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The Background
Founded in 1948, the National Glass Association is the largest and most influential trade association serving the architectural glass, automotive glass, and window and door industries. The NGA represents nearly 2,200 member companies and produces the industry's leading events and publications.
The NGA provides cutting-edge education and training programs that upgrade technical skills, improve management practices, and enhance quality workmanship. From state-of-the-art online training offered through MyGlassClass.com to professional development programs like the Glass Management Institute, the NGA is the industry’s preferred training resource.
The Challenge
With several of NGA’s aging servers reaching end-of-warranty and a file server that was running out of disk space, Marc Doggett, NGA’s Director of Information Technology, concluded that it was finally time for the organization to virtualize the network environment by implementing Hyper-V with clustered Windows 2008 R2 Servers accessing a Dell EqualLogic SAN providing the staff of 25 high-availability and failover capabilities for its mission critical business requirements.
In this new virtualized environment, Doggett would be able to start up additional VMs to replace remaining servers whose warranty was reaching end of useful life status, all without having to purchase additional server hardware. By reducing the number of physical servers, power requirements and hardware maintenance costs were significantly reduced.
Virtualization was truly the best solution for the NGA but they needed knowledgeable assistance in implementing these important upgrades.
The Solution
Marc Doggett knew Nortec from many years ago and realized how well established and respected they were in the industry. Nortec was also one of the few companies that would do the work Marc needed without any long-term contracts. Several other companies required full contracts on all the PCs and then demand contracts for all additional work.
Marc Doggett ordered all the necessary equipment and Nortec quickly came in to install the hardware and configure the clustered Windows 2008 Hosts and Virtual Machines. Nortec also created VLANs through the switches to the EqualLogic SAN. In the process, Nortec migrated the NGA from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.
Nortec is always sensitive to its clients need to stay operational during a major transition. Nortec worked hard to minimize downtime, which was only 15 hours during the Exchange migration. This happened during the afterhours and during the weekend so it did not affect any of the NGA staff. The NGA was able to keep their same internal IP addresses, server names and shares so when employees came to work the following Monday, everything was the same.
Benefits
Virtualization has already provided the NGA with several benefits. It has helped reduce new capital expenses and minimized electrical requirements through server consolidation. It has also improved operating expenses through automation, while reducing both planned and unplanned downtime. The NGA will be able to continue providing its cutting-edge education and training programs without many technical glitches. |
