creative time Unpredictable performance leading to frame drops & redoing projects High cost and complexity of managing & maintaining multiple systems NYC-based Nice Shoes is a full service, artist-driven design, animation, visual effects and color grading studio specializing in high-end commercials, web content, film, TV and music videos. The Challenge The digital content tidal wave is presenting tremendous opportunities for those in the media and entertainment industries to reach consumers, customers and other target audiences with creative, multimedia content and information. For the film and postproduction organizations tasked with developing the content, the right storage platforms and production workflows can help expand their creativity, increase final product quality and provide new revenue streams. Traditional storage platforms, however, lack the structure needed to enable these benefits and can significantly constrain creativity, speed and collaboration, which is especially problematic as film and post-production teams increasingly work across geographies on a 24/7 schedule. Today s traditional file storage technology requires film and post-production organizations to buy multiple systems to manage the enormous bandwidth of streaming data. This creates islands of storage that slow down workflows by creating long wait times to transfer files to the next stage. Deadlines can be missed, frames dropped and valuable revenue-generating hours lost. Multiple systems also increase complexity, cost of ownership and risk. Administration, floor space, power, cooling and maintenance agreements can break budgets and bandwidth. The flood of digital content also means post-production creators and editors are managing tremendous amounts of rich media content and various high resolution formats, such as HD, 2K, 4K and 3D. Combine these factors with the demand to deliver content in multiple formats to multiple devices, and traditional storage systems are likely to falter in reliability, dependability and performance. Nice Shoes knows how important having the right storage technology is to producing quality content for some of the most recognized brands in entertainment and business. The company is a full service, artist-driven design, animation, visual effects and 2012 DataDirect Networks. All Rights Reserved. 2

3 Solution DDN xstreamscaler with the S2A9900 storage engine Real-time, guaranteed QoS for HD, 2K & 4K workflows Centralized storage pool eliminated islands and file transfers Consolidated multiple systems, reduced floor space & TCO Future-proof for tomorrow s resolutions, frame rates, capacity growth color grading studio that specializes in high-end commercials, web content, film, TV and music videos. Its client roster includes Lady Gaga, Under Armour, TD Ameritrade, BlackBerry, Calvin Klein Jeans, Beyoncé, MTV s Video Music Awards and Ford. Nice Shoes wanted to replace its storage platform with a system that could more effectively operate in a 24/7 highly collaborative environment and enable users to work in real time. For example, it s not uncommon for the firm to face 24-hour turnarounds on complex projects. As Robert Keske, CTO and CIO of Nice Shoes, says, In our business, there is no such thing as just good enough. The firm s direct attached storage units required significant manual process effort to move data around and keep it functioning. The system did not allow for easy expansion and was prone to down time. To upgrade its storage capabilities, Nice Shoes sought to implement a system that offered a more centralized storage model and the ability to consolidate the pools of storage that existed with the company s current technology. Nice Shoes also wanted higher performance, resilience, availability and dependability to match work schedules, as well as concurrent access for multiple users and increased density for a more efficient use of storage space. In New York City specifically, colocation is very expensive, so this was a significant requirement for the company. In addition, the new platform had to fit nicely into Nice Shoes current workflow and connect easily with systems such as Flame and Film scanner (DFT). The Solution Nice Shoes turned to DataDirect Networks (DDN) and found a solution to its storage needs in the DDN xstreamscaler SAN file storage system. The studio depends on xstreamscaler to enable simultaneous access by its creative staff to large data files with frame-accurate quality of service DataDirect Networks. All Rights Reserved. 3

