In order to support its business, Exeter Friendly Society runs many different server based applications. Nexus has provided ICT services to the company for several years including consultative advice on the design of infrastructure, provision of server hardware and ongoing technical support.

When Exeter Friendly Society decided to implement a virtual infrastructure, using VMware software, they selected Nexus to assist with the project, as both a known supplier and also as a VMware accredited Enterprise Partner.

Several key problems were solved and many benefits gained through the virtualisation project.

Firstly, the company data centres were centralised in the Exeter head office, freeing up valuable real-estate. This transition was eased by setting up temporary virtual infrastructures before moving the virtual and physical machines to head office.

A reduction in the number of physical machines can have far-reaching cost efficiencies The server farm comprising approximately sixty physical servers was reduced to a similar number of virtual servers on five physical machines, plus three storage area networks.

Exeter Friendly Society can also react quickly to the introduction of new business applications and to the demands of operational changes. The virtual infrastructure provides an ideal test environment for this purpose.

Mark Moreland, Operations Director at Exeter Friendly Society comments, "Our decision to implement virtualisation has been an overriding success. In terms of cost reductions we have seen savings in terms of space, server build costs, licensing and support. Resilience is another key issue."

The main components of the infrastructure included:

• Deployment & configuration of 3x HP DL380 G5 servers for virtualisation with ESX Enterprise server
• Deployment & configuration of 1x HP DL380 G5 server for vCenter management of the ESX infrastructure & centralised backup using HP Ultrium technology.
• Deployment & configuration of 3 x Dell EqualLogic PS series SANs
• Deployment & configuration of 6 x Nortel managed switches in a stack configuration at the network core
• Deployment & configuration of 5x Nortel switches at the network edges with trunked connectivity to the network core
• Setup, configuration and training of the VMware infrastructure.
• Consultation on physical to virtual machine migration