Farmers Insurance Group Federal Credit Union Relies on Nutanix Performance and Availability for VDI Installation
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Nutanix Complete Cluster
- Fusion-io ioDrive
- Intel Xeon Processors
Tech Stack
- VMware
- Liquidware Labs
- Login VSI
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
Farmers Insurance Group Federal Credit Union (FIGFCU) is a member-owned, non-profit financial institution with over 40,000 members, 4,400 branches, and $650 million in assets. As a non-profit, FIGFCU is owned by its members, which allows it to offer higher savings yields and lower loan rates, as profits are returned to members through pricing. FIGFCU provides its members with access to over 30,000 free ATMs, including those at 7-Eleven locations, and over 4,400 branches. Additionally, it offers 24/7 online banking with free Bill Pay. FIGFCU has been serving the financial needs of its employees and agents for over 70 years, emphasizing customer satisfaction and financial accessibility. The credit union's commitment to its members is reflected in its extensive network and the financial benefits it offers, making it a significant player in the financial services industry.
The Challenge
The IT department at Farmers Insurance Group Federal Credit Union (FIGFCU) was transitioning from Citrix XenApp to a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and needed server and storage infrastructure to support it. VDI hosts user desktops on a centralized server and streams the display data to client devices. VDI is easier for IT to manage and support than traditional desktop computing environments, and the total cost of ownership is lower. At the same time, it is especially important the servers and storage have ample performance and high availability because all users depend on them for their desktop and day-to-day work. Rodney Perkins, IT Director at FIGFCU and VDI project leader, learned about the Nutanix Complete Cluster as a platform for VDI and was intrigued about what he had read and researched in trying to find the right fit for his environment. The Complete Cluster’s scale-out architecture and converged compute and storage provide a small footprint and avoid the expense of a SAN. Its built-in hypervisor and performance and availability features are well-suited for VDI.
The Solution
FIGFCU decided to implement the Nutanix Complete Cluster in two remote data centers to support their VDI installation. The Nutanix Complete Cluster’s scale-out architecture and converged compute and storage provide a small footprint and avoid the expense of a SAN. Its built-in hypervisor and performance and availability features are well-suited for VDI. The fault tolerance and data redundancy of the Complete Cluster allow it to continue operating without data loss even if a complete node fails, providing the high availability required by FIGFCU’s end-users. The performance resources of the Nutanix system were also attractive, with each Nutanix Complete Block including 4 compute nodes with a total of 8 Intel Xeon processors (48 cores), 4 Fusion-io ioDrive cards, 4 SSDs, and up to 768 GB of RAM. These high-performance features accelerate application response times and help deliver a fluid user experience in a virtual desktop. FIGFCU also considered traditional rack or blade servers and a small SAN from HP or IBM as the alternative. However, Perkins considered the performance inadequate, and they would have had to purchase more equipment upfront than necessary.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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