GREENER DATA
TECHNOLOGY
and sustainable methods of cooling. Some are investing heavily in improving their carbon footprint. Others will use an off-setting procedure, rather than directly sourcing renewable energy. Last year, vfx studio Jellyfish Pictures opted to
use the Hammerspace Global Data Environment for its virtual strategy. The environment doesn’t require multiple copies of content and claims to save 20 per cent on cloud rendering projects by using the most cost-effective cloud compute region. Jeremy Smith, chief technology officer at Jellyfish Pictures points to data centres housed in Montreal, where the climate aids cooling. Animation and vfx production schedules need to
be tightly designed. “You want to reduce the amount of rendering you do, to be sure with your workflows that you’re completely ready to render,” says Abdul Hakim, business development manager at the Digital Production Partnership. Mission Digital’s Tom Mitchell believes cloud
is an environmental win when it comes to data handling. The move to cloud offers scale-ability and creates efficiencies, including transport costs when the production team can access data from home. “When you start to move to cloud, you can start automating workflows – turn on when using and off when not,” adds Mitchell. Arguably, the big providers have deep pockets
and can invest in green energy solutions and develop more efficient systems. AWS Cloud services is using low-power silicone with graviton processors. Its Low latency Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class is designed for seldom-used data. Crucially, it also offers a carbon calculator tool – the S3 Storage Lens - which will indicate when a customer can move to a different class of storage, to save power and money.
STORAGE SAVINGS For those that opt for on-prem data centre solutions, there is of course, another kind of lens, aka client services. Conscientious post houses – with an intimate understanding of the content in their on- prem data centre - will prompt clients to reduce the amount of data and to put it into different levels of
storage when a production is done and dusted. When systems do need
replacing, more efficient options are coming on the market. With efficiencies and higher storage densities within the same chassis come reduced energy consumption and cost. Sky has replaced storage arrays with more efficient technology, reduced power use and cooling. Fifty Fifty recently invested in pixitmedia’s hyper-converged pixstor file system which uses Dell NVME storage. “It gives us both the performance that we require for multi suite HDR finishing and offers a reduced power consumption when compared to disk based solutions,” says Alex Meade. Down the line, magnetic tape data storage -
“NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE IMMEDIATELY ACCESSIBLE ONLINE WHICH IS EXPENSIVE AND NOT GREEN”
Linear Tape-Open - means that data can sit on a shelf where it’s not using energy. “In data terms this is often large, tens of terabytes in the case of commercials,” says Peter Godden, commercial director at archive management firm The Stockroom. “It needs to be stored, but not everything needs to be immediately accessible online which is expensive and obviously not green, this is where offline storage comes in which is secure (can’t be hacked) and green (doesn’t require power).” Between content creation and streaming,
there’s a whole pipeline for data, with various processes along the way to distribution. Humans not Robots is helping media companies to audit their operations, to save cost, time and to reduce environmental impact. “What we’re concentrating on is how media companies are ingesting, processing and distributing ever increasing volumes of content across the global market,” says COO Mick Broderick. “They spend millions on processing with very little granular understanding... They take holistic views of cost, rather than looking at a granular cost to the company.” Humans not Robots is looking at what Broderick
Spring 2023
televisual.com 101
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