THE REQUIREMENT

NP Aerospace had limited storage left on its eight servers, having inherited the infrastructure, and was looking for a solution that would not only update its equipment, but also improve its back-up facility and resilience between its two sites. Also, due to the nature of the organisation's core business, its data storage needed to be highly secure. 

THE SOLUTION

Equanet's proposed solution comprised of two storage arrays that were separate from the existing servers and replicated to give robust back-up. The solution was accepted by NP Aerospace, and two new servers were purchased from Equanet to run the virtual environment.

THE FEEDBACK

"If we had a real disaster on-site we could move our people over to the second site and still have access to all our business information. That is very valuable"

Amarjeet Tiwana, IT Manager, NP Aerospace

Case Study: Virtualisation and Business Continuity of two sites with highly secure data storage

ABOUT NP AEROSPACE

In operation since the 1920's, NP Aerospace is one of the largest thermosetting moulding companies in Europe manufacturing an extensive range of products in engineering thermoset and composite materials for a wide variety of customers in the aerospace, electrical, automotive, defence and textile industries. It has a diverse product range from military protection, such as body armour and helmets, to CAT scan platforms and armoured vehicles. The company operates at the high tech end of manufacturing and its employees are required to have a wide range of skills.

A LACK OF STORAGE

NP Aerospace is a 24:7 business, and like most organisations IT is fundamental to its activities. The company initially approached Equanet to discuss its space and storage issues. At that time the business only had 30-40 days of storage left on its eight servers, having inherited the infrastructure, and was looking for a solution that would not only update its equipment, but also improve its back-up facility and resilience between its two sites. Due to the nature of the organisation's core business, its data storage needed to be highly secure. In addition to this the MRP system was pivotal to the company, but it was coming to the end of its reliable lifespan and needed to be upgraded. Reliability and high systems availability were the key drivers for the IT team at NP Aerospace in deciding to explore virtualisation as a solution.

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT THAT SUPPORTS AND ADDS VALUE TO THE BUSINESS

As an existing supplier of hardware and software to NP Aerospace, Equanet was invited, alongside other resellers/service providers, to quote for the project. The IT team had been using Equanet since the 1990's and had always had very good service. Wayne Corbett, NP Aerospace's IT Technician, explains its importance:

"We're not fans of massive suppliers. Having a good point of contact with the right person is pivotal. Our account manager at Equanet takes on board our problems and makes a real difference. I can call up Andy, my Account Manager, and ask him to look into certain products and technologies, and he always gets back to me. Returning my calls is vital to me; so many suppliers don't, or they call me too much. Andy isn't like that. It's one of the main reasons we've kept the business with Equanet".

DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING THE RIGHT SOLUTION

Equanet started the process by undertaking a capacity planning exercise on-site to assess whether the existing equipment could be virtualised and how this could work alongside new equipment virtually. Equanet's proposed solution comprised of two storage arrays that were separate from the existing servers and replicated to give robust back-up. The solution was accepted by NP Aerospace, and two new servers were purchased from Equanet to run the virtual environment.

One server was re-utilised as an ex host at NP Aerospace's other site, and a further server was re-utilised as the backup. As Paul Szelesi, one of Equanet's Solutions Architects, explains: "

We gave the IT team at NP Aerospace the ability to improve their infrastructure design without the constraints of physical entities".

The IT team at NP Aerospace was very happy with the advice and support provided by Equanet's Solutions Architect. As Wayne Corbett explains:

"We are all reasonably technical but no experts in the virtual field. Paul is a mine of information and he explained the pros and cons of virtualisation which is exactly what we needed. He transferred key skills into our in-house team so that if something goes wrong in the future we have a basic understanding of how to put it right".

The Solutions Architect explained the benefits of various configurations and ways of storing data. He went over the detail inside the quotations and explained the benefits of each hardware component he was recommending. An added benefit was that the sum of all the hardware and software components cost less than Equanet's competitors' quotations.

The new infrastructure is faster and more efficient, and it is easier to expand as the business grows. Paul Szelesi explains the benefit:

"In a virtual environment you can have a new server in five minutes. It gives a business the ability to expand quickly at no extra cost". Wayne Corbett agrees: "Deployment now takes 2-3 minutes. Before that it was more time consuming taking a couple of days. The business is relying on IT systems more and more, and a one or even two day response time is simply not acceptable any more".

However, the most important benefits have been the ability to test and business continuity. Should the IT team want to power up a server and test some software, rather than running it on an actual physical server they are able to test it risk-free on a virtual server before deploying onto the live environment. And because there are replicate servers in NP Aerospace's second site two miles away supplying back-up in close to real-time it means there is little danger of losing data, and having to wait a week for back-up and recovery. This gives the team peace of mind.

"If we had a real disaster on-site we could move our people over to the second site and still have access to all our business information. That is very valuable" says Amarjeet Tiwana, NP Aerospace's IT Manager.

ONGOING SUPPORT

Following implementation Equanet has continued to support NP Aerospace's infrastructure remotely through its Managed Service. With this service Equanet supports NP Aerospace's IT systems during normal business working hours through its dedicated teams of network specialists. These specialists provide telephone support, greater network reliability and less downtime, allowing NP Aerospace's IT team to focus on the core business. This gives the team extra peace of mind that their IT systems are covered.