Despite early adoption of virtualisation, the legacy three-tier infrastructure hosting Xiaomi’s business critical applications including Microsoft Exchange, MS SQL Server and SAP Business Suite, was struggling to cope with exponential growth in demand. The traditional SAN storage was quickly identified as the main bottleneck, even after upgrading to all-flash arrays. By switching to the highly scalable and robust Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform with distributed storage architecture, Xiaomi managed to remove the long-standing issues. As a result, the smartphone maker has dramatically improved the performance of business-critical workloads while delivering return on investment (ROI) and savings through Nutanix Prism, a single management pane for both compute and storage resources.
The decision by Xiaomi to replace its entire three-tier infrastructure with the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform was taken after a thorough competitive analysis and a two-month testing. According to Wu Jiaqing, Head of the Xiaomi System Group, Infrastructure Architecture Department, “The benefits were both immediate and substantial.”
“Following the installation of the new Nutanix platform we have seen an immediate 200% leap in data throughput,” Wu Jiaqing reported. “In addition, we’ve seen an equally impressive three-fold reduction in latency with huge knock-on effects when it comes to deploying new applications – now being measured in hours instead of weeks.”
Xiaomi has also significantly reduced the physical occupancy and power consumption of its data centres, with a 70% reduction in rack occupancy and 30% saving in cooling and power requirements. Additionally, the Nutanix solution, with its simplicity and convenience of management, has halved the workload of IT support staff, allowing them to devote more time and energy to business innovation.
“For companies considering a virtualisation platform or building an on-premise cloud, Nutanix is the best choice for both technology and application,” said Wu Jiaqing. “The outstanding performance, easy management and quick deployment of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform has enabled us to finally address our storage issues and make some very impressive savings. More importantly, it has allowed the business to focus on what it does best – innovating for the benefits of our customers.”
