Nutanix > Case Studies > Claranet Switches to Nutanix for Hosting Managed Services

Claranet Switches to Nutanix for Hosting Managed Services

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

France
United Kingdom

Product

Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform
Nutanix Complete Block
VMware

Tech Stack

VMware
KVM

Implementation Scale

Departmental Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications
Software

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Claranet is a leading European web hosting and managed services provider headquartered in London, England. The company operates 20 datacenters across 6 European countries and employs 700 people, with 110 staff members working for Claranet France. Claranet provides hosting, network, and communications services to over 6,700 customers, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. The company is known for its commitment to delivering high-quality managed services and has a strong presence in the European market. Claranet's focus on innovation and customer satisfaction has made it a trusted partner for businesses seeking reliable hosting solutions.

The Challenge

Claranet France faced a challenge when their SAN storage system reached end-of-life. The existing system was used for web and application hosting in a VMware virtualized environment, but it lacked the flexibility and scalability needed to efficiently serve a large number of clients. The traditional SAN proposed by the major storage vendor did not meet Claranet's requirements for fast and flexible provisioning. Claranet needed a solution that could easily scale and provide high IOPS performance to support multiple VMs simultaneously. The team learned about Nutanix at VMworld in Barcelona and began exploring its potential as a solution to their challenges.

The Solution

Claranet decided to implement the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform (NX-3450) to address their need for a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective server and storage infrastructure. Nutanix's converged storage and compute architecture allows for easy provisioning and reallocation of resources, making it ideal for a dynamic cloud environment. The platform is SAN-free and expands capacity by simply adding nodes to the cluster, enabling seamless scalability. Nutanix also offers high IOPS performance, supporting a large number of VMs simultaneously. The platform comes pre-loaded with a VMware hypervisor, which Claranet's IT staff were already trained to use, minimizing the learning curve. Claranet quickly moved forward with the purchase of a 4-node Nutanix Complete Block, and the installation was completed smoothly within a few hours. By the end of the second day, the system was fully operational, and more than 140 VMs were migrated from 12 decommissioned Dell servers. The transition allowed Claranet to reduce their datacenter footprint and focus more on customer service.

Operational Impact

The Nutanix platform's converged, SAN-free architecture simplified resource provisioning and reallocation.
Claranet's IT staff could focus more on customer service due to the simplicity of the Nutanix system.
The transition to Nutanix allowed Claranet to reduce their datacenter footprint.

Quantitative Benefit