Legend 3D Selects EMC Enabling Scale to 10X to Build Transformers Smurfs Hugo and Spiderman

SIGGRAPH 2012, LOS ANGELES, Calif. - August 07, 2012 -

EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) today announced that Legend3D, the largest provider of 2D-to-3D media content conversions, has standardized on EMC® Isilon® scale-out storage for all of its visual entertainment assets. Leveraging Isilon's ability to store vast amounts of high-resolution digital media, Legend3D has streamlined its management of Big Data through greatly improved production management, increased artist productivity and the creation of new production pipelines for major motion pictures such as Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Smurfs, Hugo, and The Amazing Spiderman.

Customer Benefits:

• Improved Scalability—After deployment in July 2010, Isilon was instrumental in Legend3D's growth from 50 to over 400 artists in less than a year. Due to its flawless performance and scalability for Big Data, it helped the company to accelerate its move into the 2D-to-3D media conversion business.
• Increased Performance—Today, up to 500 Legend3D digital artists can work concurrently with large image files stored on Isilon.
• Enhanced Agility—Legend3D changed its digital media work flow and increased artist productivity by over 50% due in part to better performance and scalability with Isilon, giving the studio increased capacity and eliminating delays.
• Simplified Management—Isilon's reliability and minimal management requirements allowed Legend3D to reduce storage administration from three full-time equivalents (FTEs) to one-quarter FTE.

Customer Challenges and Solution:

With major 2D-3D film conversion projects generating as much as 100 terabytes of data weekly, Legend3D's previous storage environment proved inadequate. IT staff were charged with clearing out unused data, which always carries the risk of inadvertently deleting important files. Furthermore, as a result of Legend3D's own aggressive R&D program, huge production efficiencies were created that required ever-greater throughput. As a result, storage and access to data rapidly became a rate limiting step and downloads to the artist's desktop computers over the network were sometimes too slow, impeding the artist's accelerated productivity. Legend3D needed to control the pace at which it scaled to ensure that its storage platform adapted to its existing and future high volume workflows.

Legend3D chose EMC Isilon scale-out storage so it could better handle the exploding data centric 3D conversion market. After considering other NAS solutions, Legend3D's selection of Isilon was based on the platform's ability to scale beyond 500 artists and manage a 100-node render farm. The company deployed Isilon X-Series systems for its production digital assets and Isilon NL-Series systems for nearline storage of less frequently accessed data.

Today the Isilon infrastructure supports Legend 3D's regular production space of 600 terabytes of digital images and video, VMware virtual machines, intranet servers and their robust production asset management system. To boost performance in data synchronization between different environments, the company also relies on Isilon IQ Accelerator nodes. With Isilon, Legend3D has improved storage scalability and performance, enabling dramatic business growth and innovation.

Customer Quote:

Anthony Lopez, Director of IT, Legend3D

"By selectively compressing files and moving them to the Isilon archive, we can save up to 80% of our production space for certain projects and still regenerate all the necessary data our artists need. In the future, we're looking at moving our digital assets into the cloud and using SmartPools to optimize our capacity and further improve our efficiency."

"Isilon's excellent performance and scalability helped our studio grow smoothly from 50 artists to over 400 in less than a year. Today we can support upwards of 500 artists who can concurrently accessing the system without any issues or slowdowns. Isilon has given us peace of mind."

"Our previous storage had limited performance and capacity, hindering our growth and impeding our ability to handle our ever increasing volume of production work. Isilon immediately provided us with infinite scalability along with rapid access times and the ability to better manage our digital assets."

"The ease of managing Isilon allows us to focus more on innovation instead of constantly thinking about storage. We trained our tech staff to set up Isilon in a couple of hours and we reduced our overall storage admin requirements from three FTEs to one-quarter FTE today."

Additional Resources

• Learn more about EMC Isilon
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