Case Study: Toei Animation achieves up to 4x faster web page response and reliable handling of heavy global traffic with NetApp EF550 all‑flash storage

NetApp EF550 Dramatically Enhances Web Pages to Support Heavy Traffic

Toei Animation, the global entertainment company behind brands like Dragon Ball, One Piece and Sailor Moon, runs product information pages and an online shop that serve fans worldwide. As traffic surged during new releases and limited-edition drops, the company’s virtualized servers hit a storage I/O bottleneck that caused slow page responses and disrupted the customer experience.

Toei deployed a NetApp EF550 all‑flash array and migrated storage non‑disruptively via VMware Storage vMotion while keeping existing operations. The result was a 3–4× improvement in display response (latency now <1 ms versus 30–300 ms previously), smoother peak‑time access, faster e‑commerce searches, stronger storage reliability and better maintenance support, with plans to use flash for faster big‑data analysis.

Toei Animation

Hirofumi Tooda

Manager, Information Systems Department