Case Study: Cox Communications optimizes network testing and cuts storage provisioning time with NexentaConnect for VMware VSAN

Cox Communications Optimizes Its Network Testing with Nexenta

Cox Communications, a major U.S. cable and telecommunications provider, needed more flexible, shared storage for its Atlanta lab to support growing software-based network testing across multiple engineering groups. The existing setup tied testers to local servers, limited data retention to a few days, and required engineers to spend many hours each week provisioning storage, preventing realistic, large-scale testing.

Cox implemented NexentaConnect for VMware VSAN on a cluster of Supermicro servers, creating a 144 TB VSAN pool with SSD caching and exporting NFS mounts to some 30–40 lab servers. The solution was quick to deploy and simple for engineers to manage, cutting storage provisioning time from roughly seven hours per week across the team to a couple hours, enabling longer data collection, scalable tests that mirror real-world conditions, hardware reuse, and lower total cost of ownership.

Cox Communications

Phil Bedard

Technical Director