Case Study: Institut Laue–Langevin achieves high availability, scalable ZFS storage and up to 40% cost savings with Nexenta

Nexenta Delivers Right Result For Renowned International Research Centre

The Institut Laue–Langevin (ILL) is an international neutron research centre in Grenoble serving 1,500 researchers and operating 100 physical servers, 150 virtual machines and 1,500 workstations across two data centres. Faced with unpredictable scientific data growth (about 25% per year), limited high‑availability capabilities and an expensive NetApp upgrade path, ILL needed a scalable, HA storage solution with snapshots and automatic failover that would avoid vendor lock‑in.

ILL deployed NexentaStor (ZFS‑based) in a MetroHA active‑active cluster across the two sites, integrating with existing Solaris ZFS and centralising backups. The five‑day migration delivered instant failover, unlimited snapshots, easier customization and significantly lower cost (about 40% savings), reduced storage management to roughly two hours per week and removed dependence on a proprietary upgrade path.

Institut Laue–Langevin

Stephane Armanet

IT-Infrastructure Manager