Business challenge
This Milan-based independent financial group specializes in alternative investments in Europe. The group manages private equity, private debt, infrastructural, special credit situations and thematic funds such as microfinance of funds currently under management.
The customer previously used a traditional SAN in its primary datacenter, that included three VMware servers connected to an iSCSI SAN. The previous servers were ageing, and configured with SATA disk, connected with 1Gb iSCSI link and running on Linux.
The excessive hardware was not only cumbersome to manage, it also presented so many reliability and performance issues that the finance organization began to look for a modern alternative to replace their outdated physical SAN. A completely new infrastructure was required to effectively eliminate these dilemmas for good.
Solution
The financial customer was able to replace its costly physical SAN with a hyperconverged solution from StorMagic. The finance organization streamlined their hardware configuration (and costs) by downsizing from three to two nodes. The SvSAN cluster includes two Lenovo ThinkSystem R650 servers with SvSAN, which mirrors data between the servers. Commvault backup and recovery software replicates VM data in the Azure Cloud for offsite archiving, to further ensure business continuity.
SvSAN is configured to provide storage for the hyperconverged environment. Multiple VMs are used to provide services for the Microsoft Active Directory domain, domain controller and DNS server, File server (network share), Printer server, Application server, DB server (SQL) and VM with miscellaneous services server.
Solutions integrator DI.GI. International S.p.A. identified StorMagic as the ideal partner to address the customer’s needs, recommending StorMagic as the most suitable solution, considering client budget and performance requirements. With DI.GI’s help, installation was extremely fast, and the virtual SAN software has been very easy to manage. SvSAN is highly reliable, which has helped the finance organization reduce downtime and also improved performance by nearly 200 percent. StorMagic’s support has been responsive and great to work with.
Why StorMagic
- Simple to Use: The customer was impressed by SvSAN’s fast installation process, and by how simple the virtual SAN solution is to manage day to day.
- Cost Effective: Customers like this financial group have eliminated their physical SANs with SvSAN’s convergence of compute and storage into a lightweight commodity server footprint, thereby dramatically lowering costs.
- High Performance: SvSAN creates highly available shared storage across two nodes. This user has improved performance rates by approximately 200 percent since making the switch to StorMagic.
- Superior Support: From configuration and installation to customer service, StorMagic has met and exceeded the customer’s needs.
- Ideal for Finance Environments: SvSAN combines servers, storage and networking into a simple-to-use package that brings that data and processing closer to the finance staff that need it.
Technical Configuration
Server Configuration (Per Server)
| SvSAN License | SvSAN 6TB Platinum |
| Servers | Two Lenovo ThinkSystem R650 servers |
| CPU | 2 CPU with 8 cores |
| Memory | 64GB |
| Storage Capacity | 3.5TB |
| Disk Configuration | 2X300 GB SAS 10K + 2X1.8TB SAS 10K |
| Networking | 10GbE for VMs onsite; 8 ports per server |
| Hypervisor | VMware vSphere Essentials Kit |
| Applications | Microsoft Active Directory, File Server, Printer Server, Application Server, DB Server, Backup Server, ecc. |
| Guest VM Operating Systems | Windows Server 2016 Standard Edition |
| Data Protection | Commvault Complete(™) Backup & Recovery |
Simple
Provides a true ‘set and forget’ solution for any environment using centralized deployment and management – whether for thousands of sites or just one.
Cost-Effective
Eliminates physical SANs by converging compute and storage into a lightweight commodity server footprint thereby dramatically lowering costs.
Flexible
Delivers on today’s performance needs leveraging any CPU and storage type whilst avoiding over-provisioning with the confidence of scaling for tomorrow’s demands.
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