Akrinex – Use Case | Blog Article – 7-29-2024

Credits: Originally Written by Sunlight Marketing Staff

Updated on 7-29-2024

Executive Summary

For NETWINDY, providing high-profile clients with a secure, reliable, and boutique web hosting service is essential for them to stay in the public eye at all times – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, anywhere in the world. They can’t accept unscheduled downtime. Website 404 messages, for example, during the Super Bowl or Olympics, would be a complete disaster.

When a NETWINDY partner closed their Chicago data center with just two months’ notice, they were “put in a bind.” Thankfully, they had just recently migrated 12-14 customers to Akrinex (Formally Sunlight.io) for testing, and not only did it “just work,” but they were also experiencing great results – it was faster, better, and smoother than any solution they’d used before. So NETWINDY asked Akrinex to help do what they thought impossible – migrate all their clients into their Phoenix data center with their existing hardware. The NETWINDY and Akrinex teams set about making the impossible possible – Sunlight even wrote a dedicated driver to make it all work. And when it did, they knew they’d found a partner they could trust and rely on. Other providers would have forced them to invest in more hardware instead of using what they already had.

Performance at scale

When NETWINDY first tested the Akrinex technology, they wiped some VMware nodes and migrated them to Akrinex. To get an accurate A/B test, they used the same server hardware and migrated VMs (Virtual Machines) with the same amount of CPU – only changing the network cards. They then tested it by running their hosting applications, Apache, and other web applications. Not only did everything instantly seem “snappier,” but it was also incredibly easy to manage. With Akrinex, they could reduce their hardware requirements by 30% to get the same performance while saving management time.

Since migrating its Chicago data center to its Phoenix facility, which is now running exclusively on Akrinex, NETWINDY has been going from strength to strength. They are now looking to expand their operations across the United States by upgrading their Phoenix data center and opening others in Chicago and Atlanta. In the future, they plan to expand internationally into Europe. Sunlight makes it easy for them to scale and manage distributed infrastructure anywhere.

Sunlight infrastructure management is a game-changer

For NETWINDY, Akrinex’s ease of management is a “game changer.” Previously, they needed an army of engineers to run their service on VMware. With Akrinex, their entire infrastructure and application marketplace is now managed by a fully cloud-enabled, single pane of glass. They no longer have to spend time integrating and configuring different products. New server installs take 10 minutes, not days.

And it’s not just their infrastructure management that Akrinex is making easier. NETWINDY provides clients with unique environments (portals) from Akrinex’s Infrastructure Manager. The user interface (UI) is so easy to navigate that customers report a better experience. As more and more people work remotely, their teams and clients can easily connect to a console and manage 90% of their infrastructure remotely from anywhere.

Open and transparent customer service

When NETWINDY urgently needed to migrate their customer workloads, Akrinex rewrote a driver specifically for NETWINDY so they could reuse their existing hardware. But this was with some hiccups along the way. NETWINDY had expected this at the time and was impressed with the level of transparency and explanation provided by the Akrinex Customer Service team, working closely with them to resolve the issue as fast as possible.

This was the deciding factor for NETWINDY, which proved Akrinex was the right partner for them. We know that occasionally things break—especially when pushing boundaries—and having an open and transparent partner is crucial for a successful partnership. When we had issues with our previous supplier, we never received an explanation despite paying for an enterprise solution. With Akrinex, we have found a partner he can trust and rely on.

Partner Use Cases:

Use Case – US Restaurant Chain to Improve Service

Use Case – Transforming the Future of Enterprise Edge Computing

Note: Partner use cases are external links.

Return to Blog Articles