The configuration that is shown above does not contain the first tier extreme-speed 2u and 4u solid state drive arrays. Price depends greatly on desired configuration. Contact us for a quote.

RenderStream is pleased to announce Omnia, our turnkey rack mounted animation studio. RenderStream Omnia comes complete with PCoIP workstations and compositors. For the render farm, up to 240 Intel 5600-series Xeon cores per 7u using our Ludicrous-Speed-20 chassis managed by our PipelineFX-based Qube! Farm Supervisor with Gigabit, optical fiber and or Infiniband three-tiered storage that is transparently managed to automatically stage files based on the users’ demand.

What differentiates this solution from traditional animation studio setups is that we are now able to bring together all of the key hardware components of a world class animation studio (workstations, compositors and render farm) into a single easy to manage and highly secure 42U rack, housed outside of the production area, in your data center or server room. Omnia can be shipped to your facility fully wired with your desired software pre installed allowing you to get up and running in no time.

Key components of RenderStream Omnia:

Storage and Backplane:

Our full storage solution is built for speed, volume, security and archival. Our workstations and compositors use RAID0 media cache with PCI-e storage options so that more effective streaming can be accomplished. These systems are fed by three tiers of storage that vary from the fastest solid state arrays with half terabyte to ten terabyte storage at the top tier. Feeding this fastest storage is RenderStream’s unique high speed ten/twenty terabyte to petabyte iSCSI storage arrays that can deliver more than 15,000 In/Out Operations Per Second (IOPS). The speeds achieved are, for the money, amongst the fastest in the industry being five to eight times faster than comparably priced non-enhanced systems.

These speeds allow the studio to run at peak performance by reducing IOPS induced bottlenecks that can lead to dropped frames and longer turnaround times and lost productivity. Our fast, no compromise iSCSI, allow young studios that are just getting started to bypass the high speed storage until their business can afford and fully utilize these extremely expensive and high value solutions. Next for the final tier we use tape archival storage. The RenderStream storage solution uses a storage management system that transparently migrates files to faster or slower long term storage based on their usage thus greatly simpifying job set-up.

The recommended backplane for this depends on the load of the system. RenderStream offers gigabit, aggregated gigabit, optical fiber and Infiniband which is now less expensive than ten gigabit. Our backplanes provide effective multi-path routes to maxmize data passing efficiency and a unique network for PCoIP (PC over IP).

Partial Network Layout

Complete Network Layout

PCoIP Workstations and Compositors:

RenderStream Omnia takes advantage of PCoIP technology which allows your studio’s workstations and compositors to be centrally managed in a local server room or data center. The technology provides an uncompromising 3D production experience and IP security. Even though your workstation isn’t right next to you, panning, zooming and manipulating objects in view ports, or scrubbing 4k animation footage on your compositor has virtually no noticeable lag. The work never leaves the data center without your control, so if you use consultants they can securely work with you from transcontinental distances provided typical high speed data pipes are available.

With multi monitor support for high resolution 3D graphics and HD media, you will never know your hardware is in an isolated server room. To make the experience even more seamless, local mouse pointer software can be installed so that there is no lag whatsoever when moving the cursor on screen, thus making the signal lag less noticeable when interacting with 3D objects.

For the PCoIP rack mounted workstations we recommend our 1U dual 2.66 GHz X5650, 2.80GHz X5660 or 2.93 GHz X5670 6-core  processors with Nvidia FX3800 or FX 4800 Quadro cards or the ATI v8750 v8800 cards, 24GB Memory with a boot drive and up to five drive RAID0 media cache, though the 4-core E5620 is a great system for the budget. For our compositors we recommend the dual 3.33 GHz X5680 6-core processors with 32 GB to 192 GB memory and 15,000 IOPS one to twelve terabyte RAID0 Media Cache.

Take a look at this PCoIP demo by Teradici showing examples of this technology over a distance of thousands of miles.

Ludicrous Speed-20 render farm:

With up to 240 Intel 6-core 5600 series Xeon cores per 7u enclosure, the Ludicrous Speed-20 render farm with twenty dual processor-based computers packs a tremendous amount of computational power in a small space. For the energy conscious we recommend the 60 W 2.26 GHz X5640 6-core that delivers far more computational power than the previous generation a dual 95 W 4-core 2.93 GHz X5570 (on papers beats the 3.2 GHz X5580). While our system can use the 2.93 GHz X5670 the price point for the Ludicrous Speed-20 is the 2.66 GHz X5650 which means for the same aggregate GHz using more X5650 blades will have the lowest price per GHz making it a better option than using a faster processor. Under certain gigabit configurations the 2.4 GHz E5620 is a good solution too but in general the 6-core solutions are more cost-effective.

RenderStream Omnia is truly the ultimate solution for mid-large size production houses and it can be tailored to meet the needs of your studio’s workflow. At Renderstream we don’t just want to sell you hardware, we want to be your Media IT partner who is always there to make sure your operation is running at peak performance.

If you are in the market for a solution like Omnia, or if you need something smaller (or bigger) we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to drop us a note at info@renderstream.com or give us a call at 512-850-4098 for more information or to request a quote.

Please note: In a smaller form factor we also offer a boutique version of Omnia with one to four PCoIP workstations or compositors, a Ridiculous Speed-2 or Ridiculous Speed-4 renderfarm, 2u iSCSI or high-speed iSCSI, Qube! Supervisor, switches and optional archival system.