Case Study

Seagate Helps Boutique Animation Shop Dream Big

Scalable storage solution sets Od Studios’ storage plan into action.

Wanted: Reliable Storage for a Growing Animation Studio

When a Vancouver-based boutique animation studio started taking on bigger projects, it soon outgrew its consumer-grade storage. With its new Seagate Exos® X 5U84 RAID array, Od Studios is ready to take on a number of new animation jobs for film, TV, and commercials—and sleep well—without worrying about data loss due to failure.

Scalable
Versatile Architecture, Built to Grow

Exos X 5U84 optimized Od Studios’ total cost of ownership (TCO) for petabyte-scale storage with industry-leading density.

Reliable
Critical Data Access for Applications

Od Studios can get its data to applications when and where it’s needed with high-speed, high-performance storage.

Cost Effective
Energy-Efficient Features Lower Cost

Reduced power consumption and adaptive cooling technology help Od Studios realize cost and energy savings.

Secure
World-Renowned Data Security

Od Studios’ data is always protected with guaranteed compatible Seagate Secure™ hard drives.

Their Story

A boutique visual effects studio with feature-film ambitions.

In the video production industry, great work can lead to more work—which means more generated data, and subsequently, the need for more storage. Od Studios—a boutique visual effects studio with an emphasis on creating animation for films, TV series, and commercials—had ambitious goals to produce full-length animated feature films using the latest technology and production practices. To reach their goal, they knew that they could no longer get by with their older consumer-grade storage solution.

Their Goal

Big dreams call for big storage.

Od Studio’s long-term strategic goal is to produce its own animated content. In the short term, it aims to build a system that can handle the scope of that work while remaining small and nimble.

Their Problem

Outgrowing the past and anticipating the future.

Od Studios generates a significant amount of data during production. Its product is the data it produces. Od Studios’ efficiency was impacted by the low throughput of its previous consumer-grade hardware solution. As the studio grows, the projects it works on become higher profile, and its need to produce high-quality work increases. Od Studios required a stable solution to finish projects on time and on budget.

Their Solution

Scalable storage sets the scene for future flexibility.

Od Studios needed a storage solution that would allow it to scale and provide it with the flexibility to resolve its specific problems. As a relatively new company, it had been using a limited consumer-grade storage system with mediocre throughput that made it difficult to produce work quickly and constantly question how many days remained until it pushed the system to failure.

As a newer studio with a limited budget, affordable TCO was very high on its priority list. However, the studio knew that it needed to balance affordability with throughput and stability. It also wanted the flexibility to allow for scaling and future growth without reengineering its storage solution beyond a certain size. Plus, it wanted to install whichever vendor’s drives it chose, as well as to use the Lustre file system software it selected.

While researching hardware vendors for a replacement solution, the studio found Seagate—and chose the Exos X 5U84 RAID array because it offered a cost-efficient design, more raw storage capacity than the studio had initially considered, and it provided the studio with the flexibility to pivot should it ever need to.

Their Success

Od Studios is growing (and sleeping) well thanks to Seagate.

Od Studios considers Seagate “fantastic to deal with,” with competitive quotes and a quicker turnaround time for unit shipment than anticipated. The studio can take on much larger projects now, knowing its storage capacity can handle anything it needs for quite some time.

Most appreciated are the lack of vendor lock-in across the entire stack, low TCO, and the ability to sleep soundly without worrying if the studio’s storage is going to fail.

“The ability to scale out is a big win. With Seagate’s Exos X 5U84, we have options to scale, and that flexibility is paramount in an ever-changing industry.”

Marc Horsfield,
Founder/Visual Effects Supervisor
Products Used

Exos X 5U84 RAID System

Designed for expanding multi-petabyte deployments and extreme data growth.

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