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40 CGW S E P T E M B E R . O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4 S T O R A G E desktop needs. And The Nut Job was a wrap. Whynott believes ToonBox has found the sweet spot by separating the storage solutions into two autonomous com- ponents. "If we need more capacity, we add disks to the Dell storage chassis and expand the le system live without downtime. It's commodity hardware, which takes $400 disks rather than disks that cost up to $2,000 [each] from one of the proprietary vendors or [another] $100,000 storage node every time we need either more storage or performance. With our current solution, if we need more performance, we add another Avere." More recently, ToonBox rolled over to Linux from Windows for Spark, and with a second feature also in-house (The Nut Job 2) and a possible TV series based on The Nut Job, Whynott is hoping to augment the studio's storage with a third, and perhaps a fourth, Avere Edge ler. "I expect to add over 200 more clients to the system; we'll be working on multiple productions going forward, so I'd like to see a couple more Averes as part of the solution," he says. ToonBox is launching a collaboration with Redrover Co., Ltd. in Korea, which will need to install centralized storage of its own. Whynott will be involved in determining the storage solution, and Avere will likely play a role. "We'll have a big need for le synchronization between our studios, and I suspect the Avere units could play a role there." M I L K London's Milk (www.milk-vfx. com), a boutique VFX studio for high-end television and features, launched in June 2013 with Pixit Media's PixStor so - ware-based storage solution running on Dell hardware. Head of Systems Dave Good- bourn, who was brought on board to plan and design Milk's infrastructure, had used PixStor at two other facilities – uFX in London and Belgium, and Spov – and had been impressed. Kudos were also forthcoming from users at other VFX houses. "All the recommendations led us to our decision," says Milk CEO/Executive Producer Will Cohen. "It was a no-brainer," adds Goodbourn. Cohen says PixStor "rep- resents a very modern, very now solution, instead of hard-disk storage. The generation of companies that came before us looked for brand names and ashing lights in boxes. They were reassured by the indus- trial look of the kit. But PixStor is reliable, easy to use, quickly expandable, and its support is second to none." The present con guration of PixStor's centralized nodes o ers about 150 TB across three storage pools. The system was expanded twice in the com- pany's rst year from approxi- mately 80 TB to 96TB, then again to its current size. "We may expand it again by another 100 or 150 TB," Goodbourn says. "In theory, PixStor is in nitely expandable. We'll max out on power and cooling before we reach capacity." Milk mixes en- terprise-class and o -the-shelf disks in the system. Cohen notes that Milk's animators, modelers, artists, compositors, and online editors don't think about the storage system, "which is a good sign. Many probably don't know what it is – a handful of people maybe looked in the cupboard. They're just happy that our pipeline runs quickly and e ciently." In just its rst year, Milk has kept storage running at capac- ity with VFX for Doctor Who, Sherlock, 24: Live Another Day, Hercules, the upcoming Dracula Untold, and the new mini-series Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. "A really good test of PixStor was David Attenborough's Natu- ral History Museum Alive 3D, for broadcast and IMAX, which was pretty much our rst job," says Cohen. "It was stereo 4 K with lots of furry creatures. So being able to handle that was a good introduction to the system." Goodbourn says UK-based Pixit Media is constantly SYNAPTIC ANTICIPATES AN EXPANSION OF ITS STORAGE SOLUTION (NOW SUPERMICRO) AS ITS WORK AMPS UP FOR SLEEPY HOLLOW. MORE STORAGE CASE STUDIES: GO TO EXTRAS IN THE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014 ISSUE BOX C G W. C O M