SA Wine Industry Information & Systems (SAWIS) is implementing new IT infrastructure, including virtualised HP servers running Vmware VirtualCenter software, to optimise IT utilisation and drive down costs. The project is being rolled out by IT infrastructure, solutions and services provider, Datacentrix.
Part of SAWIS`s technology refresh project with RentWorks, the project will enable the company to maintain the benefits previously experienced around its IT environment, using less hardware. According to Yvette van der Merwe, SAWIS Executive Manager, management of the system is set to improve dramatically, while administration, maintenance and hardware costs will be reduced.
"SAWIS employs one IT technician, so the move from eight to two virtualised servers will allow for easier, more time-effective system management. The new environment will also optimise SAWIS`s redundancy."
"Historically SAWIS`s average processor utilisation per server has proven to be fairly low, lending itself ideally to the virtualisation concept," says Michael Horn, enterprise business unit manager at Datacentrix. "Server virtualisation is designed to leverage maximum performance from the minimum amount of hardware. By applying this methodology, cost as well as hardware management overheads are driven downwards.
"From SAWIS`s perspective, this means that the amount of servers operated will remain the same, but on less hardware, avoiding the common issue of `wasted` processor and memory resources often experienced by businesses," he adds.
SAWIS has also opted to continue its use of HP MSA1000 SAN technology, increasing disk capacity from 36GB drives to 72GB, doubling useable storage and providing for ample growth over the next three years.
Says Van der Merwe: "SAWIS has partnered with Datacentrix for a number of years and chose to partner with the company again to maintain continuity, while taking costs into consideration.
"Datacentrix`s proven track record, expertise and high level of service have all played key roles in SAWIS`s selection of a technology partner. Not only does the company have several experts in defined fields, which ensures that there is always a person available to assist us, but we have always experienced a fast response rate."
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