Current client project work undertaken as follows.

Provide a complete virtual messaging and file solution to the public sector: -

The idea behind this project was to be able to provide a secure, reliable and cost effective messaging and storage solution, providing both staff and students with the ability to send and receive confidential e-mails, both on-site and remotely. They wanted to be able to bring the messaging solution in-house and away from their current external messaging provider.

The solution consisted of 2 x VMWare ESX 4 vSphere servers, hosting Exchange 2007, Sophos Anti-Virus, Windows server 2008 64-bit, Active Directory 2008 and ISA 2006. These virtual servers were attached to an HP EVA storage SAN via 2 x fibre channel brocade switches, providing resilience using ESX's in-built high availibility.

Once the infrastructure had been implemented, users were then migrated from the old Windows 2000 domain to the new Windows 2008 domain. For each user, an exchange mailbox was created and all their current file data migrated to the new platform.

In order to be able to ensure that users we able to access the new domain, the workstations had to be migrated from the old domain to the new domain, and Sophos had to be re-deployed to ensure that security updates could continue to be delivered from the new server.

The total number of users on the new platform consisted of 130 members of staff, and approx 2000 students.

Exchange, File server, SQL server and storage migration: -

Before this project could be initiated, several meetings with the client, to determine their requirements for e-mail, file serving and SQL servers and to discuss their current infrastructure were necessary.  Once this had been determined, high level designs were constructed and sent to the client for review. Once these had been reviewed and agreed, detailed designs were constructed.

Following on from the meetings, it transpired that their current domain wasn't viable to perform the migrations, as this had been configured incorrectly; there were several security concerns, mainly revolving around the configuration of administration accounts.

A design document was produced to provide details for a new Active Directory services architecture. After the detailed designs for Active Directory, Exchange and the SAN had been reviewed and agreed, the equipment was purchased and installed. This consisted of Exchange 2003, SQL 2005, Brocade Switches and a Net App FAS 3070c. Migration of the 6000+ users' exchange e-mail accounts then had to be performed. This was from Exchange 5.5 to 2007 and utilised Quest Exchange Migration Wizard.

The whole process took from the initial meeting a period of 3 months; this included the designs and implementation right to the successful migration of the 6000+ users.

Storage design for Blue-Chip client: -

This project involved several meetings with the client to determine their storage requirements. They needed to replace their 2 ageing SANs with a more up-to-date SAN, which needed to be capable of consolidating all their data, as well as being scalable for the next 5 years. The required solution needed to be able to provide the backbone storage for their Exchange, Oracle and File servers.

Following on from the meetings, high level designs were written for the SAN and sent to the customer for review. Once these documents had been reviewed, detailed designs were written and reviewed by the customer prior to them purchasing the Net App clustered solution, together with a single node to be based at another of their sites to provide their disaster recovery solution.

Provide a generic, virtualised hosting solution: -

This project consisted of designing and implementing a generic services option, to be made available to the client's customer base. Several meetings with senior staff were held to determine the possibilities, and to focus on the possible requirements of several of the client's customer base.

This project had to be able to provide a “Cookie Cutter” service, meaning that a customer with 100 or more employees could purchase a complete, generic infrastructure consisting of Exchange, File/Print and SharePoint services, to be hosted at the client’s data centre and configured on the equipment provided, consisting of a cluster of Dell blades attached to a single Dell EMC CX 3-80 SAN.

The project was to design, document and implement the entire service. High level and detailed design documentation had to be written for VMWare ESX 3.5, Active Directory, Exchange, Windows 2008 and SharePoint servers, together with designs for the SAN storage infrastructure.

Backup design documentation was also required. This provided the detailed design which, at the client's request, utilised the already existing Dell PowerVault robotic tape library, and used CommVault as the agent.

The whole project took a period of 6 months to design, document and implement.

Currently the client has 4 customers, consisting of a total of 15,000 users worldwide who are utilising this service based at their data centre.