'Avengers' SFX house taps Sydney reseller for network

Sydney-based cloud provider iQ3 has rolled out new network architecture for Australian digital animation studio Animal Logic.

The IT company was selected to roll out new Brocade VDX 8770 switches at Animal Logic’s Sydney Studio, which runs EMC Isilon network-attached storage. 

iQ3 also installed Brocade ICX 7450 access switches to deliver 10-gigabit connectivity from animators’ workstations to the network core – the system gives Animal Logic the ability to support connections up to 100 gigabits per second.

The Sydney-based studio has contributed digital effects for blockbuster movies such as Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Lego Movie.

Animal Logic recently opened a second office in Vancouver, which will replicate the same network setup as in Sydney. The studio’s need for data and online storage requirements has grown significantly over the past three years as Animal Logic has taken on a full slate of production for the foreseeable future.

Johnson Brown, storage solutions account manager at iQ3, was impressed with Animal Logic’s knowledge of their own network. “It’s not one of the most creative solutions we’ve implemented as Animal Logic and the majority of  post-production and visual effects companies have such an intimate knowledge of technology and their own workflows that they have a strong idea of their needs and how they want things set up. But it’s been great getting involved with people that have a tremendous demand and knowledge of their own systems to work at maximum efficiency”

He added that while iQ3 has the capability to design and implement a network architecture from scratch, it’s more important for the company to respond to customer’s needs.

 “It comes back to the whole argument of whether the reseller can listen to what their customer’s demands are instead of tell them what they need,” said Brown.

“They wanted us to inform them of a platform that allows them to scale out data processing that is easy to manage. When to listen and understand the customer is the key to any solution. Technology is one element of the puzzle, but it’s the people who use it that empowers the technology.”

Animal Logic’s head of IT, Alex Timbs, said the new switches combined with the IP-connected EMC cluster were designed to deliver the low-latency throughput needed to push the boundaries of digital animation.

“New multi-threaded render techniques for digital animation take full advantage of the multicore CPUs in our render farm and need to be fed with a lot of data,” said Timbs.

“Having a highly reliable, high-throughput network core and big pipes connecting our storage arrays is critical to the studio’s productivity.”

Based in North Sydney, iQ3 is a data protection specialist focusing on cloud backup, storage and disaster recover. The company is also an EMC gold partner.