Canadian Animation Studio Arc Productions Customer of Avere

Avere Systems, Inc. announced that Arc Productions Ltd, a Canada’s c studio, uses its FXT Edge filers to support its artists on a production pipeline of theatrical features, television series, DVDs and shorts.

Faced with heavy rendering loads that impacted responsiveness to artist workstations, Arc Productions needed to provide a reliable and flexible infrastructure that kept tool-sets and artists working, without increasing costs or missing deadlines.

“Our studio has built its reputation on delivering the highest-quality productions on time and on budget,” explained Terry Dale, VP of systems and infrastructure, Arc Productions.

After reviewing several options, Arc Productions deployed Avere to optimize rendering and offload core filers.

“Putting Avere in front of our render farm let us ramp the farm backup to 100% during the daytime, decreasing the load on core filers, eliminating latency to artist workstations by 75% and accelerating rendering processes,” said Dale. “All at just 20-25% of the cost of traditional high-end storage.“

Arc Productions boasts one of the most stable infrastructures of any production studio.

“In this business, it’s all about uptime,” said John Hickson, head of systems engineering and rendering, Arc Productions. “In the past year, we’ve encountered no storage issues and have delivered nearly 100% of uptime to crew. Alternative solutions would have been up to five times the cost. Avere has changed our philosophy on storage.“

“In a workload-intense industry like 3D animation, IT infrastructure must be configured for maximum artistic impact,” said Ron Bianchini, president and CEO, Avere. “Avere is proud to be a part of Arc Productions’ success.“

Case study