Harris County, Texas Office of the District Attorney Moves to Nutanix Acropolis
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Nutanix Acropolis
- Dell XC Series
- Nutanix Prism
- Citrix XenApp
- Citrix XenDesktop
Tech Stack
- Hyperconverged Infrastructure
- VMware vSphere
- Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Facility Management
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
Harris County, Texas, is the most populous county in the state and the third largest in the United States, with over four million residents. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office, led by Devon Anderson, is responsible for investigating and prosecuting approximately 110,000 criminal cases annually. The office employs over 300 Assistant District Attorneys and around 300 support personnel. The IT department, managed by Senior Systems Administrators Rurik Wilmot and Ryan McCarroll, oversees all IT infrastructure and services. The office's IT environment previously relied on a legacy SAN and VMware vSphere, which presented challenges in provisioning new VMs and supporting new applications. The office sought a more efficient and high-performing platform to enhance its IT capabilities and support its extensive legal operations.
The Challenge
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office faced significant IT challenges with its existing infrastructure. The legacy system consisted of individual rack-mounted servers connected to a SAN, managed with VMware vSphere. This setup occupied over one and a half racks in their datacenter, and while performance was adequate, provisioning new VMs was a major challenge. The office had aggressive plans to implement Citrix XenApp, XenDesktop, and Microsoft Lync, as well as upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2016, but the existing storage arrays were insufficient to meet these goals. The IT team began searching for a new storage platform in 2015, considering both Nutanix hyperconverged systems and a traditional three-tier architecture. The latter involved servers, an all-flash array solution, and high-capacity deep storage, but the costs and manageability issues made Nutanix the more attractive option.
The Solution
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office chose to implement the Nutanix-based Dell XC Series systems to address their IT challenges. The decision was driven by the simplicity, lower cost, and single-vendor support offered by the hyperconverged platform. The IT team tested the Nutanix Community Edition software and reviewed architectural white papers to understand the system's performance and scalability. Convinced by the high performance, ease of implementation, and cost-effectiveness, the office purchased a Dell XC730 cluster powered by Nutanix Acropolis and Prism. This new infrastructure allowed for the migration of all production workloads to the Dell XC Series cluster, with plans to decommission the previous environment. The move to Nutanix also included a transition from VMware vSphere to the Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) to reduce maintenance costs. The Nutanix Prism management interface provided increased visibility and simplified system management, offering a single management plane for the entire infrastructure stack. The office also benefited from Nutanix's extensive partner network, including partnerships with Dell and Veeam for backup solutions.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
.png)
Case Study
Improving Vending Machine Profitability with the Internet of Things (IoT)
The vending industry is undergoing a sea change, taking advantage of new technologies to go beyond just delivering snacks to creating a new retail location. Intelligent vending machines can be found in many public locations as well as company facilities, selling different types of goods and services, including even computer accessories, gold bars, tickets, and office supplies. With increasing sophistication, they may also provide time- and location-based data pertaining to sales, inventory, and customer preferences. But at the end of the day, vending machine operators know greater profitability is driven by higher sales and lower operating costs.
Case Study
Remote Wellhead Monitoring
Each wellhead was equipped with various sensors and meters that needed to be monitored and controlled from a central HMI, often miles away from the assets in the field. Redundant solar and wind generators were installed at each wellhead to support the electrical needs of the pumpstations, temperature meters, cameras, and cellular modules. In addition to asset management and remote control capabilities, data logging for remote surveillance and alarm notifications was a key demand from the customer. Terra Ferma’s solution needed to be power efficient, reliable, and capable of supporting high-bandwidth data-feeds. They needed a multi-link cellular connection to a central server that sustained reliable and redundant monitoring and control of flow meters, temperature sensors, power supply, and event-logging; including video and image files. This open-standard network needed to interface with the existing SCADA and proprietary network management software.
Case Study
Driving Digital Transformations for Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices
Diagnostic devices play a vital role in helping to improve healthcare delivery. In fact, an estimated 60 percent of the world’s medical decisions are made with support from in vitrodiagnostics (IVD) solutions, such as those provided by Roche Diagnostics, an industry leader. As the demand for medical diagnostic services grows rapidly in hospitals and clinics across China, so does the market for IVD solutions. In addition, the typically high cost of these diagnostic devices means that comprehensive post-sales services are needed. Wanteed to improve three portions of thr IVD:1. Remotely monitor and manage IVD devices as fixed assets.2. Optimizing device availability with predictive maintenance.3. Recommending the best IVD solution for a customer’s needs.
Case Study
Marine and Industrial Displays by Caterpillar
Caterpillar needed a flexible platform for a new generation of connected human-machine interfaces across a wide variety of industrial environments. Examples include marine, petroleum pumping, generators, custom hydraulics, mining, and rail applications.