4 Benefits Safeguarding data integrity while protecting file system performance from drive error and recovery events. Maximizing data availability and system uptime with a highly-resilient architecture. Allowing concurrent editing of shared files across Mac, Linux, UNIX and Windows clients to improve workflow efficiency. Providing native support for Apple Final Cut Pro and Apple Final Cut Server to accelerate performance. Facilitating real-time editing capabilities with guaranteed quality of service. Offering world-leading density and energy efficiency to lower a company s total cost of ownership. Scaling non-disruptively from terabytes to petabytes. According to Robert Keske, CTO and CIO of Nice Shoes, the high-performance DDN storage system has the built-in flexibility and scalability Nice Shoes needs to accommodate the most sophisticated design, animation, visual effects and colorgrading projects. xstreamscaler is an integrated, clustered file system solution that includes extensive data management features. This allows media and entertainment organizations like Nice Shoes to create an integrated digital workflow and tightly couple content creation, editing, processing and delivery. Companies can capture and serve massive amounts of high-resolution digital and streaming content, provide high-speed access for users to a common pool of storage, and minimize data center footprint and costs for scale-out archives. xstreamscaler supports a broad range of server platforms and operating systems, enabling organizations to eliminate islands of storage and centralize data in a single, cost-optimized SAN storage system. xstreamscaler accelerates highly concurrent workflows to hundreds of film and post production facilities worldwide. Implementation Nice Shoes implemented the S2A9900 xstreamscaler storage system for 2K and 4K file storage. It conducted a two-tier installation and used the first-tier portion as a test. Nice Shoes originally thought it would need significantly more storage equipment than DDN recommended, but discovered that wasn t necessary after those involved with the implementation learned that xstreamscaler was configured to handle present workflows and future growth. The new system provides Nice Shoes with centralized storage for easy sharing of files. Now their creative teams can easily access the files throughout the media content development process. Such capabilities have accelerated their production workflows for applications such as editing, compositing and color correction, and facilitate output from multiple projects running simultaneously DataDirect Networks. All Rights Reserved. 4

5 The numerous workstations and applications relying upon the xstreamscaler include: Apple Final Cut Pro, FilmLight Baselight, Autodesk Flame, Smoke and Maya. Results Since implementing xstreamscaler, Nice Shoes is leveraging its new storage platform s capabilities to accomplish its business and IT objectives. The studio is reducing the maintenance time and cost it often encountered with its previous system. Our high-performance DDN system meets our most stringent requirements with ease, and it saves us time and money, says Robert Keske, CTO and CIO of Nice Shoes. The engineering effort we put in to maintain the system is minimal compared to our legacy configuration. DDN works all the time there s never a need to take it offline, reformat it, or fine-tune it. The increased uptime matches Nice Shoes demanding 24/7 production schedule. Their previous solution required a lot of manual intervention to move data during the production workflow and after the project was completed to allow room for the next project. With xstreamscaler, data never has to be moved. Nice Shoes also was able to shrink its storage footprint by replacing a number of disparate systems with xstreamscaler. As previously mentioned, the increased density is an important factor in New York City, where colocation is very expensive. xstreamscaler is also is providing much better concurrent storage system access for Nice Shoes creative teams, increasing their productivity and delivery of quality content. Nice Shoes, like hundreds of DDN customers, have been able to accelerate its media workflows and benefit from ultra-fast access to a centralized and scalable content workspace. In addition, the studio is minimizing its datacenter footprint and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for its storage system DataDirect Networks. All Rights Reserved. 5

6 DDN About Us DataDirect Networks (DDN) is the world leader in massively scalable storage. We are the leading provider of data storage and processing solutions and professional services that enable content-rich and high growth IT environments to achieve the highest levels of systems scalability, efficiency and simplicity. DDN enables enterprises to extract value and deliver results from their information. Our customers include the world s leading online content and social networking providers, high performance cloud and grid computing, life sciences, media production organizations and security & intelligence organizations. Deployed in thousands of mission critical environments worldwide, DDN s solutions have been designed, engineered and proven in the world s most scalable data centers to ensure competitive business advantage for today s information powered enterprise. For more information, go to www. or call TERABYTE ( ). S2A, xstreamscaler are trademarks owned by DataDirect Networks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved DataDirect Networks. All Rights Reserved. 6