Nonprofit Organization Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans Chooses Pure Storage

Pure Storage, Inc. announced that Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans (MPI), a nonprofit organization that administers health and retirement benefits to the film industry, modernized its IT environment with the manufacturer to drive higher performance, greater efficiency, and business growth.

Customer challenge
Over 60,000 set designers, animators, and numerous other motion picture production workers across 30 film industry unions and guilds rely on MPI for their health and retirement benefits. Serving as a custodian for trust funds between industry unions and employers, MPI is dedicated to ensuring the welfare of participants, which includes robust measures to safeguard their personal data.

Faced with aging legacy systems and an escalating ransomware threat, it underwent an overhaul of its IT operations to prioritize speed, scalability, and data protection.

Customer impact
It replaced its legacy systems with Pure to achieve these goals, while also enhancing overall performance, efficiency, and recovery time. This transformation enables support for a spectrum of tasks, ranging from pension payments to health eligibility and claims, reinforcing MPI’s commitment to providing reliable and secure services for its participants.

Benefits include:

• Reduction in Data Center Footprint and Energy Costs: Always-on de-dupe and compression make the most of MPI’s storage capacity despite continuous replication and multiple copies of MPI’s environment. A 13:1 compression rate and a resulting 95% reduction in storage racks – from 44 rack units to 2 – reduced power and cooling costs and MPI’s overall data center footprint.
• Efficient Backup and Faster Time to Recovery: MPI replaced all its tape archives with FlashBlade//S for rapid backups and near-instant data recovery. It calculated time-to-restore from a complete ransomware loss to be less than 2 days with FlashBlade, compared to more than 18 days trying to recover from tape. Ultimately, FlashBlade has proven to be 10x faster than MPI’s previous system.
• Enhanced System Performance and Scalability: MPI’s IT team supports its employees with their daily technology needs, ranging from a VDI to databases to application development. Performance and scalability to meet growing data volumes was a key factor in MPI’s purchasing decision of Pure. Approximately 1,200 VMs, more than 200 VMware Horizon virtual desktops, and SQL database workloads run on Pure Storage Flash

“Embracing Pure’s all-flash portfolio over legacy tape was a strategic slam dunk for our organization. It goes beyond a mere transaction; it’s a genuine partnership that has not only elevated our performance but also ensured the longevity of our critical IT systems. Pure has become an integral part of our success story, providing a robust foundation that aligns with our goals for the long haul, ” said Andy Marosi, senior manager, infrastructure & operations, MPI.

Case study: Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans (MPI)