BUCK uses Hammerspace’s global namespace to manage multiple projects in its pipeline, creating volumes of unstructured data ready for processing through collaborative workflows.
Niantic Labs
BUCK is a graphic design company whose work ranges from 2D and 3D modelling for multimedia to the creation of immersive in-person experiences. Its team’s services include branding, character design, animation and many others.
About 800 full-time employees and freelance artists work for BUCK worldwide from offices in Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, London, Vancouver and Sydney. At any given time, the company is managing 50 to 100 projects in its pipeline, amounting to large volumes of unstructured data that needs to be ingested, processed and modified through collaborative workflows. Performance requirements can quickly become demanding.
CTO John Kleber started working for BUCK at a time when the company was rapidly growing. The creative teams at each location were siloed – each location used NAS storage from various vendors, and data was copied between sites manually or with data movement tools like Resilio.
Global Namespace Environment
The problem here was that, whenever BUCK’s business needed to ramp up for a project in any given region, the team could not always share data quickly enough with BUCK’s offices located elsewhere. This meant missing the opportunity to distribute work across the company’s existing talent. It not only slowed projects down but also resulted in having to hire and onboard local freelance artists.
“When I joined BUCK, my vision was a single namespace storage environment, where all applications, workflows and searches point to one directory. The physical storage appliance in use wasn’t an issue,” said John.
After evaluating different types and brands of file system software and unsuccessfully trying for months to get a global namespace environment working, John contacted an outside specialist in IT systems and data infrastructures for post-production, GPL Technologies, who introduced him to Hammerspace.
Coda
The experience with Hammerspace soon brought some positive results. “We had our first Hammerspace cluster up and running in Los Angeles in about four hours and were doing local read/write speed tests,” said John. “By day two, we had joined the clusters in Los Angeles and New York and had effectively demonstrated a multi-site single namespace in less than two days.
Familiar Protocols
A global namespace is not a new or unique endeavour, but Hammerspace is different in that it does not rely on a complex abstraction layer to function. Its approach is not proprietary, instead it is based on regular SMB (Server Message Block) and NFS (Network File System) protocols, which makes it agnostic and able to fit into existing storage systems without changing workflows.
The protocols are important because they allow users and client devices to access and share files over the network, and include rules making it possible for several users to share the same file without data conflicts. SMB and NFS are similar but SMB goes a step further in terms of flexibility by allowing clients to also share files with each other. Using SMB, clients can set up connections with other devices on the network, such as servers or printers, and then access the device’s files as if it were local.
All protocols access the same underlying file system with a uniform security policy across all protocols. John also noted Hammerspace’s simplicity. “When setting up our system, all we needed to focus on was installing the software and mounting the directories. The files stay close to the user, who can access them directly,” he said.
Collaborating in a Live File System
Hammerspace is now deployed at four of BUCK’s offices, creating a single global namespace that spans offices in Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam and Sydney. Artists and data users across all locations are able to collaborate on the same files in a live file system, avoiding the problem of wrangling file copies between sites. Requests for access can be pointed to an existing share or directory, and assimilate the metadata while leaving the original data in place.
Brawl Stars
This design also means BUCK can hire artists in different regions to collaborate on the same project, which was previously not possible as mentioned above. In other words, if the team in Amsterdam wins a new client, now artists in all of the geographic regions can collaborate on that project. Projects can be completed faster, and more projects can be completed.
Compatibility with Existing NVMe Servers and NAS Storage
Hammerspace is used for all high-throughput workloads at BUCK, including editing and rendering, acting as high-performance shared storage that spans sites and different storage tiers. Data that requires the highest performance is stored on NVMe servers from Supermicro, which BUCK was already using in-house.
BUCK is also using Hammerspace to repurpose its existing NAS systems as lower-cost tier 2 storage. “We are draining off the old NAS storage by assimilating that data into Hammerspace, and then we will repurpose that appliance as lower-cost tier 2 storage.” Meanwhile, all of the storage is managed by Hammerspace.
For the future, John emphasized the flexibility and speed of Hammerspace, aware that AI will have implications for BUCK’s infrastructure and business across all locations. But currently, BUCK’s intention is to take advantage of Hammerspace to make their global company truly function globally.
John said, “Hammerspace allows us to operate our business the way we want to, which is about scale and efficiency. We are not obliged to conform our business to storage appliance architecture.” hammerspace.com
