With a lot of technical knowhow on his team, Jack wanted a partner that would give his team the space to run the project autonomously. “We wanted to have control over what we were setting up,” says Jack. “I spoke to a few different partners and DoiT really impressed me as a highly technical organization that is committed to engaging with their clients at a technical level rather than just trying to run projects for them.”

Building a scalable, reliable cloud infrastructure

beloFX began working with DoiT in 2021, spinning up its infrastructure as code with Google Cloud as it worked to build the agile, flexible architecture its clients required. A crucial part of this process was structuring its compute resources in a cost-efficient way.

Jack knew that using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) would enable beloFX to scale its compute power on demand to avoid paying more than necessary. When it came to finding the optimum GKE configuration for beloFX’s needs, Jack leaned on DoiT for support.

“GKE is a very technical system, and the DoiT team has a lot of expertise there, so they were very useful from the early days,” Jack recalls. “What I love about DoiT’s approach is that it is not trying to tell you how to run things. We would have sessions with DoiT engineers to talk through the options and set-up, and then we’d be the ones to make that choice and implement it ourselves.”

As beloFX set up GKE, it also relied on DoiT’s close relationship with Google Cloud and its detailed understanding of its tech stack to advise the company on which machine types to use in which regions, ensuring maximum availability and reliability.

Accessing the best resources at the best price

beloFX relies on DoiT to get the best price for its resources. As Jack explains, “DoiT is our first point for negotiating better prices and getting us credits and discounts in exchange for longer-term commitments. DoiT is fantastic at managing that relationship and negotiating on our behalf.”

DoiT recently helped beloFX secure a one-year commitment with Google Cloud, resulting in significant savings, as well as credits that it put toward Google Cloud compute resources. As part of that deal, beloFX was able to access the latest NVIDIA GPUs.

For Jack, having access to these GPUs allows beloFX to remain at the cutting edge of its industry. “The future of the visual effects industry will include AI technology and machine learning in many different areas, so accessing the latest NVIDIA hardware helps us stay ahead of the game,” says Jack.

Gaining a detailed understanding of cloud spend with DoiT Cloud Navigator

Working on various projects in tandem can make it challenging for beloFX to allocate cloud costs and control its expenditures. Therefore, it has relied on DoiT Cloud Navigator to help it manage its cloud spend.

“DoiT dashboards really let you zero in on where you need to focus,” Jack explains. “Once you start digging in, they reveal that maybe your intuition about where costs are going is incorrect, letting you pivot to a different area to bring the costs down.”

This proved to be the case for beloFX, with the company assuming its compute power would be the most costly part of its system. However, using the powerful analytics engine within Cloud Navigator, beloFX realized that its GKE configuration was successfully keeping its costs down, and in fact the bulk of its expenditure was going to storage. As a result, beloFX is now working with DoiT and Google Cloud to develop a tiered storage system that allows it to find the right balance between cost efficiency and performance.

Configuring access permissions with the support of DoiT CREs

beloFX has also sought the advice of DoiT cloud reliability engineers (CREs) on the best way to configure its security setup for its client environment. Establishing the proper levels of access and permissions for all of its users can be challenging, and for Jack it is something that each organization needs to set up to suit its own needs.

Turning to DoiT, Jack’s team got the initial support it needed to master the fundamentals. Jack then used that knowledge to set up role-based permissions for users across the organization, with access permissions changing whenever a user changes role.