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Accelerate rendering with Azure high-performance computing (HPC)

Render with confidence

Render on a scalable, MPAA-certified, non-competing platform that’s trusted by 95 percent of the Fortune 500. Customer data is stored in a locked-down environment within a private network.

Collaborate with global teams

Optimize productivity across remote teams on a high-speed, reliable, and highly secure platform that has nearly unlimited HPC capacity and caching that hides storage latency.

Pay per use

Take advantage of pay-per-use licensing—ideal for studios with dynamic project-based workloads, allowing you to tailor compute services to your exact application and project requirements.

Explore Azure products for boosting rendering performance

Azure HPC Cache

  • Manage spikes in render demand by instantly spinning thousands of virtual machines without moving data
  • Simplify workflows with a single point of high-performance storage
  • Extend your on-premises rendering environment with low-latency, cost effective file caching

Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) Scale Sets

  • Scale to thousands of cores
  • Use SPOT and OS ephemeral disks to reduce rendering costs
  • Run CPU-based rendering on AMD EPYC-powered HB-series VMs featuring up to 260 GB/s of memory bandwidth
  • Run intensive applications on a variety of VMs to meet your needs including GPU-powered Azure NV-series VMs or NVIDIA GPU-powered VMs. Azure Virtual Machine (VM) Scale Sets

Azure Express Route

  • Direct, private, low latency connection to Azure
  • Bandwidths to 100 Gbps supported
  • Extend and connect your existing rendering infrastructure with high throughput and fast access to Azure compute and storage

Solution architecture: Animation and VFX studio rendering for content creation and post-production

HPC Media Rendering

HPC Media Rendering

This solution allows studios to leverage on-premises capacity to its fullest with the Azure FXT Edge Filer for NAS acceleration. When demand grows beyond on-premises capacity, burst render provides access to tens of thousands of cores using Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets. An Express Route connection and HPC Cache minimize latency while studios securely manage storage in a single place without replication.

Learn more about HPC Media Rendering

Learn how you can quickly get started with rendering in Azure

Accelerate rendering on-prem

Easily deploy your render farm using Linux, Windows or in a proxy using easy to follow GitHub guides.

VFX Burst Rendering Your Way

As you transition to the cloud, the Azure FXT Edge Filer keeps your artists creating with fast access to on-premises storage.

Automate Render Cloud Infrastructure

Use Terraform for infrastructure-as-code automation that eliminates errors and manages costs.

Tell more powerful stories with Azure HPC

Visual effects studio delivers on-time, on-budget performance with Azure

"With the scalability we now have with Microsoft Avere vFXT for Azure, we can predict demand more accurately than ever before and respond to it much better, especially when dealing with last-minute changes."

Dave Blommers, Global Head of Technology, Mr. X
Mr. X

Microsoft retail stores use Azure Batch to design, automate rendering, and encode applications

See how Microsoft uses Azure Batch to manage the massive design, rendering, and encoding requirements of running the unique high-res video display configurations at all 80 Microsoft stores around the world.

Microsoft

Studio gains 70 percent compute capacity with Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets, HBv2 virtual machines

"Our Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets ran 60 to 70 thousand processor cores, sustained, for two months, and peak demand hit 90,000 total cores. With burst rendering in Azure, we gained the equivalent of an additional 70 percent capacity of our own datacenter. This enabled us to scale up massively at a moment's notice without any long-term CAPEX commitments."

Jeremy Smith, CTO, Jellyfish Pictures

Outpost VFX goes all Azure with Avere vFXT for a lion’s windblown mane, artist positivity, and global impact

"We're reliably delivering projects on time and producing the high caliber of creative work that clients are proud to include in their productions. Even as project scope and complexity increase across the industry, having the powerful Azure platform in our arsenal ensures we can keep pace."

Steve Holmes, Head of Marketing, Outpost VFX
Outpost VFX

From acclaimed visual effects to virtual humans, Digital Domain keeps innovating with GPU rendering and the fastest-yet FXT storage cache

"The FXT effectively serves as a giant shield between the render farm and our NetApp storage. With the reduced demand and wear and tear on our production filers, we've been able to run existing storage infrastructure for years and years."

Michael Thompson, Principal Systems Engineer, Digital Domain
Digital Domain

Create your rendering solution with an Azure HPC partner

Autodesk
Qube
Pixar
StratusCore
Redshift
Houdini
Blender
ChaosGroup
Foundry
Adobe
Avid
Verizon
NVIDIA
AMD
Teradici

Contact us

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