At Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics in Wichita, Kansas, the majority of employees rely on Microsoft Dynamics, which works in tandem with SQL Server for the company’s day to day business operations. When end users began reporting slow performance during processing and printing, the IT team suspected its legacy storage was to blame. “Our real pain was sluggish performance, and thus unhappy users,” said Will Eckels, senior system administrator for Mid-Continent. “Most of our users are in Microsoft Dynamics 99 percent of the time, so poor performance really affected productivity.”
Challenges
-End users were experiencing slow performance from business critical applications
-Wanted ability to virtualize (SQL) business critical applications
-Company was experiencing increased storage capacity requirements
-IT staff was overloaded with storage management, monitoring and workloads
-IT management wanted confidence in reliable snapshotting
-IT management wanted to leverage replication for improved data protection
For a solution, Eagle teamed up with Datrium to identify bottlenecks and analyze Mid-Continent’s overall storage requirements. They architected a solution that not only solved Mid-Continent’s performance issues, but also provided nearly three times the capacity and reduced storage management – all with a cost effective solution. Eagle recommended the Datrium DVX system to maximize storage performance, efficiency, and capacity. End users immediately benefited from enhanced performance with 60x faster Exchange reboots. The Datrium solution also allowed Mid-Continent to retain some of its existing server hardware which lowered the overall project investment.Mid-Continent also gained peace of mind regarding data protection. Enhanced snapshotting capabilities with Datrium along with the implementation Commvault’s data protection platform ensure that the company’s data is effectively protected. Commvault also offered the added benefit of data replication which allows Mid-Continent to replicate their local servers to their California office.
Results
-Improved overall storage performance and faster business critical applications
-Ability to virtualize (SQL) business critical applications with no effect on performance
-IT staff is freed up from storage performance and management headaches
-Reduced storage acquisition costs with capacity gains and hardware flexibility
-Enhanced data protection of mission critical data
About the Customer
For more than half of a century, Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics has been an industry leader in the overhaul, exchange, repair, design and manufacturing of aircraft instruments, avionics and advanced power solutions. Serving 57 countries, we support business and commercial aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), defense and special missions markets. The company manufactures more than 20,000 units per year and processes more than 15,000 units in its our overhaul, exchange and repair operation. Mid-Continent’s customer base includes original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), fixed base operators (FBOs), instrument and avionics shops, flight schools and government agencies.
For more information on Eagle’s storage, data protection, data management, virtualization, cloud and managed services, contact your Eagle account executive or call us at 800.477.5432.
