Case Study: Cohen Milstein achieves scalable, sub-1ms VDI performance for e-discovery with NetApp EF-Series flash storage

Cohen Milstein Streamlining E-Discovery with Virtual Desktops on Flash Storage

Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll is a plaintiff-focused class-action law firm that needed to meet rapidly growing e-discovery and document-review demands without letting case costs spiral out of control. As review volumes increased, their VMware Horizon VDI environment hit storage I/O limits, and the firm needed the ability to quickly onboard up to 100 contractor attorneys (about 250 concurrent VDI sessions) while maintaining security, performance, and predictable budgeting.

The firm moved its virtual desktop workload to a NetApp EF-Series flash array (while keeping other applications on a NetApp V3240), gaining full redundancy, low management overhead, and sub‑1ms latency for 250 virtual desktops. The change cut storage administration time by about 70%, lets the firm provision dozens of contractor desktops in minutes, sustains high e-discovery throughput, and provides scalable, cost‑predictable capacity that preserves competitiveness.

Cohen Milstein

Carlos Acha

Director of Information Technology