Subaru Canada Upgrades to Nutanix Enterprise Cloud

Company

Subaru Canada, Inc. (SCI) markets and distribute vehicles, parts, and accessories through a network of nearly 90 plus authorized automotive dealers across Canada.

Industry

Manufacturing (Automotive)

Business Need

Improve developer experience and application performance on SQL

Solution

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform

Benefits

• Simplified management of storage and server environment
• Eliminated developer and end user and complaints on poor application performance
• Cut nightly ETL processes time in half
• Increased application stability and scalability

CHALLENGE

Subaru Canada’s IT team is responsible for managing all of the storage and server infrastructure for its corporate office, satellite offices in Vancouver and Montréal, and parts warehouse. The IT environment consisted of several aging servers and NetApp storage systems serving as the backend for all enterprise workloads, including Microsoft SharePoint, CRM financial system, Dynamics AX, and an on-site business intelligence (BI) tool.

“We were running a lot of very demanding SQL-based workloads,” explained Manoj Tiwary, Director of Information Technology & Business Services at Subaru Canada. “The main problem we were having was the inadequate processing speed on our existing systems. Our existing servers and NetApp storage systems were not fast enough for our developers or end users. The IT infrastructure needed to be upgraded in order to handle the high performance workloads.”

SOLUTION

After reviewing a wide range of storage and server alternatives, Subaru Canada came to the conclusion that Nutanix was the best solution for their high database performance requirements. When asked which Nutanix features stood out, Tiwary replied, “The hyperconverged platform was one of the main reasons we chose Nutanix. Combining compute and storage into one system would greatly simplify infrastructure management. We were also impressed with the amount of IOPS we could get for our SQL-based and VDI applications. That’s why we made the decision to switch from NetApp storage to the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud systems.”

SCI purchased its first Nutanix node in 2014 and then doubled their Nutanix footprint by adding an additional block one year later. All Nutanix nodes have been deployed at the company’s main datacenter in Mississauga, Ontario. The two-block Nutanix cluster is being used to run all of SCI’s business intelligence, customer relationship management solutions, and virtual desktop deployment. “We have standardized on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud systems as our IT backbone,” Tiwary reported. “The Nutanix platform is very stable and easily scalable. We will continue to run a few workloads on our existing NetApp systems until they reach end of life, but none of those applications are mission-critical.”

RESULTS

Consolidating Multiple Workloads onto One Platform

“We were able to consolidate all of our workloads onto Nutanix,” noted John Milic, IT consultant for Subaru Canada. “It’s a real time-saver to have just one platform to manage, as opposed to dealing with multiple servers and storage systems. Nutanix has streamlined our data center architecture —just a couple of boxes can handle all of our workloads.”

Increased Performance

“From my perspective, the main benefit of moving to Nutanix was the increase in performance,” Milic added. “We’ve been very impressed with the blazing speed of the Enterprise Cloud systems. We had an ETL nightly process that used to take four hours on our NetApp systems. It finishes in less than two hours on Nutanix.”

“We haven’t had any processing issues at all on with our SQL-based applications,” noted Tiwary. “We used to get a lot of calls from our end users about poor performance on the last day of every month, since we really stress our systems to get the necessary data for our sales and parts reports. Since moving to Nutanix, we haven’t received any complaints from our end users around inadequate application performance.”

Management Simplicity

“The Nutanix systems are very easy to manage,” Milic said. “Nutanix Prism enables us to manage both of our Enterprise Cloud systems as one. We really like all of the graphs and reporting tools, and it always alerts immediately us if there are any issues. We used to spend a lot of time managing and troubleshooting our NetApp systems. By switching from NetApp to Nutanix, our IT team can work on other projects that are more critical to the business.”

Great Training and Technical Support

“Nutanix offers a lot of very informative on-line training resources,” Milic added. “I was able to quickly learn how to use the new systems, and anybody on our team can step in to help without a lot of instruction. The Nutanix support staff and account reps are also very responsive. Whenever I create a support ticket, our account rep calls and asks if he can help us with anything.”

Smaller Datacenter Footprint

The Nutanix systems fit into a much smaller footprint than the previous servers and NetApp storage systems. “The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud systems are very compact, enabling us to save a significant amount of datacenter space and power. Our data center actually looks quite empty now—it’s amazing how so much can be accomplished with such a small physical presence,” Tiwary admitted.

NEXT STEPS

SCI is now getting ready to move additional workloads onto Nutanix. “We’re planning to standardize our backup strategy this year,” noted Milic. “In order to leverage our Nutanix investment, we are only looking at backup technologies that we can run from the Nutanix box. And finally, we’d like to purchase a third Nutanix cluster and move it to another site, using built-in Nutanix’s built-in replication to sync our servers to the off-site location.”

When asked if he would recommend the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud solution to his colleagues, Tiwary replied, “Absolutely yes. Nutanix has developed a very innovative technology and a really great set of products. The impressive performance and ease-of-use of the Nutanix systems are unmatched in the industry today.”