Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. have recently collaborated with Toronto-based visual effects post-production studio Soho VFX leveraging their Hitachi NAS Platform (HNAS) to store and manage its most complex visual effects.
Hitachi NAS Platform is an advanced and integrated NAS solution useful for file sharing as well as file server consolidation, data protection and business critical NAS workloads. Hitachi NAS Platform is well suited to data center environments as well as medium organizations and remote data centers.
In the postproduction process, multiple terminals are needed to handle large amounts of image data quickly and efficiently, putting a high demand on the overall performance of Soho VFX’s IT infrastructure. To meet these demands, Soho VFX uses the high performance and scalable Hitachi platform, which efficiently stores and manages the massive image data and makes it secure and instantly accessible. These capabilities lower the total cost of ownership, migrate data more quickly, and enable more reiterations of shots because renders are completed more quickly.
“Our relationship with Soho VFX demonstrates the importance of IT infrastructure to key brands that cannot afford to take risks with their mission-critical operations,” said Ravi Chalaka, vice president, Solutions Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems. “Soho VFX has to manage challenges similar to those of many enterprise businesses — reliability, data protection, agility, and efficiency. Hitachi NAS Platform solves these challenges by enabling media and entertainment companies to accelerate business operations and drive success.”
Hitachi, Ltd. , headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2011 (ended March 31, 2012) consolidated revenues totaled 9,665 billion yen ($117.8 billion).
“Hitachi NAS Platform continues to evolve with us, which is imperative due to increased work demands and diminished timelines,” said Allan Magled, co-founder, Soho VFX. “Things are constantly changing and thanks to Hitachi Data Systems technology, we are able to handle it every time.”
Founded in 2002 by Allan Magled, Berj Bannayan and Mike Mombourquette, Soho VFX is a full-service media house for 3-D animation and compositing having worked on movies like “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 and Part 2,” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” for 20th Century Fox. The studio’s current projects slated for theatrical release in 2013 and 2014 include “47 Ronin,” “Robo Cop,” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” and “Jack the Giant Slayer” for Warner Brothers.
Animationxpress.com’s Ishpreet Chandock got the opportunity to interact with Vivekanand Venugopal- Vice President & General Manager, India HDS. Here he talks about Hitachi Data Systems and gives us an insight on the new association.
Here are the excerpts of the conversation….
Tell us the key details of this association?
The media and entertainment industries have been dealing with “big data” for a longer period of time than almost any other industry. According to an ESG Research Report, communications and media data is growing at 31% compared with around 24% for other industries.
With increased data growth, many companies in the communications, media and entertainment industry have turned to network attached storage (NAS) to support the heavy bandwidth requirements of production data and modernize media workflows over networks. Capable of instant connectivity using Ethernet over IP, NAS systems can allow for faster file transfers, retrievals and downloads. Soho VFX in order to manage its growing business, required an efficient storage platform to render, process and store data effectively. They chose the high performance and scalable Hitachi platform, which efficiently stores and manages the massive image data and makes it secure and instantly accessible. These capabilities lower the total cost of ownership, migrate data more quickly, and enable more reiterations of shots because renders are completed more quickly.
What are the key areas you would like to target with this association?
With our relationship with Soho VFX demonstrates, we want to showcase the importance of IT infrastructure to key brands that cannot afford to take risks with their mission-critical operations. Soho VFX has to manage challenges similar to those of many enterprise businesses — reliability, data protection, agility, and efficiency. With the Hitachi NAS Platform, we aim to solve these challenges by enabling media and entertainment companies to accelerate business operations and drive success.
In the post production process, how important are multiple terminals today?
In the postproduction process, multiple terminals are needed to handle large amounts of image data quickly and efficiently, placing a high demand on the overall performance of Soho VFX’s IT infrastructure.With the Hitachi NAS platform, Soho VFX is now able to manage this large data more efficiently and no longer worries about taking on too many projects. They now focus on “It’s not about how much work each project involves and the complexity of that work. With ‘Jack the Giant Slayer,’ for example, Soho VFX did a massive amount of visual effects work which required them to move data around freely, have it stored in a central location where everyone could securely and instantly access it.
What does the Hitachi NAS Platform look to offer?
The HNAS product family provides scalable, tiered network storage with FPGA based hardware-accelerated architecture to meet highest performance and reliability requirements. With very high data throughput and IOPS, simplified network storage management, and built-in intelligence, HNAS helps firms achieve lower total cost of ownership with improved productivity and efficiency.
HNAS is an advanced and integrated NAS solution and is a powerful tool for file sharing as well as file server consolidation, data protection and business critical NAS workloads. The Platform is well suited to data center environments as well as the workloads of medium organizations and remote data centers.
What are your future objectives?
Hitachi Data Systems is focused on continuing to support the growing requirements of the media and entertainment industry. The Hitachi NAS Platform will continue to evolve to meet customer requirements as workloads increase and customers are expected to do more in less time.
Soho VFX is considering another HNAS in the near future for a collocation site to handle backups. They are also looking to take advantage of the BlueArc JetMirror software for high-speed replication of production data and fast failover in the event of disaster.
Additional Comments?
At present, HNAS technology is being used globally for visual effects and digital animation in popular productions including Kung Fu Panda for TV (animation), and the Harry Potter and Twilight series films (visual effects). According to estimates, these films and others using HNAS technology generated nearly US$4 billion in box-office revenues in 2011.
Quote from Soho VFX: “From an IT perspective, Hitachi has given us rock-solid, high-end NAS performance that is managed and monitored through an easy-to-use Web interface and backed by what I consider the best support in the industry.” Todd Smith, Head of Information Technology, Soho VFX, Toronto, Ontario.