END USER INSIGHT
OUR INVESTMENT
IN PURE STORAGE
IS ROOTED IN OUR
RECOGNITION
THAT WE ALL
NOW LIVE IN A
DIGITAL WORLD.
Rao added that with Pure Storage,
MDC BMS had been able to reduce its
rackspace to 6U, stating that the TCO has
also been reduced.
He was also struck by the ease
of deployment for Pure Storage
FlashArray//X solution, stating: “With
other storage vendors, it takes a minimum
of a month to complete implementation
and sometimes up to two or three months.
“We completed this project, including
patch upgrades, the migration of close
to 400 TB of data and around 280 TB of
disaster-recovery replication, in a single
week – something that I would never have
thought would be possible.
production, disaster recovery and remote-
sites operations. FlashArray//X is an
all-flash, 100%-NVMe, shared, accelerated
storage designed for mainstream
enterprise deployments and optimised for
performance and density.
It is a decision which has been lauded
by Mansoor Almarzooqi, CIO, MDC BMS.
He said: “Mubadala Group’s brand is all
about the transformation of society and
the laser-focused investments that make
that happen.
“Our investment in Pure Storage is rooted
in our recognition that we all now live in a
digital world. Timely, accurate information
and the confidence in the safety and
security of that information are vital
components of a successful enterprise.
Because of the dedication and innovation
of Pure – and our own team – we can make
faster, better decisions that ultimately
allow us to grow our asset base.”
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
“Another advantage of Pure is its solutions
don’t require a lot of training. Pure Storage
technical resources was on site for the
first two days, for protocol reasons, but
after that the hardware and software were
so simple, our internal team managed the
rest of the implementation.”
A further benefit of the Pure Storage
solution that became apparent to MDC
BMS was the ease with which it could
be maintained. Through the Pure1
monitoring tool, the MDC BMS team can
oversee the entire infrastructure from
a single point, receiving rich views and
alerts in real time. Upgrades were also
simplified with FlashArray//X.
“We normally need to really plan upgrades
and involve the vendor, and rely on them
to complete it, which is a very tense time
for us,” he recalled. “With Pure, not so.”
An all-flash storage architecture has also
enabled MDC to achieve sub-millisecond
latency for all its critical apps. The company
previously relied on server memory to
enhance app performance but FlashArray//X
can now fulfil this need. In addition, with
Pure Storage, the MDC BMS team can
provision storage for new apps in just a few
seconds, as opposed to the days it would
take with the legacy storage infrastructure.
This is ultimately helping Mubadala
employees that use these business-
critical applications to take better, faster
real time decisions.
“Another point worth noting is that, with
our legacy storage, we were facing major
performance issues in pre-production,”
he added, “but now, non-production, pre-
production and production environments
are all run on Pure Storage, so all
environments get the same benefits as
production. This allows IT to get a very
accurate feel for how well apps will work
in production.”
Cost savings – a solution that pays
for itself in four years
Through de-duplication and compression,
FlashArray//X has also reduced MDC BMS’s
cost per terabyte, even though the company
migrated from a disk infrastructure.
“There is a misconception in the market
that disk storage is cheaper than all-
flash, but per terabyte, it is actually
cheaper with flash because of the data
reduction feature that Pure has built into
their storage solutions,” Rao noted. “One
rack runs about AED 250,000 (approx.
US$68,000) a year in colocation costs.
But since we moved from seven racks to
one seventh of a rack, we are looking at
potential savings of up to AED 2 million
(approx. US$544,000) per year.
“Also, power consumption for a disk-
storage rack is anywhere between 12 and
16 kW, but with the Pure solution in place,
this reduces to 1 kW, so we save more
than 90% in power costs.
“This all translates to a massive overall
saving in TCO and the solution will have
paid for itself within four years. We are
delighted with the outcome – any remote
sites we deploy in the future will be run on
Pure Storage solutions.” ◊
Issue 01
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