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C G W Ja n u a r y / Fe b ru a r y 2 014 ■ 45 in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. While Savage might not be a huge company, it does work with some big names, such as Directors David Fincher (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, House of Cards), Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me), and Bryan Singer (Valkyrie). Currently, Savage has a core staff and builds up as needed, but the studio is moving toward staffing a bigger office in Pitts- burgh with more full-time personnel. The studio's ties to Pittsburgh begin with co-owner James Pastorius, who grew up and went to school in the city. As such, he has many contacts and artists to call on. Savage typically uses Apple's Shake and The Foundry's Nuke for its compositing needs, and relies heavily on various 3D applications and Pixar's RenderMan, but will call on other software packages as needed depending on which freelancers are brought on for certain jobs. In terms of hardware, co-owner Brice Liesveld recognizes that having the right kind of storage is hugely important. "It's all about efficiency," he says. "We are constantly needing more storage as things evolve, and if you can't access data in real time, your efficiency just drops through the floor. It's important for everyone to have access to what they need without the hiccup of having to go pull something online." The need for storage never seems to end, especially with new technologies and the growing prevalence of 4 k and be- yond. "We aren't Weta by any means, but we chew through a lot of data, even at our size," explains Liesveld. "It was 2k, now it's 4k and 5k, and next it will be 6k and 8k. You have multi-lay- ered files like EXR, deep compositing, which is file-size inten- sive, and newer cameras generating more and more metadata. Every day there is another chunk of data you need to store and access. Without having reliable, consistent, and large enough storage, you can't do your job efficiently." In order to get a system that worked for them, Savage con- Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) in Adelaide, Austra- lia, is a visual effects specialist whose recent credits include The Great Gatsby, The Wolverine, Gravity, and Seventh Son. Founded in 1995, the company has seen its data storage needs grow exponentially over the years and currently oper- ates a tiered storage infrastructure that includes a pair of EMC Isilon NL series storage clusters, a cluster of Avere FXT 3200 edge filers, and an open-source Lustre storage cluster. Connectivity comes via 10 gb Ethernet on the front end and QDR In- finiBand on the back. Additionally, the company has 1.3pb (petabytes) of long-term data written to tape. From RSP's perspective, storage systems work best when they are invisible. If artists are worrying about ver- sioning, backups, or access, it means there is a problem or they are not working efficiently. Routine functions, such as making redundant backups and moving files from on-line to off-line, are now fully automated. "Ten years ago, it was a constant battle to ensure we could store data and had a fast enough infrastructure," recalls RSP Visual Effects Producer Ian Cope. "Today, we have systems in place so that all the legwork is done by scripts. If we get a hard drive in from a client, we don't have to worry about shuffling data around. We simply copy it across and start working right away." In 2008, RSP became the first Australian company to ac- quire an Isilon storage cluster. As data packages continued to grow, the shop added a second cluster. More recently, it incorporated the Avere edge filer to serve as a front-end caching system. That made it much easier for artists to share, manage, and work with files for current projects. "Previously, if two render nodes hit one file, it would slow things down. Placing the Avere caching appliance between those nodes removed the load from the system," says Director of Engineering Mark Day. Some of RSP's more challenging projects would have been difficult to manage without the performance boost provided by the Avere system. Cope points to The Wolver- ine, where RSP was charged with re-creating the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki, Japan. "There was a lot of data involved when the computers were trying to work out the nuclear explosion," Cope says, "especially as we were doing multiple passes and itera- tions. For high-end simulation work like that, you need robust systems in place or you are going to have trouble." "On shows like The Wolverine and Gravity, we're work- ing with large, complex data sets, non-stop every day," Cope says. "With our current infrastructure, there is little direct involvement from our artists. They can focus on solving creative problems and how things are going to look on the screen. And that, after all, is why we're here." A Tiered Approach The Wolverine © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox. Image courtesy Rising Sun Pictures.