Case study: Server upgrade

IT Champion have had the pleasure of supporting the IT systems at Meritex for over 4 years through a managed IT services contract and helped them update their server operating system.

Recently the company wanted to update their Sage Accounts software but found that their server operating system would not support the upgrade, so they contacted IT Champion to discuss the best course of action.

A senior systems engineer from IT Champion discussed all the options available to the business. Due to the age of the server hardware, configuration and broadband line speed, a number of different solutions were assessed.

The costs and benefits of the solutions were discussed, and the following project was planned to minimise any disruption to the business and provide them with the most appropriate server platform for the future.

Meritex was formed in 1998 and they specialise in event shipping and logistics.

The company has rapidly established their reputation for covering the more challenging areas of the globe, specialising in Russia and CIS, the Middle East and emerging African countries. They work in a variety of industries and their involvement in the oil and gas industry is reflected in the repeated appointments for the most prestigious oil and gas events worldwide. These include WPC, EAGE, IPTC and many others.

Since conception, their range of services has expanded to include art shipping, live event shipping and sporting event shipping. Many of the shipments they handle are high value, fragile and time-sensitive so they understand the importance of consignments being handled correctly and reaching their destination promptly.

To allow Meritex to upgrade their Sage Accounts software and provide a stable and resilient IT infrastructure, it was agreed that IT Champion would supply and install a new HP ML350 server to replace their ageing server.

The server was configured as one host, but with two virtual machines (VMs) for resilience. The VMs were set up as a domain controller and a file and print server. The previous server did not host any VMs and this new configuration would improve the disaster recovery and business continuity processes for the business.

A new backup solution has been deployed that backs up the VMs in their entirety, as well as provide file-level restore capabilities.

Once the new HP server was deployed, Sage Accounts software was upgraded as part of the project. An IT Champion systems engineer worked through the evening to move the PCs onto the new domain and arrived first thing the next morning to deal with any issues. The whole project was approved, ordered and installed within 1 week of the initial enquiry from Meritex.