Case Studies

Location: Huddersfield
Client: Trojan Plastics Ltd
Website: www.trojan-plastics.co.uk

The challenge:
Trojan Plastics Ltd is one of the leading bath manufacturers in in Europe. As they have grown, the high availability of their IT systems has become paramount, with requirements for 24/7 operation.

In addition due to compliance & contractual obligations: no system downtime became the goal, whilst providing a high-value solution which would address the traditional requirement of numerous physical servers.

The solution:
A solution was built using HP ProLiant Server technologies, incorporating Virtualisation and Clustering with Microsoft Hyper-V server technologies. In practical terms, this meant that 5 server installations were installed on a single physical server with full 'Live migration' facilities. Also, a high availability disaster recovery solution was implented.

The result:
The new high availability solution based on Windows Server 2008 and Hyper V helps Trojan Plastics to minimize/avoid downtime if a server fails. The live migration facilities allow Trojan Plastics to dynamically move virtual machines from one physical machine to a second with no downtime for future planned system maintenance, software updates etc. A reduction in energy usage and carbon footprint was made possible as fewer physical servers were required.

As a result, e-mail–based orders are less likely to be delayed, which reduces costly penalties for being late. Automation is expected to continue to improve staff productivity. And with the new solution in place, Trojan is ready to build on Windows Server 2008 with additional software that will further improve its IT environment.