Coastline Housing Association
- Solution: Server Virtualisation Project
- Sector: Public Sector
- Year: 2009
- Contact: Paul Hodgson
- Job title: IT Manager
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Overview
Nexus was approached by Coastline Housing Association to provide a solution that would reduce the number of servers that the organisation needed to manage its business systems.
Solution
Solution Description:
Coastline Housing Association (CHA), based in Camborne, is an independent, charitable housing association that employs over 170 computer users.
Nexus was approached by CHA to provide a solution that would reduce the number of servers that the organisation needed to manage its business systems and simplify the management overhead. Nexus recommended a 45 day capacity planning exercise, which demonstrated that by using VMware vSphere virtualisation technology, the organisation could reduce its physical server count from 15 to 2.
The project has made significant cost savings in both hardware reduction and lower energy consumption. CHA now utilise 13 virtual servers and a Dell EqualLogic PowerEdge 4000 series SAN to support their 170 user base. Highlights of the server virtualisation project include:
- Supplied and configured Nortel 5500 switch stack
- Supplied and installed a Dell EqualLogic PS4000 series SAN
- Created vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus cluster on existing HP DL380 G5 servers
- Implemented virtual machine templates for Windows Server 2003-2008 R2 32/64-bit
- Upgraded the domain with Windows 2008 R2 domain controllers
- Upgraded and migrated to Exchange 2007
- Performed P2V migrations of some legacy physical servers to the new virtual infrastructure
- Virtualised the DMZ infrastructure
- Ongoing support services through Nexus Telephone Helpdesk and Retained Technical Services (RTS)