Data Storage, Data Backup and Storage Virtualization - eWeek

Data Storage, Data Backup and Storage Virtualization: Massive Storage Arrays Help DreamWorks Make Digital Movie Magic


DreamWorks SKG, one of the world's busiest and most successful digital animation studios, is continually pouring out terabytes of creative video from its several hundred animators for use in two to three animated movies that it releases each year. Keeping all that content safe, organized and easily accessible for artists and production staff has always been a huge challenge, yet DreamWorks staffs only three full-time IT storage professionals. How do they do this? The answer: Everything that can be automated is automated. The studio uses a mix of Hewlett-Packard, NetApp, and Ibrix storage arrays and powerful dual-core Intel "Woodcrest"-powered workstations that have been supplied by HP for the last eight years. This slide show offers some insight into the studio's daily production, and we have a complete story on this topic here at eWEEK.
 
  • Where Many Famous Film Characters Live One of the studio's three data storage centers is located in an attractive new building at the Pacific Shores Center on the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Redwood City, Calif.(Photo by Chris Preimesberger, eWEEK)
  • The Data Is in this Rack of Boxes In April 2009, the studio added Hewlett-Packard's newest package, the HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System. This scale-out system acts as an online reference library for "Monsters vs. Aliens" and previous films, such as "Madagascar," "Bee Movie" and "Kung Fu Panda."(Photo courtesy of Hewlett-Packard)
  • DreamWorks' Derek Chan, head of digital operations "Not only are we making more 3D-type movies, but we're ramping up our production schedule from four movies every two years to five movies in two years," Chan said.(Photo courtesy of DreamWorks)
  • "Monsters vs. Aliens": 93TBs Worth of Entertainment When DreamWorks' first "Shrek" movie debuted in May 2001, it required about 6TB of capacity in its data centers. Eight years later, the studio's most recent release, "Monsters vs. Aliens," requires a bit more elbow room: a whopping 93TB.(Photo courtesy of DreamWorks)
  • Closing in on $200 Million at Box Office As of June 15, "Monsters vs. Aliens" had banked $195,246,609, according to industry researcher Box Office Mojo.(Photo courtesy of DreamWorks)
  • It makes sense for a director to re-use footage-such as a background, a particular attribute of a character, or some other element-whenever possible. Using the ExDS system, DreamWorks' artists now have much faster access to archived content, because it's all available in a fast virtualized storage system-not stored on tape or on a disconnected disk somewhere.
  • Before adding the ExDS9100 into its existing storage architecture, DreamWorks staff artists were forced to search through backup tapes one-by-one to find the archived materials needed to start a new project. This slowed up production schedules, causing additional expense.
  • DreamWorks has produced or distributed more than 10 films with box-office grosses totaling more than $100 million each. Its most successful title to date is "Shrek 2." The studio was founded 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. In December 2005, the founders sold it to Viacom.
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