Dell Fluid Data helps BioWare stay ahead • Green Efficiency • Intelligent Data Management of the game • Virtualization “ An industry like ours heavily depends on taking advantage of the latest technologies and ever changing requirements for how we manage our data. Dell Fluid Data architecture gives us options to do whatever we want, and that flexibility is crucial.” Craig Miller, Senior Team Lead of Infrastructure, BioWare Customer Profile Company: BioWare Industry: Arts, Entertainment and Media Country: Canada Employees: 500 Website: www.bioware.com Benefits Business Need • Reduced IT expenses and improved BioWare needed to adopt a virtual server and storage infrastructure capacity planning to better meet shifting application demands as game production • Eliminated almost 300 physical servers deadlines approach—a challenge when the studio’s data can change and planned expansion by as much as 20 TB per day. • Reduced power and cooling costs • Automated day-to-day tasks Solution The company implemented a data center virtualization solution based • Higher availability; reduced downtime on the Dell™ Compellent Storage Center SAN with Dell Fluid Data™ • Simpler, faster data recovery technology and VMware server virtualization software, delivering a flexible, adaptable architecture, automating administration tasks and better protecting the data that forms the core of BioWare’s business. Competing successfully in the rapidly-evolving video game industry requires employing top-notch artistic talent and applying the best in computer and animation technology. During development of today’s multimillion dollar blockbusters, this combination generates hundreds of terabytes of data during the course of production. BioWare, a leading developer of high-quality console, PC and online role-playing games, is keenly aware of how critical data can be to the bottom line. As one of Canada’s fastest-growing efficiently to changing demands and companies, BioWare faces substantial shifting priorities, particularly during data management challenges. Among the final few months before a game’s “ Our IT team rarely its most difficult tasks is managing completion when employees are had time to move the enormous volume of complex art, working around the clock and data is animation and audio files that comprise changing by as much as 20 TB per day. data. Instead, they a typical game release. Over the past According to Craig Miller, senior team 10 years, the amount of data needed to lead of infrastructure, it was becoming bought faster, produce a video game has gone up by clear that the best way to solve this and larger, disks. a factor of more than 100, with today’s problem was to virtualize the studio’s games now requiring extremely large, data infrastructure. This would Now, the Dell cinematic-quality images and thousands require implementing a virtualization of voiceover and compressed audio files. solution that would allow fully Compellent SAN Moreover, most studios today produce shared resources, easy storage and Dell Fluid Data each game in multiple languages, further classification and migration, and complicating the data management task. complete data protection. architecture move Adding to the data storage challenge for BioWare is its geographically dispersed files automatically, Technology at Work staff. With studios in Edmonton (Alberta), allowing the Montreal (Quebec), Austin, Texas, Fairfax, Hardware Virginia, San Francisco, California, company to Dell™ Compellent Storage and Ireland, product developers and Center SAN with Dell Fluid save on disk costs programmers collaborate across Data™ technology locations at all hours of the day and ™ as we grow—and night. With in-production files constantly Dell PowerEdge R710 and R610 servers with Intel® changing and moving between focus on more Xeon® technology locations, keeping data synchronized and readily accessible is a top priority for strategic efforts.” Software the IT team. This is especially true in the Craig Miller, last few months of game development Dell Compellent Data Progression Senior Team Lead of Infrastructure, where system uptime and data accuracy BioWare Dell Compellent are paramount in order to meet highly Dynamic Capacity publicized release dates. Dell Compellent Fast Track Time to virtualize Dell Compellent Live Volume Growing capacity demands and Dell Compellent Remote a fragmented server and storage Instant Replay environment were making it increasingly difficult for BioWare’s VMware IT team to respond quickly and “We needed a storage solution that Automated data movement would support server virtualization While scalability and support costs were without putting additional burdens on important factors in selecting a storage the IT team,” Miller says. “Additionally, solution, BioWare was impressed we needed to plan for business by the added value offered by Dell continuity, so we were looking for Compellent Data Progression. The cost-effective data replication without automated tiered storage functionality compromising performance.” actively, intelligently manages data at the block level. This eliminates the After evaluating options from several tedious process of manually moving vendors, BioWare worked with Dell data between tiers. Dell Compellent Compellent channel partner Mainland “ We needed a reliable Data Progression dynamically classifies Information Systems to implement a and migrates data to the optimum tier disaster recovery data center virtualization solution using based on frequency of access. the Dell Compellent Storage Center solution that would SAN with Dell Fluid Data technology and “With Dell Compellent Data Progression, VMware server virtualization software. frequently used data remains on faster allow us to continue Dell Compellent virtualizes storage at drives, while less-frequently used data operating in the the disk level, spreading data across is pushed to slower, more economical all disk drives in the Dell Compellent drives,” Miller says. “This automated event of a major Storage Center SAN to enhance storage data migration gives us the best of flexibility and improve performance. all worlds—quick access for users, system outage. The reduced storage costs and simplified The advanced storage virtualization efficiency of Dell management so IT staff can address provided by Storage Center enables more strategic tasks.” Compellent Remote BioWare’s IT team to provision from a virtual pool of storage without The company currently stores about Instant Replay makes restrictions and create storage for 300 TB of active data using two Dell hundreds of VMware virtual servers Compellent Storage Center SANs. it possible for us to quickly with no wasted storage capacity. Data is written to high-performance implement cost- Moreover, it allows programmers and drives on Tier 1 storage. Then, as the game developers to access data faster frequency of access declines, the effective IP-based by making it possible to process multiple less active blocks of data migrate to data requests at the same time. high-capacity, lower-cost drives on replication over our Tier 3 storage. By leveraging the Dell Compellent existing networks, plug-in for VMware vCenter, BioWare Post-production games and files now gains additional efficiencies in managing automatically migrate to lower tiers, helping us deliver the company’s ever-shifting virtual including more than 200 TB of data business continuity infrastructure. From the VMware in Tier 3, saving substantial costs on vSphere client, Miller and his team expensive Tier 1 storage. If files at a fraction of can perform multiple functions, such begin getting accessed regularly as managing volumes, configuring again, those blocks move back up to the cost of other storage and VM hosts and replicating VM Tier 1 automatically. replication solutions.” datastore volumes for disaster recovery. “Our IT team rarely had time to move “Any time we can work from a single Craig Miller, files,” says Miller. “Instead, they bought interface, it’s a win for us,” says Miller. Senior Team Lead of Infrastructure, faster, and larger, disks. Now, the Dell “The Dell Compellent plug-in makes it BioWare Compellent SAN and Dell Fluid Data easier to manage our VM environment architecture move files automatically, without leaving vCenter.” allowing the company to save on disk In addition, the company has long relied costs as we grow—and focus on more on Dell server technology to produce strategic efforts.” its hit games and manage its business. BioWare currently leverages 30 Dell Built-in flexibility PowerEdge R710 and R610 servers with Thin provisioning with Dell Compellent Intel Xeon processors. Dynamic Capacity enables the BioWare IT team to begin using the Dell like ours heavily depends on taking data protection using space-efficient Compellent SANs quickly without having advantage of the latest technologies snapshots called Replays. Remote to pre-allocate storage space for each and ever changing requirements for Instant Replay does not need to restore application. With Dynamic Capacity, how we manage our data. Dell Fluid the entire volume; it simply restores physical storage is not consumed until Data architecture gives us options the blocks that contain changed data. data is actually written to disk by an to do whatever we want, and that Because Replays only capture block- application. As a result, the IT team is flexibility is crucial.” level changes, the IT team can afford only buying new disks when adding to take them often without taxing physical capacity is absolutely