Mainstay were looking to expand their services with EBC Group, requiring a complete overhaul of their IT infrastructure that would deliver a reliable and scalable on-site solution, in addition to a true disaster recovery and backup plan.
Having previously implemented a fleet of multifunctional print devices and print support, Mainstay once again approached EBC Group with a view to updating their IT infrastructure
Having previously implemented a fleet of multifunctional print devices and print support, Mainstay once again approached EBC Group with a view to updating their IT infrastructure. What EBC Group found was an infrastructure that had become tiresome, and struggled to keep up with the demands required of it. Performance was becoming increasingly degraded, virtual machine outages were becoming more frequent and fears regarding an imminent hardware failure were beginning to surface.
Mainstay’s requirements were to deliver a robust, scalable, on premise solution that the internal IT team could manage on a day to day basis. Not only was the core infrastructure a key focus, but there was also a requirement to improve the backup mechanisms utilised to deploy a true disaster recovery solution.
During the scoping and project planning, Mainstay’s internal IT team were heavily involved to understand where EBC Group’s responsibilities and their own would be required to successfully complete the project.
After consulting with Mainstay’s internal team, EBC Group went about an in-depth analysis of their core infrastructure. This established where their current bottlenecks were, what areas needed scaling and what future growth plans the business had.
During the scoping and project planning, Mainstay’s internal IT team were heavily involved to understand where EBC Group’s responsibilities and their own would be required to successfully complete the project.
EBC Group provided Mainstay with a brand new clustered VMware environment, utilising the latest in Dell hardware. The solution focused on improving the IO, with a tiered storage solution put in place that would accommodate impending growth.
With the infrastructure upgraded, a Veeam Backup & replication solution was put in place to attend the backup and DR requirements. EBC Group deployed old host servers into our datacentre, and the onsite infrastructure was replicated to the datacentre where it could be brought online in the event of a disaster.
The deployment was completed with a side by side approach with migrations out of hours if required. A managed infrastructure agreement enables EBC Group to assist the onsite team when required.
A full Disaster Recovery solution ensures that services can be up and running in under 4 hours whilst everything is actively monitored by EBC Group.
An enterprise class solution using the latest Dell hardware provides state-of-the-art performance and future proofs the IT environment.
A multi-tiered storage solution was implemented with SSD’s as the tier one layer which vastly improved the IOPS performance, and combined with dual sixteen core processors and five-hundred and twelve gigabytes of RAM per host enabled future growth.
Advance backup software and storage has increased Mainstay’s RPO’s (Recovery Point Objectives). The onsite infrastructure is fully replicated to the datacentre to allow a true DR solution with quick RTO’s (Recovery Time Objectives).
The deployment was completed with a side by side approach with migrations out of hours if required. A managed infrastructure agreement enables EBC Group to assist the onsite team when required.
''I have been very happy with the way EBC Group have performed over the duration of this project, their engineers are very knowledgeable and happy to help out where they are needed. It’s been really beneficial to have them come in and include my team with the project to impart their knowledge.
The project has been a huge success. The speed has increased dramatically, the backups are no longer on tapes, we have a full DR plan which can be up and running in under 4 hours should anything major happen and everything is actively monitored by EBC Group to ensure the business is constantly available.
I can’t recommend EBC Group enough and when I compare them to who we used previously…I’m annoyed we didn’t find them sooner.”
Graham Godber, Customer Service & IT Manager Mainstay Group Ltd
