Member Article

RFMD covered in the event of a disaster

North East-based RF Micro Devices (RFMD (UK) Ltd) has recently awarded a contract, in the region of £70K to Washington-based IT solutions and Datacentre providers Knowledge I.T to implement a disaster recovery infrastructure for their Newton Aycliffe site.

As ICT systems become increasingly business-critical, it is essential to have a suitable Disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plan in place. Previously, RFMD were using a mobile ‘server on a truck’ service, which worked well but required system downtime in the event of a disaster to set up the mobile servers to RFMD’s bespoke requirements. This was a concern for the manufacturer as they are dependent upon Microsoft SQL to ensure ongoing manufacturing operations. Therefore one of the key project objectives was the reduction of any downtime in the event of a disaster to ensure production continued 24x7and that no time was lost due to loss of service.

Working closely with RMFD, Knowledge I.T devised a way to use an external building located on the main site as the base for their backup suite. Knowledge I.T also saw an opportunity to reuse some existing hardware and virtualise the server estate. A VMware capacity planning exercise was run to establish performance and resource requirements resulting in a solution which saw a reduction in the server requirement from 30 to 6.

A full replication service was set up between the main server room and the new DR suite, and all data is now replicated in real time. This ensures that in the event of any problem with the main network, there is a backup system in place and ready to go automatically.

Account manager Darren Clark explains: “The aim of the project was to create an affordable DR solution based on RFMD’s own unique needs. However, by Virtualising everything, the time needed to manage the overall network is vastly reduced so they now benefit from a system that is streamlined, more reliable and performs better.”

Gary Crane from RFMD concludes: “We are absolutely delighted with the solution. There is always a concern when updating infrastructure that some little thing or other will have been missed. However to ensure seamless changeover, Knowledge created a test-lab to iron out any issues and, as a result, the changeover could not have gone smoother.

“Also, by decreasing the number of physical servers using Virtualisation technology, less power is required which reduced our energy costs by over 30%”

Knowledge I.T is a Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity expert based in the UK with locations in the North East and North Yorkshire. Call today on 0191 4170099 or visit the website at: http://www.knowledgeit.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Knowledge I.T .