In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, staying ahead is vital for IT leaders. CID GmbH, known for its bespoke software solutions, has consistently adopted cutting-edge technologies to meet evolving customer needs. Recently, CID enhanced its infrastructure’s performance and scalability by implementing VMware’s vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA). Natively embedded within the vSphere hypervisor, VMware vSAN ESA offers an integrated hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) storage solution for virtualized environments, unlocking new potential for CID’s developers.
The Breaking Point: Confronting the Limits of Legacy Infrastructure
As CID GmbH expanded its operations and customer base, the limitations of its traditional three-tier storage architecture became increasingly apparent. With a growing number of virtual machines (VMs) and the introduction of containerized workloads, the company began to experience storage latency, slow application response times, and challenges in maintaining the efficiency of its backup processes.
Coupled with increased VM density, this led to significant storage delays that directly impacted the performance of critical AI tasks and SQL databases. The high I/O (input/output) demands from AI, SQL, and Kafka workloads began to overwhelm the existing storage setup, causing severe performance bottlenecks. Additionally, CID GmbH faced challenges in scaling its traditional storage effectively, which hindered their ability to meet the growing demands for AI, SQL, and real-time processing.
We were struggling with ghost problems—issues that seemed to have no clear cause but were affecting our system performance,” says Marcus Viel, Senior Infrastructure Administrator at CID GmbH. “We needed a solution that could not only address these issues but also provide a foundation for future growth.”
A Game-Changing Shift: Embracing vSAN ESA for Next Level Performance
CID GmbH’s IT team, in collaboration with VMware and their trusted partner Evoila, began exploring VMware vSAN ESA. This solution, known for its efficient use of NVMe storage and streamlined architecture, promised to eliminate the bottlenecks CID GmbH was facing.
“We were impressed by how vSAN ESA fully leveraged NVMe storage, removing caching layers and ensuring non-blocking infrastructure,” says Marcus Viel. “It was clear from the start that this technology could meet our needs.”
The deployment of vSAN ESA was a game-changer for CID GmbH. The simplified storage provisioning, combined with the ease of scaling, allowed CID GmbH to eliminate the storage-related issues that had been plaguing them. The team’s confidence in their infrastructure grew, enabling them to focus on what truly matters—delivering exceptional software solutions to their clients.
Unleashing New Potential: The Transformative Impact of vSAN ESA
Since implementing VMware vSAN ESA, CID GmbH has seen significant improvements in both technical performance and operational efficiency. Storage provisioning, once a complex and time-consuming process, has become as straightforward as deploying a VM. This shift has freed up the IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives rather than troubleshooting storage issues.
Impact of vSAN ESA Implementation:
- 5x Increase in Transactional Capacity: Boosted from 300,00 to 1.5 million IOPS (input/output operations per second), boosting application performance and efficiency.
- Faster Backups: Reduced 1TB backup time and under a minute
- Longer Infrastructure Lifecycle: Enabled a five-year cycle with on-demand scalability, minimizing storage reviews.
- 30%+ Cost Savings: In storage planning and infrastructure maintenance.
“We’ve noticed a substantial reduction in latency, and our applications are more responsive than ever,” Viel notes. “The ghost problems have virtually disappeared, and we can now back up over a terabyte of data in a minute—a massive improvement that directly impacts our ability to meet tight deadlines.”
The adoption of vSAN ESA has also positioned CID GmbH for future growth. The solution’s scalability ensures that as the company continues to expand its operations and take on new, data-intensive projects, its infrastructure will be able to support these demands without requiring significant overhauls.
Paving the Path Forward: Future Innovation with VMware and CID
CID GmbH’s partnership with VMware by Broadcom is set to deepen as they explore new technologies such as VMware Cloud Foundation and Private AI Foundation. The success they’ve experienced with vSAN ESA has not only resolved their immediate challenges but has also opened the door to future innovations that will keep them at the forefront of the industry. Discover how VMware vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation, together with vSAN ESA, can redefine your IT infrastructure, delivering unmatched performance and scalability.
