Wynit Distribution Bought Nimble Storage Flash Array and Cisco UCS Servers

Nimble Storage, Inc., announced that WYNIT Distribution, LLC has replaced its legacy IT infrastructure with the Nimble Storage SmartStack integrated infrastructure solution.

As a result of the deployment, WYNIT simplified its IT infrastructure, reduced transaction processing time by 60%, and implemented a new DR strategy.

As a distributor of products from the top national brands in the consumer electronics, photo, wide format printing, security, outdoor and fitness industries, WYNIT relies on performance-intensive applications to support its international customer base, network of suppliers and a geographically distributed workforce. WYNIT serves a range of customers from national retailers to independent resellers through dedicated business units and strategically located distribution facilities.

Prior to deploying, SmartStack, WYNIT relied on a storage system that was difficult to manage, inflexible and did not provide the capacity and performance required to support business-critical applications. A recent acquisition, resulting in the company doubling its size overnight, an upcoming launch of a new ERP package and implementation of virtual desktops led the company to upgrade its server and storage infrastructure. WYNIT selected the SmartStack, an integrated infrastructure platform consisting of Nimble’s flash storage arrays and Cisco UCS servers and network infrastructure, based on pre-validated reference architectures.

“With the SmartStack deployed, our business-critical applications and processes are able to fuel business growth in line with increases in customer demand. All of our critical business applications, entire production VM environment, Exchange, and our VMware VDI deployment are now running at peak performance on a single 3u CS460 Nimble array. Nimble was able to provide enhanced performance over our previous systems at just one-third of the investment,” said Tom Uva, CIO, WYNIT Distribution.

The SmartStack deployment has increased the company’s operational efficiency by enabling the team to process 60% more transactions in the same amount of time. Prior to SmartStack, the company’s Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system, which processes millions of transactions a year, was consuming 54 minutes of every hour, which has now been reduced to 22 minutes of every hour, enabling the company to handle a much larger volume of business.

Nimble has also enabled WYNIT to develop a new DR strategy.

“When I joined three years ago, the company lacked offsite DR. With the favorable economics and fully integrated data protection capabilities of the Nimble Adaptive Flash platform, we were able to deploy a second SmartStack at our new DR location 100 miles away,” added Uva. “We were also able to shorten RPOs for all business-critical applications and data. On the previous system, the RPOs were at best a full day and often times up to a full week, which has now been reduced to just 15 minutes for business critical workloads on Nimble SmartStack.“

“We have been very pleased with our move to Nimble SmartStack,” Uva concluded. “The combination of Nimble and Cisco partnering together and coming up with an integrated infrastructure platform has placed our company on a strategic path for many years to come.“