Working Remotely with Foundry Tools

Working Remotely with Foundry Tools

Working remotely is a rising industry trend further fuelled by the increasing power of cloud computing. More immediately, the restrictions put in place by coronavirus have led many studios to seek out the capability for artists to work remotely. What are your options for implementing a remote working solution using Foundry software, and what considerations do you need to take into account? This article is designed to help you navigate these critical questions.

Three ways to enable remote studio work

There are three common configurations for enabling remote studio work: connecting remote artists to existing on-premise workstations (“On-Premise”), providing virtual workstations in the cloud that are connected to on-premise infrastructure (“Hybrid”), and virtualizing all of the infrastructure into the cloud (“Pure Cloud”). Which of these options is best suited to your situation depends on several factors, including:

The current configuration of your studio’s infrastructure
The level of your studio’s in-house technical expertise with cloud
Requirements around cost, performance, and security
The amount of time and resources at your disposal to adapt your pipeline

These factors are different depending on each studio’s specific situation. This article outlines the main configurations for remote working environments. This will allow you to dive deeper into the details while having a helpful high-level model to work against.

On-Premise

Remote work using On-Premise infrastructure involves having a secure and high-performance virtual desktop connection that links remote artists to workstations which are physically on the premises of the studio. Software licensing, access to data, and access to the render farm are automatic, since these are already set up within the studio. Artists are just streaming pixels from on-premise workstations to the comfort of their home. In this scenario, security and performance should be the major considerations. The advantage of an On-Premise remote work setup is that it’s relatively quick to get started and doesn’t require use of the cloud. The disadvantage is that it is inelastic, meaning you can only provide the resources that you already have, and performance will be limited based on the distance between your remote artists and your studio’s physical location.

Hybrid Cloud

Providing virtualized workstations to remote artists is an increasingly popular option. In this situation, artist workstations are spun up and down on-demand in the cloud, and are connected to your on-premise resources like license servers, storage, and render nodes. This option is often suitable for situations where your workstation needs are variable (either in terms of quantity or individual performance) but you wish to keep your studio’s core infrastructure like storage and licenses within physical confines. Because public cloud providers have excellent geographical coverage, you can benefit from spinning up virtual workstations closer to your remote artists to maximize performance.

Pure Cloud

Pure Cloud is when all (or most) of your infrastructure is provisioned in the cloud, including workstations, storage, license servers, and render nodes. Pure Cloud has the benefit that your studio doesn’t need a central physical location, and doesn’t require expensive capital equipment like servers or workstations. With Pure Cloud, all of your IT infrastructure is provisioned elastically: you can turn everything off between projects, and scale everything up as projects ramp up.

Licensing in the Cloud

There are some important licensing considerations when making the move to the cloud. Firstly, because workstations in the cloud are virtual, it’s impractical to make use of node-locked licensing. This is because node-locked licenses are tied to the physical properties of the machine, and in the case of virtual machines these properties can change each time a virtual machine is spun up for use. Floating licenses should be used instead, because floating licenses are only tied to the physical properties of the license server which manages allocation of licenses to each user. Using floating licenses requires establishing a connection between the license server and the virtual workstations being spun up. Be sure that this connection is secure, and compliant with Foundry’s licensing restrictions on regional use. If you’re not sure, then don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team.

Summing Up

Remote work is something that our industry is warming up to more and more, especially as cloud technology is quickly increasing in capability. With threats like coronavirus making it unsafe to get everyone into a single physical location, it makes sense to think about how virtualization and cloud can help to reduce any impact. Longer-term, reaping the benefits of remote artists is increasingly within reach and worthy of consideration. We’ve discussed three models for achieving this:

On-Prem: Linking remote artists to your existing on-prem resources with virtual desktops
Hybrid Cloud: Workstations in the cloud linked to your existing studio’s on-premise resources
Pure Cloud: Provision everything in the cloud—workstations, render nodes, storage, and licenses

Each model has important trade-offs that depend on your unique situation. Foundry is here to help you to navigate your journey to enabling remote workflows, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

Source: Foundry

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