Dominican Republic’s leading energy distributor expands technological capabilities with Nutanix's hyperconverged infrastructure
EDEESTE emerges as a paradigm of innovation and operational excellence in the demanding energy distribution sector. Positioned at the forefront of powering the eastern region of the Dominican Republic, EDEESTE makes every effort to maintain effective processes and utilize the best technology to be at the forefront, providing quality electrical energy to customers in an efficient, constant, and sustainable manner.
Aristidy Santana, the Infrastructure Manager at EDEESTE, oversees the data center operations, which are the company's service delivery lifeline. "We cover the entire eastern part of the country to provide energy distribution to our customers," Santana elaborates, highlighting the company's pivotal role in the national energy infrastructure. EDEESTE ensures round-the-clock availability of its applications and services, catering to internal and external stakeholders.
With over 2,000 employees, EDEESTE's IT department comprises 60 dedicated professionals segmented across various specialized divisions, each playing a critical role in ensuring the seamless operation and strategic development of EDEESTE's technological framework. The organization's journey to technological innovation and transformation fueled its alliance with Nutanix.
Simplified scalability
The hyperconverged infrastructure solution facilitated unprecedented ease of scalability, enabling the company to meet the dynamic demands of the energy distribution sector efficiently.
Streamlined IT management
Significant reduction in administrative overhead and simplifying operational capabilities.
Cost savings
Substantial cost savings through optimizing resource utilization and reducing the need for physical infrastructure.
Infrastructure expansion
Hyperconverged technology-enhanced system capabilities, seamless scaling, and improved service support for customer experience without overhauling existing setups.
We don't see Nutanix as just a solution. We don't see it as a technology vendor, but we see Nutanix as a family. The best thing it has is a support team you can count on, no matter the time, weather, or situation. I can tell you that I have worked hand in hand with the Nutanix sales team, especially with my brother Jonathan Pache (Account Manager) and my brother Gustavo Sosa (Advisory Systems Engineer); they are family to me. They are not simply sellers of a brand; they're not people who sell you a technology solution and leave you with it. They will sell your solution and accompany you from day zero until you are with them. That is undoubtedly the most valuable thing the brand can have, apart from all the magic it does.
EDEESTE faced obstacles in achieving operational efficiency, which led to a fundamental change in its IT infrastructure approach. Aristidy Santana, EDEESTE's Infrastructure Manager, explained the various challenges that the company encountered, emphasizing the need for a solution that could bring scalability and efficiency, which were urgently required to overcome these multifaceted problems.
"We were practically at the limit of what our infrastructure allowed us to. We could only grow a little further," Santana noted, emphasizing the critical bottleneck this posed. The aged infrastructure threatened service continuity and constrained the company's strategic initiatives, necessitating a transformative solution that could usher in a new era of growth and efficiency.
“We needed a platform that would allow us to grow vertically quickly because we have an infrastructure of what we call classic: switches or servers, disk boxes, and the different arrays. We didn’t have a way to grow from one moment to the next, to create a different cluster, or to buy another storage box to replace the one we already had because it didn't allow us to grow vertically.”
These challenges added to the operational inefficiencies and elevated costs associated with maintaining and expanding the outdated infrastructure. "Every attempt to scale was a complex, time-consuming, and costly affair, with diminishing returns on our investments," Santana added, underlining the unsustainable nature of their previous setup.
EDEESTE's journey to overcome these constraints was epitomized in their search for hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, which they finally found in Nutanix's innovative offerings. Santana's experience with these difficulties set the stage for Nutanix's transformation of the organization.
EDEESTE and Nutanix’s partnership began in 2018. Nutanix's hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution, encompassing AOS, Files, and Objects, presented a compelling value proposition promising to address the company’s challenges head-on. "We did several evaluations and saw in Nutanix how easy it was for us to avoid being tied to a single hardware vendor," Santana recalls, highlighting the factors in choosing Nutanix.
The implementation of Nutanix solutions at EDEESTE revolutionized its infrastructure and extended significant benefits to its sister companies, Edenorte and Edesur. Edenorte, servicing the northern part of the Dominican Republic, and Edesur, catering to the southern regions, experienced enhanced operational efficiency and management simplicity by adopting Nutanix's technology.
