The challenge
Our help was requested to investigate options for a planned and scheduled replacement of some of their aging hosting environment. The environment was compromised of multiple physical and virtual servers along with a Storage Area Network (SAN). The HRNZ IT team had in mind a specific scope of the project.
Our solution
After a thorough consultation and review of their requirements, we saw an opportunity to not only meet their immediate needs, but to simplify the environment, further enhance security, and reduce future infrastructure costs. We proposed a solution that included further consolidation and virtualisation of their physical server environment, along with SAN setup, network security enhancements, and a change in virtualisation platform.
Server Implementation:
- Planning and Installation: Two new servers and a SAN were deployed whilst also installing Windows Server 2022 and configuring a Hyper-V cluster.
- Security and Management: We deployed a robust managed services solution that includes server and backup management, monitoring, and reporting.
SAN Implementation:
- Setup and Configuration: We prepared and installed the SAN enclosure, controllers, and expansion units, ensuring all management ports were correctly configured. Host servers were attached, necessary software installed, and initial configurations performed.
- Security and Management: We deployed a robust managed SAN solution that includes SAN management, monitoring, and reporting.
Networking Infrastructure:
- Enhanced Security and Performance: We recommended and implemented network segmentation to further improve security. We setup their UPS systems and management software to further improve reliability.
Server Migration:
- Seamless Transition: We deployed a clustered Microsoft Hyper-V environment running in parallel with the existing VMware environment, allowing HRNZ the time to gradually migrate their applications from older virtual servers to new virtual servers. We migrated the core network services including Active Directory, DNS and DHCP services. We also deployed a new SMTP server and SSL certificate server to address specific needs. Comprehensive documentation was delivered, ensuring that all stakeholders had a thorough understanding of the new setup.
HRNZ now benefits from a future proofed, consolidated IT infrastructure, that is more secure. With our Managed Services their IT team can focus more on managing the software services that directly facilitate harness racing events across New Zealand.
"The iTops staff did a great job with the planning and implementation of this project in conjunction with our IT staff. There was a bit of caution on our part initially, but the staff at iTops assuaged any concerns we had as the project progressed. They were very knowledgeable, accessible, and worked well with our in-house team. Issues were methodically solved as they arose, and if the iTops staff did not have an immediate solution they always persevered until they had a resolution. We were particularly pleased that the down time of our core systems as we changed over to the new environment was very limited. For HRNZ this has been a successful and straight forward project due to the input from iTops"
John Toohey
IT Manager at HRNZ
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