Server Consolidation
and Virtualisation
Gondola group
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Background
Gondola Groups IT Infrastructure consisted of two server rooms. Pizza Express, based in Uxbridge, is the main hub of the Gondola Group network and housed 40 servers.
A second site, ASK is located in St. Albans housed 8 servers and further communications equipment. Gondola Group needed these to be consolidated and physically located in a single server room. Gondola Group requested proposals from three organisations. Fairland proposed to utilise virtualisation technology in order to consolidate application servers and other subsystems to a smaller number of platforms. This reduced the physical demands on the server room, such as power and cooling, and enabled Gondola Group to more efficiently utilise capacity on existing server hardware. Furthermore, and as a by-product of virtualisation, Gondola Group also benefited from increased availability and recoverability.
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Objectives:
Gondola Group had a number of key objectives to achieve, including: –
- Reduce Legacy server and storage hardware / maintenance costs
- Increase availability of key production systems
- Swift restoration of key production systems using snap shot technology
- Provide rapid deployment of server(s) into production or development labs
- Ability to move systems between hardware platforms due to scheduled maintenance
- Minimise disruption to the production environment
- Implement a Disaster Recovery Solution
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Project value:
In excess of £250,000
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Comments:
“Fairland worked closely with our internal team, transferring skills throughout the project ensuring that we could support the new environment going forward.
The consultants were always available and willing to help promptly even for issues that were slightly outside of the project scope. We would happily recommend Fairland for similar projects with other clients.” Infrastructure Manager.
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About us:
Fairland is a specialist IT services provider, focussing on Microsoft, Citrix and VMWare projects but delivering further value from our vast experience of IT infrastructure projects.
Our committed consultants all have excellent knowledge and interpersonal skills to do as much or as little as clients require – be it full project delivery or hand holding your internal staff as and when needed.