One of the standout advantages was managing diverse Nutanix clusters across these companies from a single console. This unified management allowed for streamlined operations, significantly reducing the complexity and overhead of administering multiple systems. "You have a Nutanix cluster running with another hypervisor and another Nutanix cluster running with AHV. However, all clusters can be managed from a single console," was noted during discussions on the infrastructure improvements. This capability simplifies IT management and enhances agility in responding to operational demands across different geographic locations.
The robust scalability and reliability of Nutanix have been pivotal in optimizing EDEESTE's telemetry services, ensuring precise real-time monitoring and management of energy consumption, which is crucial in modern energy distribution. “We originally had the issue of maintaining and optimizing the Telemetry services. We had to have it practically divided because we did not have it under the virtualization scheme, and the platform we had at that time did not allow us to make that mash. However, after acquiring the Nutanix solution, we could make those changes and mount them directly on these servers, and the result was undoubtedly fantastic. In other words, it was more than we expected,” Santana noted.
The Nutanix solution enhanced EDEESTE’s security and disaster recovery capabilities, providing a robust framework for protecting critical data and ensuring operational continuity. Nutanix brings the protection of virtual machines locally so that you can protect your virtual IT environment with snapshot programmed for the subject, so that at any time, any failure you have with any computer, you can recover quickly and with all your information,” Santana continues, “You can recover 100% of the platform, so it is practically a backup for any eventuality. You can use it for any disaster recovery environment,” concluded Santana.
Increased response time
Nutanix helped EDEESTE's IT team streamline operations and enhance service delivery. "When we acquired Nutanix, we took advantage and implemented remote virtual desktops within the platform, which we did separately because it was difficult to maintain our load of productive servers running alongside a desktop virtualization environment on the same platform. We implemented VDI for call center staff. It was a solution that has been the best for them because they can now sit at any terminal, and automatically, their virtual desktop running on Nutanix will follow them wherever they are. This provided them with agility, mobility, and a unique response time for external customers," explained Santana.
User-friendly administrative capabilities
“When platform changes are made, sometimes, depending on the complexity of the platform's administration console, the users, who are the ones who must be aware of it, usually have a long learning curve. However, with the Nutanix platform, the learning curve is practically zero because it is a very user-friendly platform. Everything is well laid out for administration and almost one click away,” added Santana.
Reduced operational costs
EDEESTE has drastically reduced the expenses associated with physical servers, including energy consumption, space, and cooling costs. The client highlights the magnitude of these savings, stating, “In terms of savings and costs, we are saving a lot because I can tell you that in this platform, we currently have 222 virtual servers. If you calculate 222 servers in a data center, calculating the energy, space, and cooling consumption, we are talking about costs that will be high per year. For example, to invest in the purchase of this equipment, I can tell you that a server of the simplest can cost you in Dominican pesos, something between $700,000 and 800,000 pesos, which comes to be some $15,000 or 20,000 dollars more or less. Calculating that and multiplying it for the 222 servers will give you a high number. If you compare it to the virtual servers on this platform, we have servers with 128 gigabytes of RAM and five terabytes of disk, and those servers' physical cost becomes much higher. The level of savings, both investment and consumption, is quite broad. What we've had is big.”
Infrastructural growth
“After the implementation, we saw that the solution was more than we expected. I can tell you that our vision changed 100%. We decided that our data centers' growth would be with Nutanix,” Santana states.
With the successful integration of Nutanix’s solutions, EDEESTE is ready for further technological advancements. “We have a project to separate the clusters and place the hardware nodes from the same vendor to make two separate clusters, separated and even in different locations. We also plan to replicate to other Nutanix nodes, either in one of our sister companies or in a Cloud platform that runs on top of Nutanix so as not to have any change in the configuration, but something simple that any switchover I can change and have my other Nutanix platform in the cloud and it will be the same as what I have here right now,” Santana shares.
This Nutanix partnership has propelled EDEESTE into a future where technological advancement and operational efficiency converge, profoundly impacting EDEESTE's mission to deliver reliable energy services and ensuring the company remains at the forefront of the energy sector's evolution.