Amazon FSx for Windows File Server Customers
3M accelerates SQL Server migration to AWS with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, achieving higher availability, increased scalability, and reduced operational load.
3M is an American multinational conglomerate operating in the fields of industry, worker safety, healthcare, and consumer goods.
Challenge: 3M, an American multinational conglomerate, embarked on a cloud transformation journey to migrate 2,000 applications, 5,000 servers, and 5,000 databases across their business. 3M required a highly available solution that allowed them to migrate their SQL Server databases with the same level of durability and performance as their existing on-premises storage.
Solution: 3M leveraged Amazon EC2 and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server to host their SQL Server databases. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provided a highly available storage solution they could easily connect to SQL servers hosted on Amazon EC2 with no disruption to their end users. FSx allowed 3M to meet their goal of exiting their data center, while ensuring high performance, reliability, and scalability as their business continued to grow.
“Amazon EC2 and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server helped us migrate our potential Windows applications that support thousands of end users without having to change our architecture. Fully-managed services like Amazon FSx for Windows File Server make it super easy to achieve high availability without having to manage multiple datacenters on-premises, with just a checkbox in the AWS console. AWS provides us with an effortless way to manage, adjust performance, and capacity as we grow. It just works."
Andrew Bennett, SQL Leader - 3M
Vital Energy accelerates their reservoir modeling with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Vital Energy, Inc. is an independent energy company that focuses on the acquisition, exploration, and development of oil and natural gas properties and the gathering of oil and liquids-rich natural gas.
Challenge: Vital Energy experienced on-premises storage scalability constraints, and needed to reduce the time required to process and derive value from their seismic analysis models.
Solution: By using Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Vital Energy deployed fully secure, reliable, and scalable virtual desktops and fully managed shared file storage for their seismic data analysis workflows. FSx for Windows File Server helped Vital Energy scale on demand to quickly and cost-effectively locate sites for exploration and development activities.
“FSx for Windows File Server enables our team to securely access and share sub-surface data in our virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment, reducing the time required to complete modeling and visualization runs that enable us to understand a reservoir’s properties and economic potential."
Derek Gary, Manager, IT Infrastructure – Vital Energy
Jemena enhances agility while improving its operational and security posture with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and AWS DataSync.
Challenge: Jemena delivers energy to one in five Australian homes and businesses and operates some of the country’s most exciting energy projects. Facing additional storage demands from its new business while also migrating existing workloads to AWS, Jemena needed a flexible way to scale storage capacity on time without incurring significant additional costs.
Solution: Jemena safely moved 50TB of data supporting 20+ business-critical applications from their on-premises data center to AWS using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and AWS DataSync. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server gave Jemena the freedom to establish highly resilient and accessible file systems across Availability Zones to provide additional storage agility and support its business application growth. FSx for Windows File Server’s built-in encryption and Multi-AZ capabilities allowed Jemena to improve its operational and compliance posture compared to its on-premises environment.
“With Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, we get a flexible, performant and highly available file system for our workloads while also removing the undifferentiated complexity of managing and maintaining traditional on-premises solutions.”
Igor Jovanovic, Cloud Engineering Manager - Jemena
TechnologyOne improves security and agility for business-critical database storage using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: TechnologyOne’s previous storage provider prevented them from gaining granular control over their business application data, making it difficult to enhance their security posture and facilitate compliance in various regions.
Solution: TechnologyOne migrated to a Windows-based fully managed cloud storage solution using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, facilitating compliance in multiple regions and reducing system costs. The company discovered that it could meet its goals for compliance and scalability using FSx for Windows File Server to manage single-tenant customer database environments within a globally consistent storage architecture with virtually no downtime for customers.
“We saw the ability to build an enterprise-grade, scalable storage solution on AWS. Using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, we can securely deliver cost-effective file storage to thousands of customers at scale.”
Craig Taylor, Director of software-as-a-service product and platform – TechnologyOne
Infor reduces costs by 50% using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: Infor used a cloud-based storage solution for their shared file storage needs on AWS. Their previous solution was cost-prohibitive, difficult to scale and provision, and did not integrate well with their application automation framework.
Solution: By migrating their file shares to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Infor was able to provision storage to each of their applications independently at scale with streamlined application maintenance. Leveraging Amazon FSx's native multi-AZ file systems, Infor benefited from high availabilty with no downtime. Amazon FSx offers integration with AWS CloudFormation templates, Amazon CloudWatch, and fully managed backups. This enables easy deployment, monitoring, and data protection.
"Amazon FSx for Windows File Server delivers a highly available, high performance Windows file system. As a service, it reduces management and maintenance while integrating seamlessly with our existing automation framework - all at a lower cost than our previous provider. We have reduced our storage cost by 50% and improved application performance by as much as 80%. It checks all the boxes."
