Pixar Animation Chills Out Its Server Room

The server-packed render farms at Pixar Animation Studios have created classic animated films including Toy Story, Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up!. But all that rendering can generate some heat. At the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit, Pixar IT engineer Jay Weiland provided an overview of a project in which Pixar used a cold aisle containment system from Polargy to address rising heat loads in one of its render farms. The room contained gear using 335 kilowatts of power in a 1,600 square foot space, resulting in density of more than 200 watts per square foot. The containment system solved the room’s hot spot issues, with a payback of less than four months (including a rebate from utility PG&E). “The return was so quick it was ridiculous,” said Weiland. “For us, that was the lowest hanging fruit.” This video runs about 3 minutes, 30 seconds.

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About Rich Miller

Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.