Public Cloud companies are constantly looking for ways to not only improve their infrastructure and services, but also increase capacity, simplify operations and ensure continuous up-time: Cloud Carib and Zettagrid are no exception. Cloud Carib is a cloud solution provider in Nassau, Bahamas which specializes in providing government agencies, financial and professional services companies in the Caribbean and Latin America with solutions that drive innovation and improve efficiency, reliability, and agility. Zettagrid, on the other hand, is a public cloud company based in Perth, Australia which provides cloud based infrastructure as a service to customers throughout Australia.
The following case studies highlight Cloud Carib and Zettagrid and offer invaluable advice for customers looking to adopt hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions:
- Change is Good
Embracing changing technologies is integral to an organization’s success. If you are currently running into performance problems and capacity problems with your current storage environment, it’s time for a change. Zettagrid struggled to keep pace with its organic expansion while also making the most from its existing resources. Anthony Spiteri, Lead Architect at Zettagrid and team knew they had to find the right solution to keep up with the increased demand and so did Stelios Xeroudakis, Director at Cloud Carib. According to Xeroudakis, expanding by adding external hybrid storage arrays to their network was not working well … and these challenges drove them to look into hyper-converged storage.
If you’re not sure if your current environment could benefit from the switch to HCI, then request a Free Virtual SAN Assessment to get a comprehensive analysis of your vSphere environment.
- Trust, But Verify
This phrase is used a lot in business and it’s no exception when it comes to new technologies. We recommend that customers test Virtual SAN’s hyper-converged storage solution before pulling the trigger: it’s important that customers check out all claims on simplicity, performance, flexibility and agility that Virtual SAN offers, as well as, test out potential workloads that will run on the Virtual SAN environment. Cloud Carib set up a test Virtual SAN cluster with three hosts and tested the product before fully deploying it in their production environment; they simulated disk failures, host failures, and network failures and Virtual SAN passed with flying colors. This made them confident to deploy more applications and more VMs on the infrastructure. The company now has 100% virtualized storage.
Zettagrid, on the other hand, evaluated hyper-converged solutions from other vendors such as Nutanix and VMware Virtual SAN storage won the day for its affordability, ease of use, and flexibility. According to Spiteri, “We put Virtual SAN through its paces and conducted extensive failover tests, and in every instance—and at every stage—it was able to recover without any data loss. This, combined with its tight integration with our VMware environment—and most notably its interoperability with VMware vCenter Server—made Virtual SAN the clear choice.”
If you are looking to verify Virtual SAN’s capabilities, set up a small lab or do a Proof of Concept (POC) to put Virtual SAN to the test – as they say, the proof is in the pudding.
- Do Your Homework
Take time to review design guidelines about proper Virtual SAN implementation. We cannot emphasize how important the VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG) is to making sure your hardware is supported and certified. For Cloud Carib, this allowed them to implement Virtual SAN in a matter of hours after the initial deployment and design phase. Doing their homework tremendously simplified and smoothened their overall experience. Virtual SAN is simple to, enable, use and manage – make sure you do your homework and have all the right pieces in place before checking that box. Read Jeff Hunter’s blog 7 Reasons VMware Virtual SAN is Radically Simple.
- Take One step at a Time
Virtual SAN offers an efficient way to increase capacity with zero downtime by scaling both up and out. Cloud Carib found this as an efficient way to upgrade their storage without adding more rack space, which is a premium in the Caribbean. They can now increase compute and storage capacity and performance at the same time simply by adding more Cisco UCS hosts.
Their virtualized applications include:
- Oracle Database, other databases
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Microsoft Exchange Server
- ERP systems, global customer support systems, and many other customer business applications
With Zettagrid’s new found control, the company is now exploring plans to expand its operations in Australia and New Zealand as well as in the Asia Pacific and Japan regions. According to Spiteri, “Knowing that we can start small and scale out—with Virtual SAN management clusters— means that we can grow comfortably with the hyper-converged infrastructure and move forward with confidence.” Zettagrid’s infrastructure is currently hosted on the Dell PowerEdge FX2 platform and applications hosted include:
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Microsoft Active Directory
- Veeam backup servers
When in doubt, it is okay to take baby steps.
- Trust the Industry Leader
VMware created the virtualization industry and continues to expand its expertise into Networking and Storage. Customers appreciate a well trusted company, the global support and the interoperability with other best in class VMware products. According to Xeroudakis, their VMware administrators ‘get’ Virtual SAN and could immediately start using it!
So there you have it …. 5 Lessons from Public Cloud Providers Reaping the Benefits of VMware Virtual SAN. We’re always looking to grow our Virtual SAN customer case studies, so if you have a good story tell, sign up here to share your journey with us.
Watch Cloud Carib’s full customer interview here or read the full customer case study here
Read Zettagrid’s full customer case study here
