SAMG Entertainment Co., Ltd.

Background

Founded in the early 2000s, SAMG Entertainment has consistently received strong interest from both domestic and international distributors and OTT platforms for its hit 11-minute TV series such as Catch! Teenieping (156 episodes) and Hachuping.

With over 300 employees across studios and offices, the company’s production division—comprising around 120 staff—generates hundreds of gigabytes of 4K scenes, backgrounds, effects, and dubbing sources every week.

Challenges

“Capacity, speed, and protection all became bottlenecks at once.”

The most pressing issue the company faced was the explosive growth of data and the resulting I/O congestion. Due to the nature of the content, hundreds of gigabytes of assets were generated each week. However, the company was still relying on a single file server expanded five years ago, which led to:

• Storage capacity saturation
• Delays during simultaneous multi-user access
• Instability of backups using external SSDs

These issues caused missing files and version conflicts, directly affecting production schedules.

When storage became insufficient, data was temporarily moved to external SSDs. However, these drives were connected via USB rather than over the network, disrupting the overall workflow.

In addition, relying on external SSDs for backup made data management more difficult and increased the risk of data loss.

Speed was also a serious concern. When dozens of team members accessed the file server at the same time, disk I/O quickly became a bottleneck—sometimes taking 2–3 minutes to load a single storyboard.

As a result, animators and editors had to work with files delivered in “step-by-step” increments, significantly increasing idle time—especially challenging for TV series production, which requires frequent cut revisions.

Solution

QNAP NAS easily overcame the limitations of SAMG Entertainment’s previous server infrastructure. The TS-h3087XU-RP is equipped with a high-performance Intel® Xeon® E-2300 series processor and runs QuTS hero, a ZFS-based operating system that supports inline data deduplication and compression by default.

To ensure data integrity, SAMG built a hybrid storage environment with RAID 6, enabling each unit to support up to 300 TB of storage in a single storage pool.

All data is synchronized daily at a scheduled time using HBS 3. The system is configured to transfer only modified files, minimizing backup time. Synchronization is fully automated and runs without affecting main services.

The device is directly connected via 10GbE cabling, allowing dozens of users to access files from both PC and Mac platforms without any drop in performance. Storage capacity can also be expanded easily as data volume grows.

Most notably, the entire deployment was completed by just two IT staff members in a single day. Tasks such as rack mounting, network setup, HBS 3 configuration, and RAID setup were quickly handled according to predefined requirements. With Qfinder Pro, NAS access and management are highly intuitive, making the system remarkably flexible and easy to operate.

Results

By deploying the TS-h3087XU-RP, SAMG Entertainment significantly improved its production efficiency while eliminating concerns related to data security, backup, and scalability. Even in the event of unexpected system issues, the company now has a reliable safety net that enables rapid restoration of previous work versions.

The intuitive QNAP management interface makes it easy to design and adjust backup policies, reducing the operational workload on IT staff. As a result, both data management efficiency and overall system reliability have improved.

Three key outcomes stand out:
1. Maximum I/O performance at a fixed cost,
2. Automated backup processes, and
3. Non-disruptive scalability.

The strength of QNAP’s solution lies in its multi-layered data protection powered by the ZFS-based QuTS hero file system and HBS 3 mirroring. This approach allows even content production companies with limited IT personnel to establish enterprise-grade disaster recovery (DR) environments.

Additionally, the infrastructure is flexible enough to support transitions to remote collaboration or cloud-based rendering workflows—without requiring hardware replacement. Ultimately, this allows SAMG to manage production schedules more tightly and focus entirely on enhancing storytelling and visual quality.