Argonon Ltd, a leading production group that creates hundreds of hours of entertainment content each year, was listed in the Sunday Times HSBC Fast Track 200 in 2016. Comprising 11 companies across the UK, USA, and Canada, Argonon specializes in producing and distributing content for TV, film, digital, and social media.
As the company continued to expand, they selected Trustco PLC to support their IT strategy, a partnership that began in 2010. Trustco, serving as a trusted technology advisor, has helped Argonon with numerous IT infrastructure projects, and in late 2015, the need for a robust and scalable storage solution became critical as data volumes grew exponentially.
The Challenge: Scalable, Future-Proof Storage
Argonon’s existing IT architecture supported 23 editing suites, but with data growth accelerating—especially as production shifted from HD to 4K and even 8K—continuing to “bolt on” additional storage was no longer viable. Argonon needed a future-proof, scalable solution capable of handling hundreds of terabytes of data while ensuring high availability and data protection.
Trustco, in close consultation with Argonon’s Group IT Manager, Karl Dawkins, scoured the market for the best solution. Argonon’s requirements were clear: a cost-effective, high-performance system with disaster recovery capabilities that could guarantee data security.
The Solution: QSAN Technology
After evaluating several vendors, Trustco introduced QSAN Technology, Inc. as a strong contender. A proof of concept was arranged, and it quickly became clear that QSAN’s scalable solutions fit Argonon’s needs, offering rapid expansion capabilities as data demands grew.
The QSAN TrioNAS LX U300 series provided a resilient storage system with active-active dual controllers, redundant fan modules, hot spares, rapid RAID rebuilding, and network failover. Additionally, the ZFS file system allowed Argonon to easily add disk groups to their storage pool, with QSAN’s “Instant Ready” technology enabling fast and safe parity builds.
One key factor in Argonon’s decision was the flexibility to support VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix, Windows, Linux, and macOS, given the diverse systems used across the company.
Seamless Expansion and Support
Initially, Argonon deployed a 1GbE solution but soon upgraded to 10GbE SFP+ to prevent network bottlenecks, all without downtime. This upgrade significantly boosted performance across their network.
Dawkins praised QSAN’s UK-based support and noted that, as an international company, Argonon’s internal team had 24/7 access to QSAN’s developers to quickly resolve any issues. “The support team at QSAN has been incredibly responsive, and their knowledge—even at the first line of support—is exceptional,” said Dawkins.
A Partnership Built on Trust and Performance
When reflecting on the partnership with Trustco and QSAN, Dawkins expressed his satisfaction: “Trustco’s pre-sales and account management are second to none. Their advice is invaluable, and their support throughout this project has been superb.”
He added, “The QSAN solution is a scalable, efficient, and resilient NAS system that increased performance at a lower cost compared to similar technologies. Best of all, there are no software or licensing fees, which makes budgeting easier.”
For more information about Trustco and QSAN’s storage solutions, visit QSAN Technology.
