Formica Group increases its virtual machine (VM) performance by 20% by creating a hyperconverged infrastructure around StarWind HCI Appliance (HCA)

CHALLENGE

Before deploying StarWind HCI Appliance (HCA), Formica Group had a complex and costly IT infrastructure with three independent data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia. Each center utilized different hardware and backup methods, leading to over-provisioned compute resources, outdated software, and mounting technical debt. The challenge was to rationalize costs, standardize licensing, and simplify the IT landscape.

The company initially was looking for direct hardware replacements, such as Blade & SAN, further considering even the use of cloud IaaS. Nutanix, HyperGrid, and SimpliVity were also considered as HCI platforms. However, after multiple evaluations, StarWind was the clear winner in terms of performance and cost.

The ROI in our North American data center is under 12 months and on course to generate savings of nearly $450,000 in 24 months.

Matt Collier, Group Infrastructure Engineer

SOLUTION

Formica Group selected StarWind HCI Appliance after a comprehensive 2-year hardware review.

StarWind provided a proactive solution with performance analysis, which revealed a significant reduction in the number of hypervisors, from 22 to 8, while doubling storage capacity. This led to substantial savings in VMware and Veeam licensing costs, with a rapid ROI of under 12 months. The resulting infrastructure also enhanced VM performance by 20% and reduced backup times.

Formica Group is exploring further integration with StarWind by evaluating StarWind VTL for offloading backups to Azure Blob Storage.