INDUSTRY
Financial Services
BENEFITS
- Shaved off more than 2mins from digital service response time
- Achieved 100% availability today as compared to previous experience
- Seamless movement of running VMs thanks to the cluster storage feature.
- Easy system maintainability resulting in less pressure on small IT department
SOLUTION
- Nutanix Cloud built on AOS
- Nutanix AHV hypervisor
- Nutanix Prism management software
- More than 60 VM
APPLICATIONS
- Email server
- Money changer application
- Currency wholesale application
- Production systems
- Test and development applications
BUSINESS BENEFIT
MaxMoney is the first local Malaysian company to be awarded a full-fledged MSB (money services business) licence by the Central Bank of Malaysia, Bank Negara. Apart from currency exchange, the company is in the business of remittances which is a vital service for Malaysia’s many guest workers. Many of the company’s 20-odd branches are situated in locations with poor internet connectivity, ranging from one or two megabits (MB) per second. Despite the challenging environment, the company’s objective is to efficiently serve its customers through its web-based applications. For that, MaxMoney needs its back-end system to be always up running with quick response times.
After the migration to the Nutanix platform, MaxMoney enjoys 100% system availability and response time for digital services at their branches have improved dramatically thus improving customer service. The company now has the flexibility to seamlessly move data from one server to another, thus ensuring redundancy, load balancing and security of its data.
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We were looking for a system with hyper-converged infrastructure and the capability to run VMs. At the same time, cost was a major consideration for us. Also, Nutanix’s infrastructure is perfect in terms of features as well.
Mohd Izzairi Yamin, MaxMoney CTO
With the new system, the IT department can now afford to relax. Previously even on vacations we used to be on our laptops troubleshooting problems affecting mission critical operations which run 24/7. Nowadays, we hardly have to touch our laptops during holidays as the system is very stable
- Mohd Firdaus , MaxMoney I/O Engineer
Challenges
Slow server response times of legacy system were major hurdles in the company’s ambitious plan to expand its network as well as range of products.
Data privacy
Due to the nature of its business, MaxMoney stored encrypted sensitive data in secure servers within the country as per Bank Negara rules. With regulatory compliance being a major factor, the company needed a back-end system that allowed seamless and secure access and storage of data with disaster recovery capabilities.
Cost factor
When looking for a new system, cost was a major factor for the company. It checked with hybrid cloud service providers such as Amazon and Alibaba for a system upgrade. According to the IT manager, “we found that if we subscribed to their services, the monthly charges would be very expensive compared to the hardware that we would require to run our system.”
Solution
After an internal discussion, MaxMoney decided that it needed an upgraded system that came with a hypervisor, virtual machines (VMs) and storage. Firdaus and his team migrated to the Nutanix platform in 2018 and have been impressed by the improved performance, resource efficiency and ease of use. “The migration was a very straightforward process and within a week we were able to handle all the features by ourselves,” added the IT manager.
The MaxMoney team chose Nutanix’s private cloud infrastructure comprising one cluster and three nodes and running Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure with Acropolis AOS operating system and including AHV and Prism management software. The system is used by MaxMoney to run more than 60 VMs, production systems, mission critical database and test and development operations.
Customer Outcome
Shaved off more than 2mins from digital service response time
With Nutanix system in place, there has been 100% availability and the response time to database queries from the branches has gone down to a few seconds from around 180 seconds, thus eliminating the chance of a server timeout. This has been a boon for service agents in MaxMoney’s branches as they can now serve more customers per day.
Compliant with data privacy and security regulations as well as higher uptime
With Nutanix providing the flexibility to seamlessly move data from one server to another and ensure load redundancy and load balancing, MaxMoney is in a better position to store and protect customer data.
AHV hypervisor has all features bundled in, no worry about upgrading license package
MaxMoney IT team appreciated the network clustering ability Nutanix has allow seamless migration of running VMs from one server to another as and when required. “Many of the features are built-in to the Nutanix system but competing solutions only offer them in separate licence packages,” noted the IT manager.
He added that Nutanix’s starter version had all the functionality required by MaxMoney. It has been a major upgrade for MaxMoney which previously used bare metal servers and installed a single application in each server. It did not have any VMs and so were unable to do data migration from one server to another.
Prism – a daily essential control dashboard
Despite having no prior knowledge about how Nutanix products work, MaxMoney IT team found that systems like the AHV hypervisor, DR (disaster recovery), migration and the clustering of storage were very straightforward and easy to use. The Prism management software has also impressed the team.
“I like the main home screen since all the information that I require, like for example, what’s the percentage of processor usage, memory usage and other key data are available on a single pane of glass. Added to this is the excellent notification system and all I need to do now is monitor the home screen to make sure there are no warning notifications flashing – when everything is green I can relax knowing that the entire system is working smoothly,” Firdaus said.
The Nutanix system has helped the IT department easily meet its KPI (key performance indicator) of zero downtime and “we can now afford to relax”, said Firdaus.
Next Steps
According to MaxMoney, the company would probably look to either expand their server cluster or DR systems. They are also looking at new capabilities like Nutanix Xi Frame and Prism Pro.
“If and when our top management decides to upgrade our system, we will certainly look to Nutanix again,” Firdaus added.