Well Go USA Entertainment enhanced their server performance with an all-flash array for video editing

As an Oscar-nominated entertainment distribution label, Well Go USA Entertainment produces and stores large amounts of video footage and archival data on a daily basis. Their previous storage solution was no longer able to keep up with their performance and storage needs as they had maxed it out in both its capacity and functionality. They needed a solution that could handle the high-performance demands of complex video editing tasks, store data from virtual machines running business operational systems, and scale with them as data continues to grow.

Additionally, they wanted their new system to provide access to their entire content library through a single shared folder and support ProRes video playback from their content library. This would streamline their workflow significantly and help with collaboration across their editing team.

When considering possible solutions, Well Go identified five key factors that would meet their editing workflow and storage needs: high performance, scalability, simplified management, industry brand reputation, and cost effectiveness. To meet these criteria, they selected an all-flash rackmount Synology NAS, designed for I/O-intensive applications, and fitted it with multiple expansion units. With this unit, Well Go is able to handle the intense editing demands for its high-res video files and store large project folders they are actively working on.

Once an active video project is completed, they transfer the data to a high-density Synology unit for archival storage, which also stores their full media content library and provides easy access for editors through a shared folder on every workstation. With support for ProRes video playback, finding media stored on this unit is streamlined and more efficient.

This high-density storage unit also utilizes Active Backup for Business, Synology’s backup management tool for physical and virtual environments. With ABB, Well Go automatically backs up their virtual machines and can restore from this unit if their VMs ever fail.

Finally, they deployed an off-site rackmount Synology server that backs up their on-prem data, for a secure and complete backup solution.

With the all-flash server, Well Go was able to achieve the level of performance needed for I/O-intensive tasks like video editing. They further optimized their storage performance by utilizing SSD caching. By caching frequently accessed data, Well Go improved overall system performance and reduced latency for fast and responsive access to critical data.

The high-density head unit is capable of scaling up to 1PB of storage within a single volume. This capacity easily meets Well Go’s scalability needs without introducing the unneeded complexity of managing multiple volumes. In addition, the simplified storage provisioning and monitoring, and the maintenance processes offered by Synology’s management interface allowed the IT team to allocate time and resources more efficiently to focus on other higher-value projects.

Finally, by deploying Synology, Well Go significantly reduced the high costs typically associated with traditional storage solutions while still achieving enterprise-grade performance and the scalability they need.