Case Study: WD-40 Company eliminates growth roadblocks and speeds application performance with NetApp FlexPod

WD-40 Company Eliminates Roadblocks to Accommodating Business Growth with FlexPod

WD‑40 Company, a global manufacturer headquartered in San Diego with 390 employees and products sold in 190 countries, faced growing strain on its San Diego–based IT infrastructure as demand for e-mail, analytics and other resources increased. With about half its servers still physical and business‑critical applications (Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, IBM Cognos, and an Innatrack ERP) experiencing performance and capacity limits, the IT team needed a scalable, standardized platform to avoid a capacity wall.

WD‑40 implemented a FlexPod converged infrastructure (NetApp storage with clustered Data ONTAP, Cisco UCS servers and Nexus switches) running VMware, with SnapMirror replication to a Phoenix DR site and NetApp deduplication. The deployment delivered dramatic results — roughly 10x storage I/O, 8x network throughput, nearly 3x compute capacity, 1.5 ms average I/O latency, and 37% faster Cognos cube builds — enabling 24/7 availability, faster analytics, easier data migrations, and the headroom to support continued growth.

WD-40 Company

Lynn Buck

Director of IT Operations