North Mississippi Health Services-South Marion saves about $85,000 in capital expenses by deploying a high-availability cluster with StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), North Mississippi Health Services-South Marion had storage from Nutanix with a VMware hypervisor on top. The infrastructure functioned, but the cost of maintaining it was extremely high. Every 5-6 years, the organization was pushed to spend more than $100,000 on new hardware just to stay supported, and most technical guides were locked behind paid service contracts. This made it hard to solve problems quickly without extra costs. After a year of research and testing many options, the hospital struggled to find a solution that fit within their budget. The team needed reliable shared storage that would improve performance and remove the pressure of forced hardware refresh cycles.

StarWind VSAN provides real-time storage redundancy that we require and even gives far better performance than the previous solution.

Brandon Robbins, IT Supervisor

SOLUTION

North Mississippi Health Services-South Marion chose StarWind VSAN because it delivered strong performance and allowed the hospital to reuse its existing servers. The documentation, guides, and whitepapers were open and accessible, making it easy to understand how the system worked before making the investment. After deployment, the setup proved simpler than Nutanix or other products tested. StarWind VSAN provided real-time storage redundancy and delivered faster performance than the previous solution. The hospital estimates around $85,000 saved in capital expenses, plus about $3,000 a year in support costs. The team is satisfied with the new infrastructure and plans to expand with an additional node or NVMe-based cluster in the future.