Goodstart Early Learning

Goodstart was created by a partnership of four of Australia’s leading charities who saw the potential of early learning to transform Australia. Their mission is to provide high-quality, accessible, affordable, community-connected early learning in all of their centers, as well as partner and openly collaborate with the sector to drive change for the benefit of all children.

When the organization upgraded its SAP environment for business analytics to facilitate regulatory reporting, the directive from the CIO was clear: keep focused on using technology to improve child care and learning, not troubleshooting applications. At the time, however, certain reports were beginning to impact the performance of other applications. Goodstart began looking for a flash-based storage solution for Microsoft SQL Server, the data source for SAP and QikKids, which is a childcare management software platform at the core of Goodstart operations.

An existing NetApp customer, Goodstart decided to store the databases on NetApp All Flash FAS AFF8020 systems. It deployed one two-node cluster for production and another for disaster recovery and test and development. Data is protected using the same SnapMirror replication software as Goodstart’s other NetApp systems. The All Flash FAS controllers run the clustered Data ONTAP operating system, simplifying day-to-day activities for IT staff by providing a unified data management platform and eliminating planned downtime.

Today, the organization is sustaining sub-millisecond latency for its SQL database on All Flash FAS. As a result, QikKids and other critical applications can run smoothly and I/O-intensive SAP reports complete faster, without affecting the performance of other workloads. In addition, since contract database administrators (DBAs) no longer need to be actively involved in managing performance on a day-to-day basis, their time can be more strategically utilized. After seeing the increased performance in its production systems, Goodstart moved its entire testing and development environment for QikKids to NetApp All Flash FAS. Developers can now bring new application features into production faster, helping the staff to offer individualized services to families engaged in their services.

With NetApp All Flash FAS, Goodstart is continuing its focus on quality outcomes. Any workload that requires higher performance can simply be moved to flash storage. And if Goodstart wants to expand to the cloud in the future, NetApp’s vision for a Data Fabric will deliver the right level of application performance and data management wherever it’s needed most.