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Enhancing performance and resilience
New IT infrastructure for Penspen to help the oil and gas pipeline group enhance performance, improve access to information and establish higher levels of resilience and security...
A major project to implement a new IT infrastructure for the world-leading oil and gas pipeline engineering group Penspen has been completed by Fordway Solutions. Integral to this project was the installation of a Sun StorageTek storage array based on LSI Logic technology.
The overall objective was to replace an ageing infrastructure to enhance performance, improve and widen access to information, and establish higher levels of resilience and security.
“We’re a large organisation operating all over the world and we need good, reliable communications and access to information,” says Penspen ICT Manager Paul Trotman. “It had become clear for some time that our IT resources were not keeping pace with our growth and the growing complexity of our operations”.
“Much of the hardware needed replacing – a few of our servers were over 10 years old. But it wasn’t just a case of replacing equipment. We wanted to take a fresh look at what we actually needed. Really, it was a root and branch task”.
The project
The project was in three parts. The first was to renew infrastructure elements at the main sites of Richmond, Newcastle and Aberdeen and install a SAN in Richmond. The second was to put in place a thin client environment, and the third to provide ongoing managed maintenance of the whole infrastructure.
Penspen had a mix of NT and 2000 servers covering such areas as Exchange, SQL data and printing, for example, with different Exchange servers at the various sites. These were centralised and consolidated by Fordway at the central Richmond office, with assorted peripherals and backup. There was also an upgrade from NT to Windows 2003.
A storage solution from Sun StorageTek was adopted. Components supplied by Sun StorageTek included an FLX280 disk system enabled by technology from LSI Logic and the SANtricity software suite.
The second part was to implement a thin client environment. “We now use Microsoft terminal servers rather than Citrix,” says Trotman. “Everyone runs their Windows sessions on the server rather than their own full-blown PC. This reduces maintenance overheads and capital purchase costs. It also avoids the kind of typical problems you get when people put things on their PCs that they shouldn’t – and keeps them clear of viruses and malware.”
“The third part was for Fordway to take responsibility for managing the new infrastructure, including servers, backup, storage, comms equipment, communications between sites and a Virtual Private Network that runs across the Internet. The network was extended to include a node at Fordway’s own office, by which they essentially become our IT department”.
“The new infrastructure now serves 170 users altogether - at Richmond where there are 110, Aberdeen where there are 40, and Newcastle where there are 20. Support for everything is now provided 24x7 by Fordway.”
“Since the start of the contract we won a large engineering project worth $80M in Saudi Arabia with Khafji Joint Operations (KJO), a company formed by Aramco Gulf Operations and Kuwait Gulf Oil. The Khafji project management contract involved putting in a local network for between 70 and 120 users for ourselves, with around 70 users actually on site. Fordway provided a solution for this and adopted the same model they had built for us in the UK,” says Trotman.
“Implementation went smoothly and according to plan,” says Trotman. He continues: “Parallel running provided an early benefit; the CommVault Galaxy system was a big improvement and we were able to recover data much more quickly. Previously, we did a full backup of systems in Richmond over the weekend. We would usually start on Friday night and hopefully finish some time on Sunday. With CommVault and the new tape library – a 50 tape system – it takes just a couple of hours”.
“Formerly, disaster recovery was off-site. Currently, Fordway are running standby servers at their office and providing warm recovery within 24 hours. Shortly that will be down to just a couple of hours. Presently, we take a copy of data from remote sites to the Richmond SAN. If we lose one, that site can use the data at the Richmond office until their own site has been recovered”.
