Paramount Pictures

Story Details

When the producers of Barnyard decided to rip and replace their 32-bit Dell compute farm and EMC storage solution used for rendering and storing complex animated scenes, they needed solid technical advice and they needed it fast. The preferred alternative was a 64-bit solution running Linux, but installing it in the middle of production was a potentially risky move. Certain applications would have to be rewritten and there was no guarantee the new render farm would run smoothly. But to tighten the production schedule, Barnyard’s crew needed a solution that would allow them to complete what may be the most technically challenging animated movie to date for Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies.

Barnyard’s producers and IT staff chose Sun, over IBM and HP, to deploy a high-performance computing and storage solution. The technical superiority of the Sun solution and previous experiences that select crew members had with Sun’s technology opened the door. But the decisive factor was Sun’s willingness to partner with the crew and serve as a trusted advisor, both before and after the sale.

Sun’s account team and a Customer Ready Systems (CRS) team provided multiple iterations of the render farm design, recommended rack configurations that addressed concerns with heating and cooling issues, and offered suggestions for reducing costs and gaining efficiencies. Additionally, the CRS team designed a cascading switch to provide a single point of management for the server farm.

Within three weeks, CRS engineers assembled, racked, tested and delivered, in 19 boxes, a ready-to-deploy rendering farm comprising 620 dual-processor Sun Fire V20z and V40z x64 servers. By using the CRS program, Paramount saved approximately 230 hours in labor (about $7,000 worth) and freed its IT staff from working out configuration and system integration issues, and system bugs. Paramount also purchased 100-terabyte Sun storage arrays and a Sun tape library to provide online storage and backup of shot files and other movie assets.

Sun Client Solutions served as an extension of Barnyard’s small 12-person IT staff by providing ongoing technical support, onsite assistance and informal training—critical to the movie's success given the technical challenges in creating it. Sun provided focused suggestions on technical issues as they arose and supplied a rapid "break/fix" service to handle any equipment challenges. Client Solutions helped the IT staff design certain software tools and offered knowledge transfer at just the right time, which helped Barnyard's IT team avoid getting bogged down with unnecessary technical details.

When the crew moved its IT infrastructure to a co-location center closer to the studio, Sun Managed Relocation Services handled the transition, transporting 35,000 pounds of equipment, reconnecting the components, and giving Barnyard’s IT staff valuable information about network connections and power and cooling requirements.

Thanks to the level of Sun support and the solution’s performance—which both exceeded the crew’s expectations—work on the film finished earlier than expected, allowing the release date to advance from October to August 2006, in time to reach larger summer movie audiences.

Thrilled with their Sun partnership, Barnyard’s producers are exploring additional opportunities for Sun to provide similar computing and storage solutions on upcoming movie productions.

Find out more about Barnyard’s high performance computing solution