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Company: Waterstons Limited
Project: Virtualisation & Offsite Replication at Visage Ltd

Dates: Sep 2007 to Feb 2008

How did the project start?

Durham-based business and IT consultants Waterstons were working with leading supplier to the retail and wholesale clothing market Visage to create and update business wide business continuity and disaster recovery plans. This work highlighted some key parts of Visage’s business that had raised their dependency on technology and needed a higher than expected level of resilience with quick recovery in the event of disaster. Visage asked Waterstons to consider what options might be available to them to meet these needs.

What options did you consider?

Waterstons are familiar with traditional routes for making IT systems resilient, including replicating key systems to an off-site backup. However most of these solutions are very expensive to implement, which makes them impractical for medium sized organisations even with sizable budgets. We needed to research lower cost routes, and our knowledge of some key emerging technologies led us to believe this might be possible.

The key emerging technology was ‘server virtualisation’. This technology allows multiple virtual servers to operate across a smaller number of traditional physical servers. It is only recently that this technology has started to gain acceptance to be trusted to run live IT systems.

One of the many benefits of virtualisation is the ability to run a virtual machine on different types of hardware. This opens up a range of cost saving benefits as the hardware requirements for the offsite location become more flexible and less demanding. Virtualisation also encapsulates a server into a file, which makes it much easier to copy and replicate a server to a second location. It was this area we researched next.

Because of the new nature of the technology, this area was poorly served with existing solutions. A safe option was to use SAN (Storage Area Networking) mirroring as supported by established hardware vendors. However very high hardware and software costs make this option impractical and it was quickly ruled out on cost grounds.

Instead we focused on emerging software tools which could replicate virtual machines from one data centre to another. A research exercise was undertaken to identify the best type of “virtual server replication” using software products. After trials and experimentation it became clear that the software products available (although developing at a very rapid rate) were somewhat immature, and a number of limitations were exposed. After consultations with vendors and several iterations of testing using subsequent versions, we selected a successful product – Vizioncore Inc vReplicator.

The final piece in the jigsaw to enable to solution was to come up with a way of moving the fairly high volumes of data required at low cost from Visage’s South Sheilds site across to their Washington warehouse. This posed a number of challenges as this exceeded the capacity of their current link, and upgrades were prohibitively expensive. Again through knowledge of emerging technologies we were aware of a new wireless network technology which could be used to inexpensively create a network over the distances and terrain involved. Furthermore this new technology offered significant cost savings over their current link, as well as improved performance. Viability was established by carrying out an on-site trial.

What help and expertise did you receive?

Owing to the newness of the solution, most of the expertise gained was gained through Waterstons own research activity. Several vendors were willing to loan us copies of their software so that we could test feasibility within our test environment. This help was invaluable. Most of the problems we encountered had to be overcome internally, as few people had tried to do this previously.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

The main challenges involved identifying the most suitable technologies which would fit within real-world cost constraints. As with any fast emerging technology, a rapid rate of development has meant that it can be difficult to keep on top of continuous changes. Waterstons overcame this challenge by investing time in significant research and development, and by engaging vendors in dialogue.

This work has already been of benefit to other customers who want to take advantage of a similar solution. Waterstons have been able to create a new product offering out of this research activity, which allows small and medium sized customers to achieve a level of resilience for their business systems that rivals levels achieved by much larger organisations but at an affordable cost.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

The end solution for Visage is an IT infrastructure that delivers critical business needs for high levels of availability and painless disaster recovery. The benefits of this when needed could be incalculable. Research suggests the majority of businesses never survive a major incident like a fire, but Visage are now in a strong position to counter this statistic. Following our project the expected server recovery time in the event of a site disaster can now be measured in minutes. Prior to implementing this project the equivalent recovery exercise would have taken several days, with significant costs to Visage in lost business.

Visage has also gained a new low cost/ high capacity communication link which over time will yield cost savings. The whole solution was implemented within the demanding budget constraints imposed.

As mentioned previously, the work done for Visage is of wider interest to the business community and our other customers. Waterstons have been able to create a new product offering out which allows small and medium sized customers to achieve a high level of resilience for their business systems at an affordable cost. Previously there simply were not practical ways of achieving this, so this is a significant development. Waterstons are already working with several customers on similar projects.

What are your plans for the future?

Business Continuity:
Now that the technical capabilities are in place, the next phase for Visage will be to consider the procedures required to streamline the disaster recovery process. This recovery exercise will also be rehearsed and tested on a regular basis.

Other Customers:
Other customers are interested in the Visage solution, and are implementing similar solutions with help from Waterstons.

Use of Wireless Technology:
The success of wireless technology in the project has highlighted the potential opportunity to capitalise on and use this technique elsewhere. We are currently exploring this with a Teesside based customer.

Continuing developments:
A criterion for selection of some of the software components was anticipated future developments and enhancements. This area continues to evolve rapidly, and the commercial deal Visage have allows them to benefit from these developments.