Luis Lavina, Jr., System Administrator, Principal
Greg Bell, Manager, Cloud Services - Infor
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John Holland Group improves data protection by migrating 90+ critical applications to Amazon FSx.
Challenge: Australian construction company JHG experienced an outage of its file storage environment that corrupted application and data repositories containing business-critical data.
Solution: By migrating its file storage to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, JHG restored access to critical applications and improved its user shares and file-based applications while reducing maintenance time.
“Amazon FSx for Windows File Server hasn’t missed a beat. The speed, the stability, and the ability to tune throughput speed and availability to our environment are quite positive for us.”
- Kier Morrison, General Manager of Information Technology Operations, John Holland Group
Change Healthcare achieves their performance and resiliency requirements with Amazon EC2 Windows, SQL Server on AWS, and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: Change Healthcare, a leader in healthcare technology uses dozens of SQL Servers to support their mission critical services. As they migrated to the cloud, they needed a means to bring their high performance SQL workload to AWS while avoiding an increase in the cost of their SQL licensing profile.
Solution: By migrating their workload to EC2 and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Change Healthcare was able to avoid $3.1M in SQL licensing costs while maintaining IO performance above 40,000 IOPS. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server also enabled Change Healthcare to meet their high availability requirements without using enterprise edition. Using Microsoft SQL Server with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Change Healthcare is able to use SQL Server Fail-over Clustering while achieving their mission critical RTO/RPO production requirements while saving in SQL licensing costs.
"AWS provides us the best compute and storage to migrate our mission-critical SQL workloads. We were able to get highly available and performant storage with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for our SQL nodes using SQL Failover Clustering, which also allowed us to keep our Microsoft SQL licensing costs way down. A win-win for all."
Urs Bertschinger - VP, Research & Development Services, Change Healthcare
NRI improves reliability and agility with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and AWS DataSync, while reducing costs and operational overhead.
Challenge: NRI faced challenges managing their on-premises SaaS collaboration platform as it grew to over 25,000 users. Adding capacity to support additional users and SaaS solutions became tedious and expensive.
Solution: Using FSx for Windows File Server and AWS DataSync, NRI securely migrated 120TB of on-premises data to AWS. NRI achieved a 20% cost reduction and improved agility compared to their on-premises solution, and improved reliability by using highly available multi-AZ file systems.
“Migrating our collaboration platform to AWS will help reduce operational overhead and cost. The system will be integrated to NRI's service "aslead", which allows us to enhance usability with the new platform and improve customer's productivity with the service.”
- Yukiko Yashiro, General Manager, OpenStandia Business Department, Nomura Research Institute, Ltd.
Workhuman improves performance for their high availability SQL Server deployments by 30%.
Challenge: Workhuman was in the process of migrating their core Epicor Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to AWS and required performant and reliable shared storage to scale their high availability SQL Server Failover Clusters.
Solution: With fully managed Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Workhuman easily deployed a highly available SQL Server solution – delivering the performance and scalability required for their business-critical workload – without the management overhead and provisioning required with on-premises infrastructure.
“With the high performance and availability of Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, we were able to complete our full ERP workload migration to AWS, making it easy to scale at the click of a button versus months on premises. We increased our overall performance by 30% which allowed us to focus on improving the experience for our 6 million users.”
- Dr. Andrea C. Johnson, Senior Director, Workhuman
Epiq saves on storage costs and increases availability using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: Epiq, a leading global legal services company worldwide, was tasked with reducing costs for their eDiscovery platform, which relies on shared storage to help legal firms search and secure electronic data for use in legal cases.
Solution: Using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Epiq was able to replace several hundred TB’s of self-managed Windows file shares with fully managed SMB file storage. Amazon FSx provides a common file share between their various eDiscovery platforms including Relativity, Nuix, and AbbVie.
“Amazon FSx really helped us achieve some lofty cost optimization goals. We no longer have to worry about managing file storage, it was a drop in replacement and just works. We get the performance we need, but with higher availability than we can achieve on our own.”
- Tina Kennedy, Director of Engineering Operations, Epiq
CyberAgent reduced RTO by migrating over 1 PB of file storage backups to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: CyberAgent’s existing on-premises network-attached storage (NAS) solution provided limited flexibility with their backups and did not meet their recovery time objectives (RTO).
Solution: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and AWS DataSync enabled an easy lift-and-shift of their on-premises NAS backups to AWS. Using AWS DataSync, CyberAgent created an ongoing replication schedule with their on-premises backups seamlessly moving to Amazon FSx. Amazon FSx was instantly accessible in the cloud, meeting their near-zero recovery time objectives and eliminating manual restore operations.
