Upgrading Storage & Breaking out of a 3 Year Refresh Cycle

Challenges

Seeing substantial growth in their data storage utilization, the client experienced data latency issues as they neared their storage limit. They sought a solution that would meet their Microsoft Exchange needs and integrate with their upcoming VMware environment refresh. The driver for their virtualization refresh was an infrastructure upgrade to support a corporate relocation. To best support the relocation, the client wanted to install the new gear at their future site. The incumbent storage solution failed to provide the performance required by the client, and also imposed an expensive three-year refresh cycle.

Selection Criteria:

After strategically planning their IT approach with Vandis, the client requested a choice between a few storage solutions within their budget constraints and who were able to meet the performance and growth requirements of their increasingly demanding IT needs. The organization wanted a solution that was simple to deploy, easy to use, and low cost without jeopardizing performance. In addition, the client wanted to break out of the three-year refresh cycle while maintaining easy scalability. With the relocation in mind, Vandis recommended migrating from fiber channel to IP-based storage and recommended Nimble Storage & HP’s 3 Par solution as possible options.

Solution

The client chose the Nimble Storage Array for its ease of use, easy deployment, and rich feature set. For this client’s use case, one feature really distanced Nimble Storage from the competition: built-in data encryption. To satisfy the performance-requirements of their large Exchange mailboxes, Nimble Storage’s hybrid flash architecture and CASL file system automatically caches the “hottest” data into the flash drives, delivering the lowest latency and best performance to the end users.

Results:

With the build-out of Nimble Storage, the client has substantially higher performance, greater storage space, and better scalability at a lower cost point. With their overhauled storage system, the organization can complete their virtualization refresh and move into their new location.