Animation company produces its first full-length film on easy-to-manage technology, avoiding the recruitment of • Mobility • Backup, archiving and recovery additional employees • Workstations

“With Dell technology, our people can focus on being creative, instead of worrying about technical issues.” Hilmar Sigurdsson, Chief Executive Officer, CAOZ

Customer profile Company: CAOZ Benefits Industry: Arts, Entertainment & Media • Collaboration with Dell and Dell Country: Iceland Partner EJS ensures optimum Employees: 30 solution • Self-managing storage saves CAOZ Website: www.caoz.com from hiring two additional staff • Growing storage needs met with Business need easy-to-scale storage Animation studio CAOZ needed an enterprise infrastructure to support • Film on schedule to hit release date the production of its first full-length film. with reliable Dell technology Solution • Production data stays safe with CAOZ worked with Dell to implement Dell EqualLogic storage and Dell™ mirrored Dell EqualLogic storage PowerEdge™ servers to store, protect and process the production data • Staff are free to be creative with for the film. It also deployed Precision workstations. efficient technology CAOZ is a 3D animation studio with two award- winning short films – The Lost Little Caterpillar, and Anna and the Moods – to its name. The studio is now working on its first full-length computer-generated film. Legends of Valhalla – Thor, set in the world of Nordic mythology, is due for release in August 2011.

On finalising the funding for Legends Dell suggested that the company of Valhalla – Thor, CAOZ extended use Ethernet connections to link its core staff of 15 with another 25 screens on artists’ desks with Dell “We’ve avoided hiring animators and developers. The Precision™ R5400 workstations with between one and next step was to deploy a new IT Intel® Xeon® processor 5600 series or infrastructure to support them. Robust Intel® Xeon® processor 5650. These two IT staff thanks to technology was a prerequisite, both are located in the server room, and for the artists making the film and the paired with the Dell FX100 Remote the simplicity of Dell investors backing it. Access Device. This gives all users on the company network secure access EqualLogic.” Hilmar Sigurdsson, Chief Executive to the workstations via dedicated Officer, CAOZ, says: “For us, technology Hilmar Sigurdsson, hardware that compresses, encrypts works when no one thinks about Chief Executive Officer, and manages the transfer of data. CAOZ it – great storytelling and creative inspiration don’t happen when people “Dell came up with a great solution for are worrying about downtime.” CAOZ our animators and developers. We have needed continuous offsite backup remote connections to workstations to meet investor requirements, so a located in the server room, so the general rethink of the IT infrastructure studio is more comfortable, with less was essential. heat and noise,” says Gunnarsson. When employees leave the studio for Collaboration with Dell defines the day, the workstations automatically optimum infrastructure switch to image rendering – a CAOZ needed to support not only its compute-intensive task. own team, but animators and sound specialists at partner companies in Germany and Ireland. All staff would Technology at work be supported by the enterprise infrastructure at the CAOZ studio in Hardware Reykjavik, Iceland. Dell EqualLogic PS4000E and Arnar Gunnarsson, Computer Graphics PS6000E storage area networks Supervisor, CAOZ, says: “We looked (SANs) at Dell first, based on a positive – Auto-Snapshot Manager experience with previous purchases, – Auto-Replication including PowerEdge servers. IBM was ™ ™ an option too, but ultimately we found Dell PowerEdge R410 servers ® ® that with Dell, we got better value.” with Intel Xeon processor 5650

™ Initial conversations with Dell focused Dell Precision R5400 ® ® on a workstation solution. With workstations with Intel Xeon ® heavy demands on these machines, processor 5600 series or Intel ® CAOZ wanted to minimise heat in Xeon processor 5650 the studio and maximise utilisation. Dell FX100 Remote Access Device Self-managing storage saves CAOZ from hiring two additional staff

