Simply Hosting make complex IT simple. With more than 540,000 customers and over 15 years of high-end hosting experience, Simply assist customers with complicated infrastructure requirements by providing reliable, dedicated cloud and virtual servers or building custom environments.

Superior Service

Simply differentiates itself by producing a high level of service whilst regularly examining metrics associated with both server performance and customer satisfaction.

As a result, they continually explore how technology innovations and infrastructure investment can improve the services they offer.

Aware of the benefits of adopting SSDs across their server estate, Simply set about exploring how this premium offering could enhance customer performance and experience further.

Not All SSDs Are Equal

Simply support over 11,000 servers with 7PB worth of data storage, this made finding the right SSD technology critical for them.

In most server platforms HDDs can be directly replaced by their SSD counterparts, providing they are identical in fit, form and function. There are plenty of options available, but it is a complex technology that is fast evolving, so selecting the right type for your workload and customer demands can be tricky.

It is well documented that SSDs offer significant performance benefits over HDDs so it’s common for technology adopters to fall into the trap of looking at the spec sheets and price to decide. Those adopters typically compare speeds, warranties and MTBF rates before selecting options that are more suited for the workplace, where the demands on the drive are much less.

The problem with this approach is down to the way NAND flash works, as it will degrade over time, using the wrong technology for your workload results in loss of data and complete device failure. When Simply experienced these issues first-hand during a testing phase, they knew exactly where to turn.

Trusted Partner of Choice

As a specialist distributor with access to the world’s leading memory and storage technologies, Simms was called upon for expertise in this field.

After advising on the technology limitations and trade-offs, Simms was quickly able to pinpoint NAND endurance as the most logical reason for failure. Given the severe consequences of potential data loss or drive failure in the infrastructure, no time was wasted in providing additional technical support in the form of direct access to the chosen manufacturer Kingston.

Collectively, the technical teams at Simms and Kingston analysed the workloads, performed a health check on the drive and diagnosed the fault before recommending the Kingston DC450R enterprise SSD as an appropriate solution.

Happy to proceed with our recommendations, samples for testing arrived next day and the ‘ask an expert’ team at Kingston guided Simply through optimum configuration, helping them evaluate and understand performance metrics in a real-world environment.

Delighted with the increased performance, reliability and support received, Simply approved the Kingston DC450R as the incumbent drive within their datacentre.

As a trusted partner, Simms continues to offer technical assistance and help Simply navigate the volatile pricing and supply nature of the SSD market, ensuring their services remain always-on.

The Results

Faster Site Speeds

Improved customer conversion rates, user experience and site ranking

Competitive Advantage

Enhance performance at a fraction of the cost of new platforms

Lower Power Usage

SSDs delivered at a 20% power reduction compared to HDD equivalents

Better Hosting

Request heavy site customers are able to execute web requests faster, reducing CUP reliance and freeing up server resources

Reliable Performance

Robust SSDs and no fragmentation delivers improved peace of mind to its customer base