E N D - U S E R I N S I G H T the latest industry-standard collaborationbased solution for constructing disparate elements into animated 3D scenes – Universal Scene Description ( USD ).
DNEG decided to break up key parts of the asset tracking system into microservices and manage these in containers using Red Hat OpenShift , the industry ’ s leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes . The first and most acutely critical , component of this was a highvolume metadata interrogation API , Pipe Query . DNEG had a clear vision and leaned on Red Hat consultants and training to enhance its expertise in DevOps , Infrastructure-as-Code , API management and other relevant areas , developing first a proof of concept , then a global infrastructure .
Now in production in six data centres around the globe , Red Hat OpenShift provides an abstraction and orchestration layer between artists and the database , enabling developers to deliver Pipe Query in a standardised , cloud-native way to artists , wherever they are in the world .
Red Hat OpenShift automates the application lifecycle to reduce manual processes for DNEG ’ s developers and enable workloads to be managed dynamically . DNEG has taken a progressive DevOps approach to delivering Pipe Query from development and build , through quality assurance ( QA ) and all the way to production . Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines , based on the upstream open source Tekton project and Red Hat OpenShift GitOps , which uses Argo CD , are helping DNEG to create advanced workflows for continuous integration and continuous deployment ( CI / CD ) using industry best practices .
With its deployment of Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus , DNEG can also take advantage of :
• Red Hat OpenShift ’ s in-built security features , enabling DNEG to control its trusted sources of content , testing and deployments , to defend applications from attacks and vulnerabilities in all layers of the platform and to extend secure services through standard interfaces and APIs .
• Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes to control clusters and applications from a single console , with built-in governance and compliance policies .
• Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes to help protect containerised Kubernetes workloads in all major clouds and hybrid platforms .
• Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation for persistent software-defined storage and essential data services .
• Red Hat Quay , a scalable , central registry of available software to help distribute it efficiently to multiple clusters .
DNEG is planning to onboard more of its software to Red Hat OpenShift for ease of distribution and orchestration , prioritising services that deliver the most value . This includes its asset provisioning system and its file transfer system , which carries 40 petabytes of data . As industry technology evolves , DNEG anticipates that this could also include workloads that use Machine Learning ( ML ), as these have high compute demands and can save hours of laborious manual work by helping artists to apply animation principles from one digital entity to another .
DNEG is also in the process of implementing Red Hat 3scale API Management to help manage workload , such as balancing requests from artists with batch requests from a server to reduce congestion . Red Hat 3Scale API Management can help DNEG to prioritise artist ’ s computing consumption based on the importance or delivery date of the work . This helps artists learn the most efficient way to use resources to deliver their work and enables DNEG to better understand how much resource each production is using , so it can more accurately quote for future jobs .
We asked Paul Salvini , DNEG CTO , further questions to find out more about the project :
Can you elaborate on the strategic vision behind adopting Red Hat OpenShift and how it aligns with DNEG ’ s long-term goals in the visual effects and animation industry ?
DNEG ’ s long-term technology goal is to provide the best possible creative platform for artists , production managers and clients . Our company has grown to more than 9,000 employees in 10 locations around the world . At any given time , we need to juggle dozens of complex , multi-petabyte visual effects and animation projects . Adoption of Red Hat OpenShift makes it possible for us to adjust our complex proprietary software
This helps developers deliver Pipe Query updates in a faster , more stable and flexible way – deploying features when they are available rather than waiting for rigid release cycles and with minimal disruption : releasing a change now takes minutes where before it took hours . Red Hat OpenShift gives DNEG visibility into application usage so that it can streamline the creative process of asset design for artists and help them be productive instead of waiting for the system to fetch data .
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