Architectural Firm 2

A large downtown Architectural firm had some serious IT Infrastructure problems. A server cluster that had been installed to deliver high availability was delivering the opposite. Although it was less than two years old, the Storage Area Network was within 5% of capacity and could not be upgraded. File service over the network was frustratingly slow, earning complaints primarily from AutoCAD and Revit users who had resorted to the use of local NAS hard drives.

The previous IT/CAD Consultant had configured the cluster and SAN in ways that can only be described as "not recommended". The server cluster was set up with every available function and service consolidated on it while the SAN was configured at its maximum capacity with RAID 6 which is overly complex and delivers the worst possible performance, especially with more than 10 physical drives.

Downtime is always inconvenient and expensive; in this case it was valued at between $10K and $20K/hour and it happened nearly every day taking out mail and file services in the process. Management and staff alike were frustrated and had lost confidence in IT to support the business.

Trump was engaged to perform an IT Audit and Diagnostic and then, based on that effort, to implement many of the recommendations outlined in the Strategic Plan for IT. Senior Trump consultants met with the principals responsible for IT and then interviewed management and staff. Coincident with this effort, Trump technical staff performed a detailed analysis of the existing IT Infrastructure.

A report of Observations and Recommendations was prepared and presented to the principals summarizing their objectives, the interviews with management and staff and details of the existing IT Infrastructure. A prioritized list of action items was presented along with Rough Order of Magnitude costing for budget purposes.

It was time for some drastic action in the form of a technology refresh while preserving the existing investment in IT hardware and software. Fortunately, the Microsoft Licenses had been purchased with Software Assurance, allowing for an upgrade to the current versions at no additional cost. The existing cluster and SAN were reconfigured and repurposed.

The existing cluster was upgraded to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition and Exchange Server 2007 EE. The SAN was reformatted and reconfigured for RAID 10 to improve performance. This cluster was configured to be an Exchange server and conflicting services such as DC, were placed on another server.

An additional, new server cluster running Windows Server 2008 EE and a new SAN were installed for file services, this time taking into account the projected rate of data growth and the ability to configure additional enclosures into the SAN when required. Existing, non-email data was migrated from the old SAN to the new one.

All of the work was carried out between Christmas and New Years in order to minimize the impact on user productivity. The result of this technology refresh is that unscheduled downtime has been eliminated; network performance is fast and completely satisfactory from the AutoCAD and Revit user perspective. The IT Infrastructure has been designed to be resilient, delivering high availability, reliability with complete scalability to facilitate future upgrades.