CASE STUDY
Cost savings – a solution that pays
for itself in four years
THERE IS A MISCONCEPTION IN THE
MARKET THAT DISK STORAGE IS
CHEAPER THAN ALL-FLASH, BUT PER
TERABYTE, IT IS ACTUALLY CHEAPER
WITH FLASH BECAUSE OF THE DATA
REDUCTION FEATURE THAT PURE HAS
BUILT INTO ITS STORAGE SOLUTIONS.
An all-flash storage architecture has also
enabled MDC to achieve sub-millisecond
latency for all its critical apps. The company
previously relied on server memory to
enhance app performance but FlashArray//X
can now fulfil this need. In addition, with
Pure Storage, the MDC BMS team can
provision storage for new apps in just a few
seconds, as opposed to the days it would
take with the legacy storage infrastructure.
This is ultimately helping Mubadala
employees that use these business-critical
62
INTELLIGENTCIO
applications to take better, faster real
time decisions.
“Another point worth noting is that, with
our legacy storage, we were facing major
performance issues in pre-production,” he
added, “but now, non-production, pre-
production and production environments
are all run on Pure Storage, so all
environments get the same benefits as
production. This allows IT to get a very
accurate feel for how well apps will work
in production.”
Through de-duplication and compression,
FlashArray//X has also reduced MDC BMS’s
cost per terabyte, even though the company
migrated from a disk infrastructure.
“There is a misconception in the market that
disk storage is cheaper than all-flash, but
per terabyte, it is actually cheaper with flash
because of the data reduction feature that
Pure has built into its storage solutions,” Rao
noted. “One rack runs about AED250,000
(approx US$68,000) a year in colocation
costs. But since we moved from seven racks
to one seventh of a rack, we are looking
at potential savings of up to AED2 million
(approx US$544,000) per year.
“Also, power consumption for a disk-storage
rack is anywhere between 12 and 16 kW, but
with the Pure solution in place, this reduces
to 1 kW, so we save more than 90% in
power costs.
“This all translates to a massive overall
saving in TCO and the solution will have
paid for itself within four years. We are
delighted with the outcome – any remote
sites we deploy in the future will be run on
Pure Storage solutions. n
www.intelligentcio.com