News

posted on 16 June 2008 10:20

Canadian special effects house Soho vfx used Dell servers and workstations fed by BlueArc storage to create and render the 16TB of photo-realistic special effects needed to create The Incredible Hulk movie.

Soho vfx's IT systems had to process and store 30 terabytes of data while running multiple software applications used to create and render visual effects for "The Incredible Hulk."

Kevin Peesker, the VP and GM for Small and Medium Business in Dell Canada, said: "A robust combination of Dell's PowerEdge Servers, Dell Precision Workstations, storage backup solutions and timely customer service enables Soho vfx to deliver the best creative and technical expertise in the visual-effects industry."

But it was a back-end BlueArc Titan 2200 hardware-accelerated network-attached storage (NAS) array that fed the 1,200 Dell servers and workstations with data whilst they were creating and then rendering the special effects scenes. The data was fed through Fibre Channel links at 600-700MB/sec.

Soho vfx was contracted by the film studio which produced the Hulk movie, Marvel Entertainment. It bought its Titan 2200 in 2006 and uses it as its mainline storage resource. The machine currently has a38TB capacity.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}