Bottlenecks in High-Performance Data Access

Inadequate storage system performance prevents the rendering computing clustered node from quickly accessing the latest texture files. As a result, rendering takes a long time.

Unguaranteed Reliability

To ensure smooth animation rendering, the storage system is required to operate reliably for a long term while carrying heavy load.

Unsatisfactory System Scalability

Fast-growing businesses require the quick and smooth expansion of storage system capacity and performance. In addition, the storage system must be compatible with various platforms so that the rendering cluster can run on different application platforms.

Overview

Animation rendering is a special type of video production used to provide better visual experience. The production process involves a large number of high-speed computing activities, which require the back-end storage system to provide stable GB-level bandwidths. The HUAWEI Animation Storage Solution is based on the clustered NAS storage system and employs the dynamic tiered storage (DST) and SmartCache technologies to enable users to frequently read and/or write over massive files and efficient access to hotspot data, which all shorten rendering time and boost production efficiency.

Components

• HUAWEI OceanStor Mass Storage

• Superb performance: The clustered NAS storage system provides powerful random I/O processing capabilities and intelligent DST to manage full data lifecycle requirements and allocate resources on demand, which provides the rendering process with the high-performance data access it requires. The NAS series ranks No. 1 in the SPEC performance test, with a record-breaking performance of NFS 3,064,602 OPS, twice that of the runner-up.
• High reliability: Service stability and continuity are guaranteed with the multi-node active-active cluster architecture and high-reliability designs of the storage units used in the solution, which feature redundant controllers, data coffers, disk pre-copy, and global hot spare disks.
• Flexible scalability: Engine nodes can be online scaled up to 24 nodes and the storage capacity to 15 PB. The system performance increases linearly with the number of engine nodes. The NAS series supports online expansion, which meets the performance and capacity expansion requirements of animation rendering.