NISC with StorMagic SvSAN Replacing Dell EMC PowerEdge VRTX

About NISC

National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC) is an information technology company that develops and supports software and hardware solutions for their member-owners who are primarily utility cooperatives and broadband companies across USA. It provides advanced, integrated IT solutions for consumer and subscriber billing, accounting, engineering and operations, as well as other leading-edge IT solutions.

Business challenge
It previously used Dell EMC’s PowerEdge VRTX onsite at 8 of its member sites to manage NISC billing and accounting applications. The systems were difficult to deploy at remote sites, expensive, and presented single points of failure. When Dell announced that the product was approaching end of life, NISC was eager to make a switch.

Solution
Upon reviewing several hyperconverged solutions, NISC was impressed with StorMagic, Inc.’s small physical footprint, ease of deployment and in-house support offerings. After conducting a PoC with the StorMagic engineering and support teams, the decision to move forward was clear.

During installation, StorMagic helped NISC implement simple, easy-to-manage VMware infrastructures at its 8 member sites. Not only did the solution provide HA within a small physical footprint, it also allowed for a 50% reduction in required Oracle license costs – which translated into $22,610 in initial cost savings and $3,610 annually per site. Today, NISC’s SvSAN clusters are running VM applications in hyperconverged configurations at all 8 sites, and are managed through StorMagic’s VMware vCenter plugin.

Why StorMagic?

• Cost-effective: NISC realized a 50% reduction in Oracle hardware and software licensing costs, resulting in $22,610 in initial cost savings and $3,610 annually, per site.
• Reduced hardware and footprint: Eliminates bulky physical SANs by converging compute and storage into a lightweight commodity x86 server footprint. NISC reclaimed significant floor space by switching from VRTX to the SvSAN platform.
• Superior support: During the PoC process, StorMagic ensured NISC that SvSAN was a good fit for their members as they had not implemented virtual SAN solutions previously.

Technical Configuration