Ringling College of Art and Design Accelerates Student Creativity with High-Performance Computing and Powerful, Scalable DDN® Storage
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- DDN’s SFA®10K
- DDN’s SFA®12K
Tech Stack
- Oracle Solaris
- ZFS file system
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Digital Expertise
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Digital Twin
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Ringling College of Art and Design is a prestigious institution that has been cultivating the creative spirit in students from around the world for 84 years. The college offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (BFA) program in 11 disciplines, including Advertising Design, Computer Animation, Digital Filmmaking, Gamer Art & Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interior Design, Photography & Digital imaging and more. Located on Florida’s Gulf coast, the college attracts close to 1,300 students each year from 48 states and 60+ foreign countries. The college's alumni are heavily recruited by top art and design companies, including Apple, Disney, DreamWorks, Hallmark, Sony and Target, to a name a few. In 2014, LinkedIn ranked Ringling College seventh among design schools for placement of graduates into top design jobs.
The Challenge
Ringling College of Art and Design faced a challenge of explosive data growth caused by high-resolution, digital file-based workflows. This created a demand for future-proof storage that could scale on demand. The college wanted to use technology to support art as a tool, so that students could be creative without having to manage technology or deal with interruptions to their work. A robust, reliable and transparent storage infrastructure was required to accommodate the college’s desire to give students seamless access to all their digital assets, regardless of platform or location. The college wanted to avoid the management, access difficulty, cost and complexity of siloed storage.
The Solution
Ringling College deployed DDN’s SFA10K and 12K storage platforms with 1.6PB of storage to meet its needs for industry-leading performance, density and scalability. At the file server level, Ringling deployed Oracle Solaris with the ZFS file system, as the team felt it best met the college’s needs for robust yet transparent performance. The college implemented its high-performance DDN system so that students can immediately access their digital files upon logging into their home spaces, regardless of platform or location. Each home space is immediately visible to the student, making it extremely easy to create, share, process, reclaim and archive digital assets. Many students treat their home spaces like a local disk, so all their project files are readily available the next time they log in on any workstation or lab system.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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