“Creating a backup infrastructure for our on-premises NAS proved more difficult than we thought. On-premises solutions were costly and did not meet our RTO objectives. Amazon FSx made it super easy, fast, and cheap by using tools we were already familiar with –a no brainer.”
Shuichiro Makigaki, Corporate System Division, CyberAgent Inc.
eLaw improves productivity of remote workers with Amazon WorkSpaces and FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: eLaw pivoted to remote working, leveraging a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy. They were challenged with protecting their data across a wide variety of unprotected devices and lack of centralized management. Additionally, the costs of supporting these devices was on the rise due to an increase in calls and support requests. They needed a managed, secure remote Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) with easy shared file storage for their existing applications.
Solution: FSx for Windows File Server provided fully managed, highly reliable Windows file storage for their Amazon WorkSpaces users. Integration with AWS Managed Microsoft Active Directory enabled easy access to AWS applications and services, as well as easier user and group management for eLaw.
"Connecting FSx for Windows File Server from Amazon WorkSpaces, provided a smooth transition from on premises to the AWS Cloud with fast, secure shared storage to thousands of legal professionals. We saw increased reliability and scalability with no disruption to our applications. We no longer worry about protecting file data on individual laptops.”
Vic Kanwar, CIO, eLaw LLC
Expedia reduces costs and increases performance for their user shares with FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: Expedia had 20+ offices, each with their own file servers that made it difficult to manage and scale. They needed to enable their regional offices to easily store and access files but faced costly hardware refreshes.
Solution: Using fully managed Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, Expedia was able to consolidate multiple file servers and reduce their hardware footprint. They lowered TCO and improved durability with multi-AZ file systems. They no longer have to worry about each office managing hardware and expanding capacity, and their end users achieve better performance.
"With FSx for Windows File Server, there was no disruption to our user experience. We were able to free up resources to focus on our core business. Performance was faster than on premises and we look forward to further optimizing file servers with AWS.”
William Weigle, Senior Manager, Expedia Group
ENGIE Deutschland increases scalability of their user shares and reduces cost by 83% with FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: With their current provider, ENGIE experienced difficulty in managing and scaling their Windows file storage for their 4,400 users across 30 sites. They wanted to avoid replacing aging hardware and move to a better file storage solution that was easy to scale as their users and overall file data grew.
Solution: ENGIE easily moved their Windows storage to fully managed Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, enabling them to scale faster without additional hardware or changes to their existing environment. Leveraging the HDD storage option, ENGIE was able to reduce cost and increase performance for their end users.
"Before Amazon FSx, it would take up to two months to add capacity. Now we can scale in minutes and no longer worry about end-of-life hardware issues.”
Roland Zain, CIO, ENGIE Deutschland GmbH
Avio Aero reduces their Microsoft SQL Server cost by 60% with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: GE Avio Aero had to upgrade its SharePoint site, which hosted several critical applications. Avio Aero required a highly available environment, and lower costs.
Solution: With Amazon FSx, GE Avio Aero deployed a highly available SQL Server Failover Cluster with SQL Standard licenses. Amazon FSx provided significant savings and a lower TCO compared to using SQL Enterprise licenses for Always On groups on premises.
"Using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server allowed us to run an highly available SharePoint site, while at the same time reduce our SQL license costs by more than 60%. The feedback from our users is very positive, both in terms of performance and reliability of the system.”
Ivani Di Conca, Senior Manager, Digital Operations, Avio Aero
AdvancedMD reduces time spent managing SQL Server database backups by 85% using Amazon FSx.
Challenge: AdvancedMD needed to scale its existing hosting infrastructure for medical data to keep up with the demands for new products and rapid customer growth in doctors’ offices. Their current storage platform was causing performance issues with their SQL Server database backups due to the length of time to complete a backup.
Solution: Using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, AdvancedMD migrated its clients’ data to the AWS Cloud to provide secure, readily accessible hosting and increased performance through improved Microsoft SQL Server database processing time.
" Without Amazon FSx, we would have spent hours every day on a backup as opposed to actually helping our business grow.”
Steve Coombs, Senior Site Reliability Engineer, AdvancedMD
Venerable accelerates data center migration with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and Amazon WorkSpaces.
Challenge: Venerable was tasked with a short timeframe to depart from their data center as part of a divestiture and chose AWS for greater agility and easier management for their hundreds of users processing financial datasets.
Solution: Using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and Amazon WorkSpaces, Venerable migrated six months earlier than expected, resulting in significant savings. They migrated hundreds of users to AWS using fully managed Desktop-as-a-Service and leveraged shared Windows storage to provide their users with fast and secure processing of large financial risk modeling files.
