Case Study

NiceHash mines DoiT Flexsave for maximum compute savings and flexibility

Client

NiceHash

Industries

Technologies

Features

Flexsave

Region

EMEA, North EMEA

Country

Slovenia, British Virgin Islands

Meet NiceHash

Global hash power marketplace NiceHash can switch VMs whenever it needs – and still save with Google Committed Use Discounts (CUDs)

In the world of cryptocurrency mining, nothing stands still for long. And for companies like NiceHash, this can make life complicated. A global hash power marketplace where buyers and sellers of computing power traders connect to mine cryptocurrencies, NiceHash deals with highly volatile levels of demand. To make things even more interesting, cryptocurrency mining needs cutting-edge hardware to process, so the number of virtual machines required is constantly changing, and frequent hardware upgrades are a fact of life. All of this had made it impossible for NiceHash to leverage Google Cloud Platform Committed Use Discounts (CUDs), which require customers to commit to a specific machine type.

The challenge

The crypto industry is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, and it’s constantly changing. Demand fluctuation is frequent and rapid, prompting situations where NiceHash would double VM capacity every two months for a year — only to drop back to a minimum configuration without warning.

To handle these demand swings, NiceHash chose Google Compute Engine, which allowed them to quickly scale up or down based on changes in demand.

And to better control compute engine costs, NiceHash wanted to purchase Committed Use Discounts (CUDs), which provide significant discounts on compute engine resources in exchange for a commitment to use a minimum level of VMs for one or three years.

However, the fact that processing cryptocurrency requires state-of-the-art hardware meant that NiceHash was not only constantly changing the number of VMs in response to demand changes, but also upgrading to the latest cutting-edge machines as they were released. As a result, NiceHash was precluded from leveraging CUDs because customers must commit to a specific machine type to avail of them.

This prompted the company to seek a solution that would give them the freedom to scale as they needed while ensuring they would pay the best possible prices for compute engine resources.

The solution

That’s when NiceHash turned to DoiT Flexsave , which automatically applies 1-year discount rates to optimally cover customer workloads. Getting started was simple: The click of a button was all it took.

Since it switched on Flexsave, NiceHash has been enjoying the best of both worlds: the savings benefits of CUDs alongside the flexibility to switch and upgrade machines as business needs dictate. Flexsave automates the management of these CUDs, so NiceHash is free to scale up or down in response to industry demand, knowing their compute unit costs will always be optimized for rate.

As NiceHash turns on or shuts down machines, Flexsave automatically adjusts to the new workload demand to maintain high coverage. Even better, workloads covered by Flexsave are risk-free, so NiceHash doesn’t need to worry about the potential costs of overprovisioning.

The result

Increased CUD coverage from 0% to over 80%
Realizes discounts offered by CUDs while having the flexibility to upgrade machines
Continuously getting the best rate for Compute Engine, no matter the scaling scenario

Denis Tomasevic, Head of Infrastructure & Security, NiceHash

“With Flexsave by DoiT, we maximize our performance by having the flexibility to switch machines whenever we need, while realizing CUD discounts on those machines at the same time!”