Driving a Formula One vehicle entails quick decision making on the track, and the same can be said for the team working behind the scenes.
For the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, migrating their data onto Pure Storage’s FlashArray and FlashBlade helped them to gain better application performance to enhance data protection capabilities and benefit from a competitive advantage both on and off the tack.
Need for data capabilities to keep up
As the team introduced new services such as simulators online, there was an exponential growth in data volumes that took up a significant operational overhead in the organisation’s existing data centre.
It was also costly and complex for the team to manage infrastructure from multiple vendors. Furthermore, with the applications residing in different systems, there was inconsistent performance levels across the business.
“We knew we needed to provide data services to the organization at a cost point that is effective, but we also needed basic controls to secure the data and provide a certain level of performance,” said Michael Taylor, IT Director at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One.
Improving query times
By standardising their data on FlashArray and FlashBlade, the organisation experienced a 90% improvement in query times for database applications and 66% faster access to track-side files.
In addition, even with the increased volume of data, only one storage administrator was needed to manage the 3PB of data. Using ActiveCluster to safeguard the organisation’s data has also helped ensure quick uninterrupted insights both on and off the track for the team.
“We want to be knowledge-driven, so we must reduce operational friction and seamlessly use data as an enabler to make effective decisions,” said Taylor.
“Pure’s architecture makes it very easy to provision storage and provide storage-based services in the data centre with the least amount of input but the most amount of control.”
