Qumulo High-Performance File Storage Powers VFX Studio MARZ’s GPU Rendering, Project Delivery Times

Visual effects (VFX) studio Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies (MARZ) has selected Qumulo’s distributed file system for its ultra-fast performance, high availability, and scalable capacity. Qumulo’s software will enable MARZ to better meet its extremely aggressive post-production timelines by accelerating GPU rendering speeds for VFX projects and by providing real-time visibility into storage capacity and usage.

Toronto-based MARZ delivers feature film-quality VFX for premium television series such as HBO’s Watchmen, Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys, and Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. Compared with feature film timelines, television series require VFX studios to deliver visual effects at a vastly accelerated rate.

“Our GPU rendering turn-around speeds are radically fast. We selected Qumulo’s file storage to support the imminent 8K standard, and immediately put it to the test on 4K shows, with more than 30 artists hitting it hard 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Qumulo’s file storage performed flawlessly and has exceeded our expectations,” said Sebastian Bilbao, MARZ’s chief technology officer. “With our studio’s fast-paced growth, we would have been dead in the water if we had not taken rapid steps to upgrade to a file storage system that met our challenging requirements.”

Since deploying Qumulo’s file storage, MARZ has been able to double its rendering workloads and has tripled its previous storage capacity, all with a smaller storage footprint.

MARZ will deploy the new file system on Qumulo’s extremely dense Capacity Series C-72T platform. The C-72T can store 72TB of capacity in a 1U form factor that can scale up to 3PB. The platform’s high-density, block-level architecture delivers 100 percent usable capacity. Hybrid SSD/HDD media supports fast performance with efficient storage, and 6-core, 2.2 GHz CPU and 64GB memory.

“File storage is at the heart of modern editorial, VFX and rendering workflows. Studios like MARZ that are at the forefront of delivering feature film quality on tight timelines require fast, simple, and reliable storage for their artists,” said Eric Scollard, vice president worldwide sales for Qumulo. “Qumulo is the recognized leader for powering high-speed GPU rendering with high-performance, massively scalable, intelligent file storage technology that customers can run on-prem or in the public cloud.”