Nutanix Outperforms Traditional Servers and SAN in VDI Deployment at Law Firm
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform
- VMware View
Tech Stack
- SAN-Free Converged Infrastructure
- VMware Hypervisor
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Leitner, Williams, Dooley & Napolitan is a well-established legal defense firm founded in 1882, with offices across the southeastern United States, including Chattanooga, Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis, TN, Atlanta, GA, and Oxford, MS. The firm employs nearly 100 attorneys and represents a diverse clientele ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to small businesses and individuals. The firm's primary focus is to protect its clients from the costs and risks associated with litigation. The members of the firm are dedicated to mastering the law and understanding the businesses and industries in which their clients operate, believing that both are essential for providing excellent legal representation. With hundreds of years of combined experience in litigation and mediation, the firm is committed to delivering high-quality legal services and maintaining a strong reputation in the legal community.
The Challenge
Leitner, Williams, Dooley & Napolitan, a legal defense firm, faced a significant challenge when they planned to upgrade their software to Microsoft Windows 7 and Office 2010. This upgrade necessitated more robust PC hardware, presenting the firm with a choice: either maintain their traditional desktop environment and roll out new PCs or adopt a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to run virtual desktops on a centralized server. The firm recognized that VDI could simplify administration by standardizing desktops and allowing updates to be pushed to all clients from a single location, rather than managing customized physical desktops across their geographically distributed offices. After testing a VMware View pilot for nearly a year, they concluded that it could deliver a satisfactory user desktop experience. However, they needed a server and storage infrastructure that offered fast performance and high availability. As a customer of HP and EMC, they initially considered traditional clustered servers and SAN storage. However, their reseller, United Data Technologies (UDT), proposed the Nutanix SAN-Free, converged compute and storage platform as an alternative. William Tomlinson, IT Director at Leitner, was immediately impressed by the potential of the Nutanix solution.
The Solution
Leitner, Williams, Dooley & Napolitan decided to implement the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform after testing it against traditional server and SAN storage solutions. The Nutanix platform outperformed the traditional infrastructure in terms of performance and compactness. It enabled faster desktop refreshes and recomposes in VMware View, minimizing the performance impact of regular administrative tasks. The Nutanix appliance's compact 2U size was a significant advantage, fitting well into the limited rack space available in the firm's data center. Additionally, the built-in VMware hypervisor, live migration, and automatic node failover provided the high availability required by the firm. The intuitive GUI allowed the IT team to monitor performance statistics for individual VMs easily. The Nutanix platform now hosts virtual desktops, supporting a wide range of applications, including Microsoft Office 2010, an accounting system, a content management system, Firefox web browser, Windows 7-Zip, VLC media player, and Adobe Reader and PDF Creator. The firm was particularly impressed with Nutanix's holistic support approach, which involved optimizing the network and VMware View application alongside the Nutanix platform. With the Nutanix system in place, the firm plans to expand its infrastructure as its requirements grow.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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