Agile Films — High-performance remote visualisation on AWS — eliminating on-premises rendering bottlenecks for distributed creative teams.

Distributed media production teams working across locations face significant challenges: rendering delays on on-premises hardware, high infrastructure maintenance overhead, inconsistent access for remote artists and contractors, and storage complexity across live projects and archives. On-premises solutions could not scale economically with demand.

• NICE DCV Fleet — 10 x g4dn.4xlarge and 5 x g4dn.16xlarge GPU instances for high-performance visualisation
• AWS FSx for NetApp ONTAP — high-performance shared storage with minimal latency for active production projects
• AWS Direct Connect — secure, low-latency private connection between AWS and on-premises infrastructure
• Automated data tiering via AWS DataSync — active project data on FSx, archives to S3 Glacier Deep Archive
• Instances commissioned and terminated in line with actual workload demand — no idle capacity cost
• Full encryption at rest via KMS and in transit via SSL/TLS — securing sensitive creative assets

• Provisioned a VPC spanning two Availability Zones with subnet separation for DCV fleet, FSx, and support services.
• Deployed 15 NICE DCV GPU instances configured for remote desktop and application streaming — accessible via NICE DCV Client or browser.
• Set up FSx for NetApp ONTAP for high-performance shared project storage with low-latency access for remote artists.
• Implemented automated data tiering — active projects on FSx, completed archive data transitioned to S3 Standard IA and Glacier Deep Archive via DataSync lifecycle policies.
• Configured AWS Direct Connect for a secure, private, low-latency link between the on-premises data centre and AWS.
• Applied KMS encryption at rest and SSL/TLS in transit — securing all media assets and maintaining data integrity.

• Remote artists access high-performance GPU workstations from any location via NICE DCV — no on-premises hardware required at remote sites.
• Rendering performance improved — EC2 G4 GPU instances outperform equivalent on-premises hardware for media rendering workloads.
• Storage management simplified — shared FSx storage replaces fragmented local storage with consistent low-latency access.
• Infrastructure scales with demand — instances commissioned when needed, terminated when idle, eliminating always-on hardware cost.
• Data integrity and security maintained — all assets encrypted and access-controlled throughout the production lifecycle.