About Charles Russell Speechlys
Charles Russell Speechlys LLP is an international law firm which focuses on private capital, at the intersection of personal, family and business. It is headquartered in London with offices across the UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Business Challenge
Charles Russell Speechlys previously used VMware vSAN to manage its business level applications, including domain controller, Microsoft Exchange databases, SCCM, and SQL for AppSense and document management, in nine of its 11 global office locations. vSAN was difficult to manage, costly and the features were overkill in their two-node solutions located at remote sites. Because their offices are located in multiple geographies, vSAN renewal meant the customer was facing skyrocketing costs that included nine unique licenses and nine separate contracts.
Charles Russell Speechlys searched the market for an alternative solutions to lower costs while maintaining high availability in their environment and shortlisted three solutions – Starwind, Linux Ceph and StorMagic SvSAN.
Starwind was considered, but their sales and support teams were too slow to respond, which eliminated them from the shortlist. Linux Ceph, an open-source software-defined storage platform, was also tested and considered. StorMagic’s VMware vCenter plugin had a very slick and professional feel compared to the other solutions, plus its support team was easy to work with and responsive.
Why StorMagic
With the help of Fortem Information Technology, Charles Russell Speechlys is now running StorMagic SvSAN on two HPE DL380 servers in a hyperconverged configuration, in nine of their offices. The customer loves the ability to manage everything from vCenter, VMware’s advanced server management software. Fortem Information Technology suggested this solution as StorMagic’s single remote witness was very easy to deploy on premises in all nine sites, with no special IT staff required.
Compared to the other tested solutions, StorMagic SvSAN was easy to deploy, improved disk latency and offered the easiest storage usage visualisation. The customer loves the ability to manage every SvSAN cluster from a single pane of glass with vCenter, VMware’s advanced server management software. Fortem Information Technology was able to deliver the StorMagic solution in a single, affordable contract for all 9 locations, and their solution is backed by StorMagic’s solid support team.
Technical Configuration
| Server Configuration (Per Server) | |
| SvSAN License | SvSAN 6TB License |
| Servers | HPE DL380 |
| CPU | 1 vCPU |
| Memory | 1GB per server |
| Storage Capacity | 6TB |
| Disk Configuration | 8 disks, 2 for OS (RAID-1), 6 for capacity (RAID-5), 2.18 TB usable disk capacity, hot spare disks |
| Networking | T1 5-8 ms, 3 network cards per server |
| Hypervisor | VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition |
| Applications | Print and domain controllers, Veeam Proxy Servers, Microsoft Exchange in 3 sites, SCCM, SQL for appsense and document management |
| Guest VM Operating Systems | Linux CentOS, Microsoft 2016 and 2019 |
| Data Protection | Veeam & Exagrid |
| Native Encryption | Nimble |
| VDI | Citrix |
Simple
The customer found that SvSAN is a true ‘set and forget’ solution for any environment using centralized deployment and management – and deployed it in nine remote office locations.
Cost-Effective
SvSAN dramatically lowers costs by eliminating physical SANs, converging compute and storage into a lightweight commodity server footprint. A complete two node cluster is available starting at $8,000. SvSAN came in at the right price and includes all of the features they needed for their remote sites.
Superior Support
The customer found StorMagic’s support team to be easier to work with and very responsive, and with no hoops to jump through, and less wait time.
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