"We didn't want to set up and manage our own infrastructure. AWS made it easy to migrate but Amazon FSx and Amazon WorkSpaces made it even easier. Now we don't have to worry about software, patches, updates, or any of the trappings of managing infrastructure ourselves.”
Justin Keefer, VP of Technology Services, Venerable
Emirates gains 37% performance improvement with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: Emirates was in the process of migrating their business-critical booking engine from on premises to the AWS Cloud and needed reliable shared storage for their content management system (CMS).
Solution: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server enabled Emirates to easily provision file storage for their CMS to store shared files for their booking website.
" With Amazon FSx, it was easy to migrate our flagship sites from our hosted data center to AWS. Our CMS needed high performance, stronger security, and reliable shared storage -- with the added bonus of scalability. Amazon FSx removed the complexity of managing our file-based workloads, significantly contributed to an uplift in performance and reliability, and most importantly, reduced the operational efforts across all of our teams.”
Anoop Kumar C, Principal Engineer, Emirates Group
Cengage optimizes performance with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: Students stream education content through Cengage’s Wowza, an on-premises, Windows-based application. Cengage was constantly running into capacity, performance, and reliability issues with its on-premises storage, which affected the students’ overall experience.
Solution: Cengage migrated multiple TBs of videos and files from their data center to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server with minimal modifications or disruptions. Now millions of students around the world have access to high quality content without experiencing bandwidth constraints.
"Amazon FSx for Windows File Server enabled us to migrate and store over 12 TB of content files from our on-premises data center to the cloud. Our transition to the cloud was seamless, not only was there minimal re-platforming necessary, but we were also able to move to a highly performant platform with little modification to existing processes or permissions.”
Coleman Greene, Cloud Operations Manager, Cengage
Neiman Marcus leverages fully managed FSx Windows to accelerate enterprise lift-and-shift and improve performance.
Challenge: Neiman Marcus was experiencing slow performance with their business-critical file-based document processing application and needed a quick cloud migration solution.
Solution: Moved their legacy Windows business application and associated file shares to AWS - with help from APN partner BizCloud Experts - from on-premises to Amazon FSx, the company was able to quickly take advantage of the automation and scalability of the cloud, as well as resolve their latency performance challenges.
"We were able move our Windows file-based application to AWS quickly and solved a critical performance issue. Based on our successful lift-and-shift experience, we’re looking to move more of our legacy applications requiring Windows native compatibility, to Amazon FSx.”
Hemanth Jayaraman, Director, Cloud Center of Excellence - Neiman Marcus Group
DocXellent reduces complexity with their application migration and achieves a highly available and scalable Windows-based file share within hours.
Challenge: DocXellent, a leading provider of electronic document control software and quality software applications, needed a more scalable and durable offering for their on-premises file-based application to increase availability and reduce operational overhead.
Solution: With Amazon FSx for Windows, DocXellent was able to implement a highly-available file storage system in less than a day, enabling its customers to store and retrieve files wherever and whenever they are needed while reducing the complexity of installing and managing their own file share. Since using FSx, DocXellent increased its cloud offerings up to 30% in a few months.
"FSx for Windows File Server is an integral part of our highly-available offering for our enterprise-level, global customers and has helped us overcome our performance challenges. We find that AWS is the best partner to help us continuously optimize our offerings as soon as new services become available and enables us to increase customer satisfaction."
John Waller, Senior Engineer - DocXellent
Qube Research and Technologies simplifies file storage management, improves productivity, and lowers costs with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Challenge: Qube Research & Technologies (QRT) was limited by on-premises NAS arrays in terms of performance and experienced high operational overhead.
Solution: The company processes financial trading and research data, taking advantage of Amazon FSx for Windows’ integration with AWS Direct Connect and EC2 to run highly available and durable Windows file systems.
"We can scale our Windows file systems, improve productivity, and lower costs by running FSx for Windows on AWS. We were able to provision a single file share and scale faster compared to our on-premises file system, which required more significantly more resources and slowed performance overall."
Jon Fautley, Systems & Cloud Engineer - Qube Research & Technologies
Matrix Pointe improves agility and reduces maintenance time by 15-20% with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
"Matrix Pointe improves efficiency for our customers in the justice community, accelerating the legal process. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server reduced maintenance time by as much as 20%, while increasing speed of recovery from a disaster by 10X, allowing us to focus on innovating for clients, not wasting our time reinventing the wheel for file services, backup and recovery."
Paul Davis, Manager, Technical Services - Matrix Pointe Software