Case Study: Investec Asset Management achieves 80% data center footprint reduction and 100% virtualization with Pure Storage FlashArray

Investec Asset Management Shows High Returns from All-Flash Array

Investec Asset Management, a global investment manager, needed to move from a legacy spinning-disk SAN to an almost entirely virtual environment but faced performance and management pains: SQL backups disrupted daytime services (Exchange and Blackberry), physical servers constrained growth, and the team wanted to support a growing VMware estate without added complexity.

They deployed a Pure Storage FlashArray FA-420, enabling an all-flash, 100% virtual infrastructure with inbox deduplication/compression. The change cut hardware from 1½ racks to 10U (an 80% reduction), achieved a 5.4:1 deduplication ratio (turning 17 TB of SAN into ~60 TB usable), accelerated migration to Microsoft SQL Server 2012, improved load times ~10%, and expanded front-office trading capacity from 150 to 600 users while simplifying storage management and supporting future VDI and DR plans.

Investec Asset Management

Dave Comben

Head of IT Infrastructure Services