How the world’s most iconic film event modernized its virtualization stack with Vates VMS
How the Festival de Cannes modernized its IT infrastructure with Vates VMS, relying on open source, reliable backups and a resilient virtualization stack.
About the Festival de Cannes
For more than seventy-five years, the Festival de Cannes has been a global reference point for cinema. It shines a light on bold, meaningful films and brings together the people who make the industry move forward. Beyond its artistic aura, Cannes is also powered by the Marché du Film, the world’s largest film market, where deals, partnerships and discoveries happen every day.
A small IT team with critical responsibilities
After eight years at the Monnaie de Paris, the current IT lead joined the Festival in early 2023. The change was real: going from a team of eight to a compact team of two, later reinforced by an apprentice dedicated partly to cybersecurity.
Their job is simple on paper but demanding in practice: keep the entire infrastructure running smoothly across both Paris and the Palais des Festivals, while strengthening cybersecurity and guaranteeing continuity during the most intense periods of the year.
When I joined the Festival, the context was very different from my previous role. We were a much smaller team, with a very wide scope, and infrastructure that had to work flawlessly during critical periods.
– Head of IT, Festival de Cannes
Challenges
A virtualization platform that wasn’t evolving anymore
Before switching to Vates, the Festival relied on Citrix Hypervisor. Over time, support became slow and cumbersome, and the platform itself didn’t move forward. No visible improvement, no real innovation.
The trigger: getting backups right and support that actually helps
The Festival needed something essential: reliable backups and support in French that wouldn’t blow up the budget. This requirement alone pushed them to question their entire virtualization layer.
Backups are simple, reliable, and the reports are clear. File-level restore was a strong argument for us, because it’s something we actually use.
– Head of IT, Festival de Cannes
Why Vates made sense
VMware vSphere Essentials was evaluated mainly to compare costs.
Vates entered the picture because XCP-ng was already running on a server before the new IT lead arrived.
What tipped the scale was clear:
- a strong Open Source foundation with an active community
- a reduced surface of security vulnerabilities compared to VMware
- 24x7 French support
- a management interface that feels more modern than Citrix
- an ecosystem that actually evolves
- and a licensing model that stays reasonable
For a deeper look at how organizations build resilient setups on XCP-ng, this overview of High Availability is a good reference:
Olivier Lambert
Solution
Two sites, one infrastructure that stays aligned
The Festival now operates two pools of four servers, split between Paris and Cannes. This dual-site setup is the foundation of their disaster recovery strategy.
- SQL Server high availability handles database redundancy
- DFS replicates file servers
- iSCSI SANs provide the base storage
- NAS devices were added in 2024 for flexible expansion
During the Festival itself, critical services move physically closer to Cannes to reduce latency and ensure immediate intervention if needed.
What changed for the team
With Vates VMS, the team gained something valuable: clarity.
Backups run smoothly, reports are easy to read and the Enterprise license gives them access to file-level restore, which they use frequently.
Several features quickly became part of their routine:
- VM tags to keep the environment clean and organized
- the Health Check to catch anomalies early
- Autostart for critical VMs
- clear dashboards showing VMs, hosts and pools at a glance
- the XOA Proxy, perfectly suited for their remote Cannes site
The official backup documentation covers many of the capabilities they rely on:
And for a sense of how the platform evolves over time, the recent Xen Orchestra 5.113 release gives a good snapshot of the ecosystem’s maturity:
Olivier Lambert
Looking ahead: a long-term partnership built on trust and innovation
The Festival plans to modernize its servers by moving toward a hyperconverged architecture powered by XOSTOR. Removing SAN and NAS layers would simplify everything, from maintenance to scaling.
Before that, the network equipment will be fully refreshed at the end of the year.
The Festival de Cannes is constantly evolving, both in its cultural role and in the technology that supports it. As the infrastructure becomes more modern and resilient, Vates VMS provides a foundation the team can rely on. The combination of Open Source transparency, operational stability and continuous innovation gives them room to grow without being locked into rigid tools.
We’re looking at hyperconverged infrastructure with XOSTOR to simplify things further. The goal is to reduce complexity, not add another layer.
– Head of IT, Festival de Cannes
This collaboration shows how a world-class institution can adopt a modern, future-proof virtualization stack without compromising security, performance or budget. And as new projects emerge, from hyperconverged storage to broader infrastructure upgrades, Vates remains a partner ready to support the Festival's ambitions.