“Our new 8202-E4C with SSDs is so fast we were able to minimize our night shift support because we could complete all of our processing and printing in ½ the time.”
Background
Carnegie Agency, Inc. is a Southern California-based managing general insurance agency. Besides California, Carnegie is licensed to operate in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Washington.
Carnegie had supported 100 users on a 9406-520 with 1.6 TB, running customized insurance software, Quadrant Fast Fax, and IBM Content Manager for iSeries. Their programmer staff of 6 had also developed custom software with ASNA and stored procedures with .net applications on the system.
Business Increase Calls For Upgrade
In August 2012, Carnegie’s CIO Bob Negrey determined that to be prepared for an increase in business, it was time to upgrade to IBM’s POWER7 i.
“We had originally thought we needed to consider an 8202-E4C Enterprise configuration with an expansion chassis to accommodate up to 20 disk units for performance as well as capacity”, explains Bob.
Source Data Suggests Less Expensive 8202-E4C With SSDs
Bob goes on, “Source Data suggested we also consider an entry 8202-E4C with Solid State Drives (SSD’s).”
Source Data Clarifies SSDs Capacity And Superior Performance
“Initially we had some reservation about SSDs. We knew they were fast. But each SSD was really expensive – about $6000 per SSD compared to about $494 per hard drive (HD)”, Bob continues. “Then Source Data explained that we could have the storage capacity we need and superior performance with fewer SSDs than HDs.”
8202 P05 Equals $12,500 Savings With More Than Enough Room To Grow
“Source Data also pointed out that we saved about $12,500 going with an 8202 P05 instead of an 8202 P10. While the 8202 P05 was limited to 8 disk bays, we only needed 5 SSDs – so we had more than enough room to grow.”
We Saved $54,681 With Our Entry 8202-E4C With 5 SSDs
“When we compared the final price of the 8202 P10 to the 8202 P05 with SSDs, we saved $54,681. Even though we originally thought the SSDs were real expensive, big picture the entry 8202 with SSDs was way less expensive”, Bob concludes.
Blown Away By Performance Improvements
Bob continues, “We were still uncertain what we were getting with this new server. We had expected to see performance improvements; however we were blown away with what we really got.
“For example, a night job that used to take 5-6 hours completed in 2 hours. I was kind of expecting to see an improvement down to about 3-4 hours – not 2 hours!”
Full Backup Used To Take 12 Hours – Now Complete in 2 Hours!
“We have a backup job that includes all of our images in the IFS that we saved to a Cybernetics Virtual Tape Library (VTL). A full backup could take up to 12 hours. With our new 8202-E4D and SSDs that job completed in 2 hours!
“Our new 8202-E4C is so fast with SSDs that we were able to minimize our night shift support because we could complete all of our processing and printing in ½ the time”, Bob continues.
Our Business Increased By 2750% – And Our POWER7 i Keeps Pace
“In hindsight, we are really fortunate we went with the POWER7 i with SSDs. We made several changes to our business. A year ago we were writing about 8 policies per day. After tweaking our pricing, we now do about 220 policies a day – an increase of 2750%. Where we used to get about 60 payments per day with one of our payment processes, now we get 300 payments per day. Even with this dramatic increase in business, the nightly job that completed in 2 hours after we switched to the POWER7 completes in 2 hours and 20 minutes. That’s fast.”
New POWER7 Really Helped With Huge Growth In Business
“We are really glad we got our POWER7 when we did. We had a sense that business would pick up. We had no idea just how much business would take off. Our new POWER7 has really helped us deal with the big increase we are experiencing.”
Solid Technical Expertise From Source Data
“And when we needed technical help, they responded quickly with solid expertise.”
Carnegie Recommends Source Data Products
“I would highly recommend Source Data Products. They took the time to help us get the right POWER7 i with great performance without getting loaded up with extra, unnecessary stuff.
“They helped us navigate the ‘ins and outs’ with IBM, which can sometimes be a little challenging. They sure steered us in the right direction with the entry 8202 POWER7 i and SSDs. That easily saved us over $54,000.”