ISAN Radiátory s.r.o. is the largest producer of towel rail radiators in the Czech Republic, exporting 90% of its production abroad, especially to other European Union countries.
I was pleasantly surprised at Infinity’s solution and their professional approach. The previous IT, as it was handed over to me, was in a state that was absolutely unsuitable for our company’s needs. It was necessary to quickly take steps to adapt our IT to the way we do business, taking into account the fact that we export our products all over the world. After several months of operation, we can conclude that with Infinity we achieved our goal, and we will further develop our IT so that we will have more useful tools to support our business.
Libor Piňos, IT manager ISAN Radiátory, s.r.o.
Task
To fully virtualize the data centre
For a long time, ISAN had been using servers of various ages from different producers, overloaded with dozens of applications, many of which were outdated. This situation became unsustainable as the IT management lost track of licences, the number of indispensable servers, and the knowledge of who and how to fix all the defects.
It was therefore necessary to consolidate the whole computing platform, simplifying the existing chaotic structure of the servers and the administration of the environment. Redefining the policy for the licences in use and establishing a clearly arranged network so that data could be backed up and recovered efficiently in case of loss also proved necessary.
Solutions
Our specialists proposed a virtualization solution based on the client’s requirements, using MS Hyper-V.
The HP ProLiant DL380 G7 server, fitted with two 6-core Intel processors and 96GB of RAM, was used as the base. The administration of the newly-created environment was secured by MS System Center VMM, a tool designed by Microsoft. The implementer used the tool to transfer all existing physical servers to the virtual environment.
The project also comprised the creation of a new domain, including the migration of all existing user accounts. One of the released physical servers was then used as a secondary domain controller as a precaution against primary domain outage. The whole process, including testing, had to be completed within 24 hours so that the company could continue its operations without any interruptions.
In the second phase, it was necessary to back up the whole solution in a fast and reliable manner. The Symantec Backup Exec SW, with all the necessary licences and a disc network storage where all backups were stored, was therefore deployed.
Finally, the existing 100MB switches were exchanged for new gigabyte elements of the HP ProCurve E 2510 series, each fitted with 48-port gigabit switches.
Achievements
The virtualization resulted in the anticipated simplification of the structure and administration of the whole environment, and it enabled the company to substantially decrease the total energy consumption.
Business Impacts
The new ICT solution completely adjusted to the client’s business style and its need to export products throughout the world. The client sees the main advantage in the location of its entire ICT solution at one site. The virtualization fully met the client’s requirements to simplify the structure and administration of the whole IT environment.