Wholesale Electric In Data Center Virtualization With Compellent and Xsigo

Compellent Technologies, Inc. and Xsigo Systems, Inc. announced that Wholesale Electric, a Houston-based electrical product distribution company, experienced a significant reduction in expenses by combining a Compellent virtualized storage area network (SAN) and Xsigo’s virtual I/O.

 

Deployed as part of a VMware ESX server virtualization rollout, the technology combination saved Wholesale Electric 50 percent on servers and reduced I/O infrastructure by 66 percent. By virtualizing its storage on the Compellent SAN, Wholesale Electric eliminated 13 servers and avoided having to purchase internal servers, disks and other components at approximately $1,200 per server.

Wholesale Electric deployed a Compellent SAN and Xsigo virtual I/O in conjunction with their VMware implementation. The combined solution dynamically allocates both storage and I/O resources, eliminating the waste and inefficiency of dedicating resource capacity to specific virtual machines, resulting in less storage spend and 50 percent less I/O infrastructure cost.

"Deploying server virtualization with our existing storage and server connect technologies would have significantly increased overall costs," said Bill Fife, director of technology at Wholesale Electric. "Compellent and Xsigo technologies perfectly complement server virtualization, allowing us to run more VMs on smaller servers with less storage capacity. This three-pronged approach to virtualization – combining servers, storage and I/O – substantially increased efficiency and reduced our costs, which is why we’re virtualizing in the first place."

Architected and implemented by Houston-based integrator Tradentrix, the complete solution consisted of a Compellent SAN, the Xsigo I/O Director and VMware ESX 3.5 virtualization software. Virtualizing the storage and I/O resources allowed Wholesale Electric to deploy 66 percent fewer server I/O cards, cables, and switch ports than would have been otherwise possible. The reduced physical complexity also permitted the use of compact 1U high servers rather than 4U high devices, reducing power supply requirements by 35 percent and space requirements by 75 percent.

"The combined Xsigo and Compellent solution delivered a robust, resilient, and highly available architecture that was also surprisingly cost effective," Fife continued. "In addition to the capital cost savings, we also extended the life of our existing assets, and expect to enjoy an extended useful life for the new assets as well. When you combine that with the space, power, and cooling benefits we realized, the Xsigo and Compellent solution generated substantial savings all around."

"Inherently virtual and built on advanced storage management applications, the Compellent SAN is proven to reduce total cost of ownership, simplify storage and server asset management, improve availability and dramatically enhance disaster recovery capabilities, making it the most intuitive storage platform for virtual environments," said Bruce Kornfeld, vice president of marketing and alliances, Compellent. "By building the company’s virtualization strategy around the Compellent SAN, Xsigo and VMware, Wholesale Electric transformed its data center into a high-performance, highly-efficient IT hub."

"Virtualization demands more from I/O resources, and VMware vSphere ups the ante again with new features and more performance capabilities that will further strain traditional I/O infrastructures and drive the need for Xsigo’s virtual I/O," said Erik Hardy, vice president of sales at Xsigo. "Xsigo I/O virtualization delivers the scalability and performance required to maximize server utilization and application performance while reducing connectivity costs."