NIFTY Corporation

A Critical Challenge

In June 2016, NIFTY Corporation launched NIFTY Cloud Desktop (Dedicated), a cloud-based virtual desktop service, as a new service offering of NIFTY Cloud.  The service uses VMware Horizon DaaS as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) software which is offered in the dedicated environments on NIFTY Cloud. Before this product was launched, NIFTY had to overcome a number of performance challenges when it implemented its own internal VDI for employees in 2011.  Running VDI on the company’s legacy spinning disk storage system created significant latency issues that produced negative user experiences among its workforce due to unacceptably slow response times.  "What's important for VDI in terms of user experience, is to make the user feel like they’re using a local PC with the performance they are accustomed to,” said Kei Hamanaka, Manager of the Cloud Infrastructure at NIFTY Corporation’s Cloud Business Division.

Enter Pure Storage

In order to increase customer demand for a cloud-based virtual desktop service, NIFTY evaluated a new storage infrastructure for NIFTY Cloud.  Pure Storage participated in a proof-of-concept test, initially to address the latency issues associated with VDI. “We validated that we could provide the quality that meets customer expectations and began production deployment with confidence,” said Hamanaka.

After the evaluation, NIFTY implemented a Pure Storage FlashArray//m20 as a strategic part of its infrastructure to ensure highly stable virtual desktop services. Using all-flash storage has dramatically reduced latency, a common challenge posed by virtual desktop environments, which provides a user experience equal to that of locally-attached PCs.  “By switching to all-flash storage, we were able to gain enough performance to offset the latency over the network,” said Hamanaka.

VDI performance gains were only one advantage provided by Pure.  As a cloud service provider, NIFTY Corporation recognized the need for its new storage infrastructure to deliver new levels of scalable capacity, reduced CAPEX and OPEX overhead, high reliability and streamlined management.  

"The design of a cloud service platform that can minimize cost factors – especially when it comes to the underlying storage infrastructure – is critical because it directly influences the pricing and margins of cloud service offerings,” said Kohei Sakai, Infrastructure Engineer with NIFTY’s Cloud Infrastructure Department.

 “In the evaluation process of flash storage platforms, we prioritized data deduplication as a means of reducing data center rack space and power consumption. The deduplication capabilities provided by Pure has consistently and significantly freed up usable storage capacity that enables us to support more customers with less cost. Since the launch of our DaaS service, we are seeing 8:1 data reduction levels."