Nexans Autoelectric achieves seamless business operations by creating a hyperconverged IT environment around StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), Nexans Autoelectric operated in an entirely physical environment using HP ProLiant BL460с Generation 6 servers with attached Storage Blades and VMware vSphere as the hypervisor. The lack of a virtualized environment made scaling and storage management cumbersome.

While exploring virtualization options, the company needed a cost-effective shared storage solution that did not rely on SSDs. Although they tested HPE StoreVirtual and VMware vSAN, neither met their requirements as effectively as StarWind in terms of price and functionality.

We tried HPE StoreVirtual and VMware vSAN, but StarWind won in our study by price and functionality by not requiring SSDs. Additionally, we save about $3,200 every 3 years comparing to HPE VSA as StarWind is permanent, while the HPE license lasts 3 years only.

Ricardo Gonzalez, IT Manager

SOLUTION

Nexans Autoelectric selected StarWind VSAN because it provided a fault-tolerant shared storage solution using their existing hardware resources and cloud, eliminating the need for costly physical storage upgrades. By implementing a three-node hyperconverged setup with VMware vSphere, StarWind enabled Nexans Autoelectric to achieve seamless failover during disaster tests without any storage interruptions.

Impressed by its performance and scalability, the company plans to deploy StarWind VSAN in other locations and use it as the foundation for future data center projects.