Case Study: Rainmaker Entertainment achieves faster, scalable CGI rendering with NetApp storage systems

Rainmaker Entertainment 20 Years of CGI Animation Without Missing a Deadline

Rainmaker Entertainment, a Vancouver‑based CGI animation and visual‑effects studio with a 20‑year track record of meeting deadlines, faced rapidly growing storage and performance demands as projects moved from SD to HD and beyond. Individual projects surpassed 100 TB and tens of millions of files, forcing the studio to expand render‑farm capacity and eliminate latency and reliability issues while keeping costs under control.

Rainmaker engaged partner iT Blueprint to deploy NetApp FAS8060/FAS8020 systems with Flash Cache and Flash Pool SSD caching (clustered Data ONTAP) in under two weeks. The new storage eliminated performance problems, enabled a 33% increase in CPU compute for the render farm, produced zero unplanned downtime, and supported higher‑resolution workflows on a flat IT budget—allowing more concurrent projects, better quality control, and improved customer satisfaction while avoiding costly outages.

Rainmaker Entertainment

Ron Stinson

Director of IT and Operations