Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia Implements PernixData FVP Software

PernixData, Inc., in server-side storage intelligence, announced that the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), the peak policy, research and advocacy body for Australia’s superannuation industry, has deployed its FVP software to support mission critical applications while gaining storage performance and saving cost.

The ASFA helps achieve the best retirement outcomes for members of super funds from the corporate, industry, retail and public sectors. With two data centers supporting a number of mission-critical applications, it is important that these applications run at optimum performance. However, the group’s existing storage infrastructure was preventing this from happening.

Looking for a solution to this challenge, ASFA’s head of IT, Alex Au, considered Pure Storage and Nutanix, but found that “both options were more expensive than PernixData FVP software and would involve re-designing either our SAN or the VMware hosts,” which would result in a total upheaval of the IT system and may have required the ASFA to retire some components prematurely.

Au conducted a proof of concept in his test lab for a week and then implemented PernixData FVP software with Dell Enterprise Plus 800GB SSDs in the production environment.

“Installing FVP was really simple and allowed us to retain our existing infrastructure with minimal new investment,” said Au.

FVP software delivered gains in application performance.

“In a three month period with FVP software, we have saved over 611 million I/Os from the datastore and have accelerated over 917 million writes,” said Au.

The ASFA also saved over $100,000 by avoiding an expensive storage array upgrade – equating to a 560% ROI.

“Before deciding to buy a new SAN or converged system to meet performance or storage requirements, you need to think about decoupling storage performance from capacity with innovative technologies like PernixData FVP software,” said Au. “You may be able to achieve a solution that is not only cost effective but environmentally friendly also.“