BlueArc Energy-Efficient Storage Propels New Dr. Seuss 3D CGI Animated Film

BluArc Corporation, a leader in scalable, high-performance network storage, has announced that Illumination Entertainment, a producer of family films for Universal Pictures, has selected an energy-efficient storage system from BlueArc.
One of the system's first tasks is to manage the animation rendering on the animated feature Dr Seuss' The Lorax, currently in production at Mac Guff, Illumination's Paris-based animation production partner. The move further demonstrates Illumination's commitment to pursuing forward-focused technologies that also reduce environmental impact.
Mac Guff, which also worked on Illumination's worldwide hit Despicable Me, is using two clustered BlueArc Mercury 100 systems at its production studio for artistic rendering and composited images. Additionally, a Mercury 50 is located offsite for business continuity planning.
French reseller NewNet introduced BlueArc as a data storage solution provider for Mac Guff. Like many digital studios, Mac Guff uses commercial software packages such as Autodesk Maya, but is also a rare example of studio that uses it own proprietary rendering application, MGLR.
Robert Taylor, Illumination's Associate Producer on the film, said: "We needed a storage system that could scale to cope with demands placed on it by the rendering applications we use. In BlueArc we found a solution that was not only scalable in terms of its expansion capacity but also extremely energy-efficient."
The primary factor contributing to Illumination's energy-efficient capacity is a special server farm configuration - first used on 2010's Despicable Me, Bruno Mahe, Mac Guff's Chief Technology Officer further explained: "We have deployed a customised server farm at our French digital production house using IBM's iDataPlex processing system. The singular configuration of servers in iDataPlex compresses processing power into a small space, reducing energy use by as much as 40 percent relative to traditional server farms."
Ravi Chalaka, Senior Director of Solutions and Product Marketing at BlueArc, said: "We are finding that data-driven businesses like Illumination Entertainment want more sustainable, cost-effective, high-performance storage solutions, but they don't want speed and capacity at the expense of energy or rack space. At BlueArc, we're able to deliver more capacity with lower levels of energy consumption than competing systems."
BlueArc will exhibit its solutions and post-production customer deployments at NAB (Stand: SL 10815).
(KMcA/GK)