NovaGlobal successfully executed the second phase expansion to the NWD HPCC for a weather forecasting research unit in NTU. The latest expansion includes an IBM BladeCenter H consisting of six LS22 Blades shod with the latest AMD Shanghai range of six-core processors; and QDR Infiniband.

NovaGlobal has successfully achieved yet another milestone in completing a Digital Media Rendering as a Service project for a government-owned institution in Malaysia

Background

MSC Malaysia, formerly known as the Multimedia Super Corridor, is Malaysia’s most exciting initiative for the global information and communication technology (ICT) industry. This particular institution within MSC Malaysia is dedicated to becoming the preferred location for ICT and multimedia innovations, operations and services. Its facility center is to promote Malaysia’s creative industry onto the global stage, by developing local talents, providing shared facilities, production funding and creative awareness.

Challenges

This government-owned institution wanted to have a shared-rendering facility that can be easily accessible by the public. Targeted for use by animation houses and content providers, this facility must be secured and has the resources to backup, recover, manage and protect users’ data. The facility should have optimal performing hardware and software to assist users’ in improving the quality of their production. Users can access the facility remotely via internet or intranet. There should be an administrative software solution for the System Administrator to use to monitor, deploy and manage the facility’s resources. The facility can support multiple users running on selected rendering manager, animation and modelling software.

Our Solution

For this government-owned institution, we built a high-speed rendering facility equipped with high-performance computers, enterprise backup, data storage management solution and fast parallel file system connected via 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network. The facility has a web based submission portal, chat system and rendering service request form. There is a specially developed administrative tool for configuring, assigning and monitoring the nodes. In addition, the administrative tool can deploy files to the nodes, generate usage and billing reports. The facility is integrated with a deployment tool to capture and efficiently deploy the images to the nodes. The facility can be scaled horizontally and the application can be modified to accommodate new requirements without impacting the current operations.

Benefits

Local animators and creative content providers have responded favorably. The web based shared-rendering facility provides significant increase in speed compared to rendering the same job on their local machines. The system provides great flexibility to users, as they can submit and monitor their jobs at anytime and anywhere as long as there is internet connection. The system is secured and safeguards users’ intellectual property as only registered users are permitted to use the facility. Users can only access to their individual directory and check the status of their own jobs. The facility provides a low-cost, conducive and productive environment for the users. It promotes cost-effective use of energy by harnessing the power of green computing technology.