Production data stays safe with mirrored Dell EqualLogic storage

“We like the workstation solution provide reliable archiving to a disaster Dell provided because it maximises recovery site. This was a key driver utilisation,” says Gunnarsson. “If an for choosing Dell EqualLogic, as animator is only using two cores and Gunnarsson says: “We now have a Dell the others are idle, the machines EqualLogic PS6000E SAN in our server “Lost data would automatically use the others for room, and a PS4000E at a remote rendering.” location. Continuous auto-replication hamper productivity between the two gives us peace of This solution led to discussions about and cause expensive mind that our production data is safe. CAOZ’s datacentre needs – particularly Lost data would hamper productivity storage. “Our mission critical delays to the film’s and cause expensive delays to the requirements included a sound price– film’s release. It’s comforting to know release. It’s comforting performance ratio, scalability, and that we have a dependable solution.” simple, reliable data protection,” says to know that we Sigurdsson. “Our Dell account manager Gunnarsson and his team set up worked with the Dell Certified Partner Auto-Snapshot Manager – an inclusive have a dependable in Iceland, EJS, to show us how Dell software tool – to take snapshots solution.” EqualLogic storage could meet of all production data 24/7. He says: our needs.” “With Auto-Snapshot Manager, we Arnar Gunnarsson, Computer know we have a minimum recovery Graphics Supervisor, CAOZ CAOZ ran some early production data time if something goes wrong – our on a Dell EqualLogic storage area snapshots are almost real-time.” In network (SAN) provided by EJS. “We addition, the SANs are designed for carried out a number of tests to assess maximum uptime with hot-swappable the performance of the SAN, with components that ensure there is no the support of EJS, and then made single point of failure. a decision. The demonstration, plus the test device, gave us confidence Low maintenance solution that we were making the right choice,” saves CAOZ the cost of hiring explains Gunnarsson. additional employees CAOZ keeps production data Unlike the tape-based backup model safe with Dell EqualLogic storage that CAOZ used for shorter films, the Dell EqualLogic solution requires The studio will produce a vast amount almost zero maintenance. “We were of data to complete the film – not comfortable with Dell EqualLogic, least because it will be in 3D. The film firstly because all the software we will consist of 250,000 10-megabyte needed was included in the initial frames, with each frame undergoing purchase price, and secondly because 24 designs before being finalised. it requires minimal management,” says The company needed to store this Sigurdsson. “It’s reliable, accurate and constantly evolving data in a secure, straightforward – it works exactly as scalable solution that would also Dell said it would.” Sigurdsson estimates that without Dell load-balanced across a wider pool EqualLogic, staff expansion would have of storage,” says Sigurdsson. “This been inevitable. “We’ve avoided hiring is a feature of Dell EqualLogic that between one and two IT staff thanks to appealed to us, because we’re the simplicity of Dell EqualLogic. The producing large amounts of data to mirroring to our disaster recovery site which our artists need consistent, has been working without issue for high-speed access.” over six months, and the maintenance The film company also deployed burden is close to zero,” he says. “Our six Dell™ PowerEdge™ R410 servers backup times have been significantly with Intel® Xeon® processor reduced and we’ve eliminated the 5650. “We wanted high processing possibility of human errors. speeds, stability and a good price– CAOZ worked with EJS to deploy performance ratio. We looked the SAN, and found that the process at Dell, HP and IBM, and found required little manual input. The that Dell offered the best value,” migration process from the test system says Gunnarsson. to live production was completed much faster than expected. “I thought Company on track for film we’d need a meeting with EJS to release with Dell infrastructure discuss the migration. In fact, when “With the technology backbone we the EJS technician delivered the have, including Dell EqualLogic SANs PS6000E SAN, he and our IT supervisor and Dell Precision workstations, we unpacked and set up in seconds. expect to deliver our film on time,” They connected it to the test system, says Sigurdsson. “We are very satisfied hit the evacuate button and went Dell users.” home,” says Sigurdsson. CAOZ plans to work with Dell on future Studio’s growing data storage projects. Says Sigurdsson: “We feel needs met with easy-to-scale SAN confident about working with Dell – if we need new systems, it will be our “Scalability is important to us,” says first choice. I’d definitely recommend Sigurdsson. “It’s great that our Dell Dell to other studios. With Dell EqualLogic SANs are so easy to scale, technology, our people can focus on thanks to their plug-and-play, pay-as- being creative, instead of worrying you-grow architecture.” about technical issues.” CAOZ also liked the fact that SAN performance would increase in line with expansion. ”As we add For more information go to arrays, the speed of the SAN will dell.com/casestudies/emea increase, because our data will be

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Availability and terms of Dell Services vary by region. For more information, visit: dell.com/servicedescriptions © November 2010, Dell Inc. Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc. Intel and Intel Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. This case study is for informational purposes only. dell makes no warranties, express or implied, in this case study. Reference number: 10008766