OpenCue Sony Pictures Imageworks case study (#111)

* Add case study draft Signed-off-by: Sharif Salah <[email protected]> * Add missing link Signed-off-by: Sharif Salah <[email protected]> * Editorial changes Signed-off-by: Sharif Salah <[email protected]> * Fix typo Signed-off-by: Sharif Salah <[email protected]> * Clarified that RQD also runs on the artist workstations Signed-off-by: Sharif Salah <[email protected]> * Update case study terminology * Clarify use of RQD Signed-off-by: Sharif Salah <[email protected]> * Clarify historical storage use Signed-off-by: Sharif Salah <[email protected]>
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diff --git a/content/_index.html b/content/_index.html
@@ -40,8 +40,8 @@ <h1>What is OpenCue?</h1>
 
 
 {{< blocks/section color="primary" >}}
-{{% blocks/feature icon="fas fa-film" title="Built for visual effects and animation"%}}
-Sony Imageworks in-house render manager used on hundreds of films.
+{{% blocks/feature icon="fas fa-film" title="Built for visual effects and animation" url="/docs/concepts/spi-case-study/"%}}
+Sony Pictures Imageworks in-house render manager used on hundreds of films.
 {{% /blocks/feature %}}
 
 

diff --git a/content/docs/Concepts/opencue-overview.md b/content/docs/Concepts/opencue-overview.md
@@ -18,7 +18,9 @@ allocates the necessary computational resources.
 
 OpenCue provides features to manage rendering jobs at scale:
 
-* Sony Imageworks in-house render manager used on hundreds of films.
+* Sony Pictures Imageworks
+ [in-house render manager](/docs/concepts/spi-case-study/) used on
+ hundreds of films.
 * Highly-scalable architecture supporting numerous concurrent machines.
 * Tagging systems allow you to allocate specific jobs to specific machine
  types.

diff --git a/content/docs/Concepts/spi-case-study.md b/content/docs/Concepts/spi-case-study.md
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+---
+title: "OpenCue Sony Pictures Imageworks case study"
+linkTitle: "OpenCue Sony Pictures Imageworks case study"
+weight: 3
+date: 2019-10-18
+description: >
+ How Sony Pictures Imageworks runs OpenCue in production
+---
+
+This page provides a case study of how Sony Pictures Imageworks runs OpenCue
+on production infrastructure. This case study illustrates an earlier version
+of OpenCue prior to open sourcing the project. This case study is aimed at
+system admins and other professionals planning to install OpenCue. When
+planning a production deployment of OpenCue, you can review this case study
+alongside the [OpenCue getting started guide](/docs/getting-started/).
+
+## Before you begin
+
+Many of the OpenCue terms and concepts in this case study are explained in
+more detail in the following introductory resources:
+
+* [OpenCue overview](/docs/concepts/opencue-overview/)
+* [Glossary](/docs/concepts/glossary/)
+
+As you read through this case study, you might find it useful to refer to
+these introductory resources.
+
+## System components and specifications
+
+The production deployment consists of the following components:
+
+* Several [Cuebot](/docs/concepts/glossary/#cuebot) virtual machines (VMs)
+ servers
+* A database server that stores data over a Network File System (NFS)
+* A render farm consisting of between 2,500 and 4,000 render nodes,
+ including:
+ * Dedicated render nodes running [RQD](/docs/concepts/glossary/#rqd)
+ * Artist workstations, also running RQD
+* A 10 Gb/s network
+
+From their workstations, artists submit jobs to OpenCue through a cluster of
+Cuebot servers. The Cuebot servers dispatch individual frames in a job to the
+render farm. Cuebot servers also store all persistent state and transactions
+in the database server. Figure 1 illustrates how the various OpenCue
+infrastructure components interact:
+
+![OpenCue infrastructure components](/docs/images/opencue_spi_infrastructure.svg)
+
+Figure 1. OpenCue infrastructure components
+
+Each Cuebot VM is provisioned as follows:
+
+* Managed via vSphere platform
+* Allocated 4-core CPUs (Intel Xeon L5640 running at 2.3 GHz)
+* Allocated 8 GB RAM
+
+The database server is provisioned as follows:
+
+* Runs on a bare metal server
+* Allocated 16-core CPUs (Intel Xeon E5-2670 running at 2.6 GHz)
+* Allocated 128 GB RAM
+
+The back end storage is provisioned as follows:
+
+* Runs on a NetApp filer
+* Allocated the following types of storage:
+ * Primarily using Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 10K drives
+ * Some SSD for caching
+* Connected to the database server over NFS
+
+The current dataset occupies approximately 1.2 TB, including 7 years of
+historical data.
+
+## See also
+
+To learn more about the production use of OpenCue, see the [recording of the
+OpenCue Birds of a Feather roadmap from SIGGRAPH
+2019](/blog/2019/09/20/opencue-at-siggraph-recording/). In this recording,
+Ben Dines from Sony Pictures Imageworks provides a summary of the development
+and use of OpenCue on a number of films.
+
+## What’s next?
+
+* To plan your production deployment of OpenCue, see the [OpenCue getting
+ started guide](/docs/getting-started/).
+* To run OpenCue in a Docker sandbox environment on your workstation, see
+ [quick starts](/docs/quick-starts/).
diff --git a/content/docs/images/opencue_spi_infrastructure.svg b/content/docs/images/opencue_spi_infrastructure.svg