Case Study: Nexans Autoelectric achieves high availability and cost savings with StarWind Software

Nexans Autoelectric Virtualizes Its Physical Environment to Achieve HA and Cost-Efficiency Together with StarWind VSAN

Nexans Autoelectric, a manufacturer of wiring harnesses and vehicle systems with over 10,500 employees and €464M turnover in 2019, needed to virtualize an all-physical VMware vSphere environment (HP ProLiant BL460 Gen6 with storage blades) to achieve high availability and resiliency using existing IT resources. Attempts with HPE StoreVirtual VSA and VMware vSAN proved too costly and inflexible, so the company sought a cost-effective alternative.

By deploying StarWind Virtual SAN in a three-node hyper-converged configuration with VMware vSphere 6.7, Nexans created a fault-tolerant storage pool from existing hardware (and cloud) without new equipment. The solution survived a tested single-host failure, maintained constant uptime, and cut costs—saving about $3,200 every three years versus HPE VSA—positioning StarWind as the basis for wider rollout and future datacenters.

Nexans Autoelectric

Ricardo Gonzalez

IT Manager