2 page Case Study - Posted 11/18/2008

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Beijing Planetarium

Planetarium Increases Rendering Speeds for Faster Creation of Astronomy Shows

Beijing Planetarium produces leading-edge digital planetarium shows using high-performance computing for rendering animation and special effects. It recently upgraded its environment to Windows® HPC Server 2008, which has helped the planetarium reduce the time, effort, and operating costs that are associated with managing the system.

Business Needs

Beijing Planetarium has a long history of prominence in the field of astronomy. The Beijing Ancient Observatory was first built in 1442 in the Ming Dynasty and served as the national observatory in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Today’s Beijing Planetarium is considered a center of astronomy education and research for all of China.

The planetarium fosters the public’s interest in astronomy by presenting multiple digital space shows each day. It also creates new shows, which it sells for use in planetariums across the globe. The planetarium’s digital studio develops two new shows a year—each up to approximately 30 minutes in length.

The process of rendering the animation and special effects for those shows is complicated and time consuming because each show includes between 40,000 and 60,000 individual images or frames, each of which has a resolution of up to 8,000 pixels x 8,000 pixels. Creating the images for these shows demands a great deal of processing power, so using high-performance computing (HPC) helps Beijing Planetarium complete a show much faster than it could using desktop computing.

Previously, the planetarium had implemented the first version of Windows® HPC for rendering in an HPC environment. “The rendering programs that we use most can run on both Linux and Microsoft® HPC environments, but we selected the Windows platform because it’s more useable, familiar, and mature, and it offers a wider range of plug-in technologies,” says Steven Song, Director of the Digital Studio for Beijing Planetarium. “However, we wanted to upgrade to take advantage of the streamlined management capabilities and better performance available with Windows HPC Server 2008.”

Solution

In March 2008, Beijing Planetarium deployed a 35-node cluster running on Windows HPC Server 2008 and using Sun Fire X4600 server computers with AMD Opteron dual-core processors. It took the planetarium just a few hours to upgrade its entire HPC environment, which was important because deployment is not a one-time event for the organization. Rather, it opts to reinstall the cluster each time it begins to develop a new show. “It’s easier for us to reinstall the nodes at the start of each project than to rearrange them because we end up with a cleaner installation with all the right plug-in applications,” explains Meng Xi, Engineer for Beijing Planetarium.

It has been absolutely beneficial for us to upgrade to Windows HPC Server 2008. We can spend less time managing our system and devote more time to strategic rendering work. Steven Song Director of the Digital Studio Beijing Planetarium

Beijing Planetarium has conducted performance tests on its new system and is pleased with the results. In fact, the planetarium plans to add a 15-node and a 6-node server computer that run Windows HPC Server 2008 to its HPC environment. It also is exploring remote rendering with the new system using service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services. “We now have projects that demand remote rendering functionality, and Windows HPC Server 2008 provides application programming interfaces and other scripted connectors to make it more straightforward.”

Benefits

Beijing Planetarium has increased management efficiency by using Windows HPC Server 2008, which translates into cost savings and, ultimately, greater revenue because the organization will be able to produce more shows each year. “It has been absolutely beneficial for us to upgrade to Windows HPC Server 2008,” says Song. “We can spend less time managing our system and devote more time to strategic rendering work.”

Faster Deployments

The planetarium spends considerably less time on its HPC deployments now that it uses its new Windows HPC environment. “We’ve cut our deployment time by at least 50 percent with Windows HPC Server 2008,” says Song. “Plus, we’ve found it easier to detect and correct errors, whereas it took us longer to find and address mistakes on our old system.”

Easier Monitoring and Management

Beijing Planetarium has found that its new environment is easier and less time consuming to maintain than its previous one. “But Windows HPC Server 2008 is definitely easier and faster to take care of than our old system,” says Song. “We especially appreciate the Heat Map feature, which helps us see at a glance our CPU usage across the cluster and network health to identify and address issues more quickly.”

The organization also is taking advantage of the enhanced reporting capabilities that are built into the new system. “I used to manually pull together statistics and produce reports, but now I can use the detailed reports that the system automatically generates to quickly illustrate progress for our management,” says Meng Xi. “I can easily access the real-time status of the processing jobs that we’re currently running along with any historical data we might need—it saves me a lot of time.”

Greater Efficiency for Increased Revenue

Spending less time on management means that Beijing Planetarium can focus more of its time on rendering. “We’re hoping that, thanks to the improvements in Windows HPC Server 2008, we can increase our production to three shows per year,” says Song. “That’s a significant jump in productivity, and it could result in a revenue increase of about 30 percent for the planetarium.”

Reduced Costs

 The planetarium has decreased its operating expenses by moving to the new system. “We’ve experienced a cost savings of up to 10 percent with our new environment because we’ve eliminated a lot of third-party management software,” says Song. “That means that we can dedicate resources to other strategic investments.”