Production and post-production
Eight years on the same storage: Cirque du Soleil, from design to renewal
Eight years on the same platform, with no forced migration and no media loss — then a planned, full renewal instead of an emergency replacement.
- Client
- Cirque du Soleil
- Industry
- Production and post-production
- Location
- Montreal
- Services
- Infrastructure, media storage and post-production · Support and fleet life extension
- Equipment
- EditShare · Arista switches · EditShare ARK · LTO library · Archiware
- Outcome
- Eight years on the same platform, with no forced migration and no media loss — then a planned, full renewal instead of an emergency replacement.
The context
In 2018, Cirque du Soleil needed shared storage infrastructure that could match its content production: creative and post-production teams across multiple sites, volumes measured in hundreds of terabytes, and media that amounts to a heritage — Cirque’s footage cannot be reshot.
We designed and delivered the EditShare deployment — at the time, one of the largest in Quebec.
The constraint
A system of that size isn’t judged at delivery. It’s judged at year five, when licences, switches, archiving and working habits have piled on top of it — and the question becomes: does all of this still hold together?
The industry has a default answer: throw everything out every four or five years and sell a new system. It’s the most profitable answer for the vendor. It’s almost never the best one for the client.
What we did
We maintained the platform over the long run: Arista switch renewals, ARK archiving licence management, an LTO tape backup chain, interventions as needs came up. Year after year, the system followed the production instead of constraining it.
The original EditShare fleet after eight years of continuous service — network identifiers masked.
Seven years after commissioning, when the hardware reached the end of its cycle, the renewal was decided on facts: the actual state of the fleet, what deserved replacing, what could keep going. Cirque renewed its Montreal storage in 2025 — a planned transition, on a platform its teams know, with no forced migration to something else.
The transition in one frame: the new system comes up while the old one, at the end of its cycle, is still running — network identifiers masked.
The result
Eight years on the same infrastructure, with the same partner, without media loss. The renewal was an informed choice, not an emergency — and Cirque’s image heritage was never exposed.
That’s what fleet life extension means: a system maintained well enough that replacing it is a decision, never a crisis.
DXM has supported our media platforms for over eight years. When I need a straight answer on a technology decision, they're the ones I ask. That's what a trusted partner is.