Imperial PFS Relies on Nutanix for VDI Disaster Recovery
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
- Puerto Rico
Product
- Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform
- VMware Horizon View
- Fusion-io flash PCIe cards
Tech Stack
- Converged Storage and Compute Architecture
- Automated Data Tiering
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide 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
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
Imperial PFS (IPFS) is a leading provider of premium financing to insureds, insurance agents, and brokers in the United States and Puerto Rico. With corporate offices in Missouri and New Jersey and branch offices throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, IPFS is a top premium financing company in terms of dollars financed and the number of accounts. Premium financing is a short-term loan that spreads payments over the course of a policy instead of paying the full premium upfront. The company serves a wide range of clients, providing financial solutions that allow them to manage their insurance premiums more effectively. IPFS is known for its innovative approach to premium financing, offering flexible payment options and exceptional customer service. The company has a strong reputation in the industry and is committed to providing high-quality financial products and services to its clients.
The Challenge
IPFS was running VMware Horizon View to provide virtual desktops for its 500+ employees and wanted additional servers and storage for a disaster recovery site. The production VDI environment consisted of four Dell R810 servers with flash storage PCIe cards and a DataCore SAN. The system delivered high performance and responsive user desktops, but lacked high availability. In the case of a serious system failure or disaster, all users would be offline and unable to work. So the firm wanted to establish a secondary site for failover and business continuity. The infrastructure for the DR site did not have to be the same as production – it is virtualized, after all – but it needed to offer comparable performance and the additional benefit of extreme ease of use. VDI is famously demanding of high I/O throughput, so it was important to have a consistent user experience between the production and DR environments. The IT staff also wanted a solution that would be easy to configure and manage.
The Solution
After evaluating solutions from several vendors, which included testing a trial unit from Nutanix, IPFS chose the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform because it met all requirements and was by far the simplest solution and easiest to use. The Nutanix converged storage and compute architecture eliminates the need for a SAN and the associated network equipment, connections, and configuration. Nutanix uses exceptionally fast Fusion-io flash PCIe cards, similar to the flash cards installed in the production servers, as well as automated data tiering to deliver high throughput for the IOPS-hungry virtual desktops. The Nutanix system is far more compact. It delivers the same number of server nodes (four) plus storage in a dense 2U appliance, while the traditional servers and SAN consume 15U, more than 7 times of what the Nutanix converged solution consumes. On the cost front, the Nutanix system costs less than IPFS’s production servers and SAN combined. The financial picture became even more favorable when operational expenditures were factored in. The converged platform meant they did not have to build and integrate another server and SAN system. Ongoing administration for Nutanix is much simpler. The IT staff set up and tested the Nutanix system at the main corporate datacenter in Kansas City before shipping it to the DR site. Configuration was fast and easy. A Nutanix support engineer provided guidance on best practices, even beyond the scope of Nutanix for the Horizon View application. Nutanix support has been proactive and convenient, according to Walker. For fixes and software updates, an engineer connects to the system remotely and performs the work. As the number of virtual desktops and VM size continues to grow, the Nutanix system expands easily by adding nodes to the cluster.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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