StarWind provides the IOPS we need, reduces the need for added hardware (SANs) and it just works!
Joseph Havlat, IT Director
PROBLEM
Before StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) deployment, Farmers & Merchants Bank had an IT infrastructure with primary and disaster recovery (DR) sites. Each of the locations had 2 Hyper-V hosts running Microsoft Server 2019 and Dell EqualLogic SAN. Despite the fact that SAN provided the organization’s applications with a high intensity of I/O operations, its maintenance was very expensive. Farmers & Merchants Bank was looking for a shared storage solution that would help ensure high availability (HA) and fault tolerance (FT). Achieving HA and FT provides critical safety of the organization’s financial data. As a possible software-defined solution, the financial institution tried to implement Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) on servers running Windows Server 2019. But problems with ensuring reliability appeared. The Microsoft engineers suggested switching to Server 2016 until 2019 was more mature.
SOLUTION
Farmers & Merchants Bank tilted toward StarWind VSAN in pursuit of fault tolerance and peace of mind. StarWind VSAN was easily deployed on servers running Windows Server 2019 with no need to move to the legacy version. It completely eliminated the necessity to purchase additional SAN hardware while ensuring the desired amount of IOPS. As it is known, SAN equipment is very expensive, and its management requires special skills. At the same time, StarWind VSAN does not imply having network administration or UNIX management skills. A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware or Windows can do VSAN installation, configure and maintain VSAN operations. Obtaining the desired HA, Farmers & Merchants Bank also saved close to $60,000 in hardware upfront. In addition, the organization was very satisfied with the highly skilled and very responsive work of the StarWind Support team.
About the Company
Farmers & Merchants Bank is a US financial institution, located in Nebraska, providing business and individual banking services. The organization specializes in credit financing, opening deposits, and preparation
of accompanying financial documentation.
Company Profile
Financial Services
Contact Person
Joseph Havlat,
IT Director