Majenta Group
Majenta Solutions Ltd., one of Europe’s leading providers of product development, manufacturing, product lifecycle information management software and IT infrastructure solutions, has just helped to virtualise the IT needs of a leading manufacturer of Power & Control electronics for the Aerospace & Defence Industries.
Ferranti Technologies Ltd. has gained an enviable reputation as a supplier of high quality Power & Control electronic products and more recently, leading edge Avionics & Mission Systems for Air, Land & Marine forces. Ferranti products range from Helmet Mounted Systems, Avionics, Guided Weapon Systems and Training and Simulation, to Land Systems such as Force Protection Systems & Mission Management Systems.
Ferranti were reaching the point where legacy equipment needed to be replaced with an enhanced, more modern IT infrastructure, so as to provide disaster recovery and enhanced primary site resilience. At the same time, the mandate was to reduce the actual on-site physical server population, thus reducing maintenance and associated running costs whilst enhancing green credentials.
Ferranti had a number of complex applications that were interlinked and difficult to restore which needed to be moved from their existing hardware platforms to simplify the provisioning of resources. The project needed to be completed in a minimum time-frame, with little downtime against a set project budget.
Ferranti called-in Majenta’s experienced consultants to assess the site and listened to the dilemmas being faced. After careful consideration to ensure optimum performance and maximum system integration, the recommendation was to virtualise the server estate with VMware, utilising three new HP Proliant DL380 servers, which deliver a heritage of engineering excellence with increased flexibility and performance, enterprise-class up-time and HP Insight Control manageability.
A Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN Array was also deployed to centralise the production data, combining a high level of fault tolerance to provide simplified administration, rapid deployment, enterprise performance and reliability, and seamless scalability; a good balance between performance and capacity. Majenta also recommended a second Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN Array to act as a replication target for the company’s production data, to provide disaster recovery and minimise data loss in the event of machine failure in the data critical production area.
Virtualisation dramatically reduced the number of physical servers being used, reducing the associated maintenance and running costs whilst enhancing green credentials as required (less onsite energy being used, less heat production). The new system provided consistent hourly data recovery points, and N+1 server resilience, whilst allowing Ferranti enough head room for the provision of future services, without the need for additional hardware outlay.
Ferranti Technologies now have a fully resilient IT infrastructure using the latest technology. This solution is highly efficient, simple to manage, and easy to scale.
“We at Ferranti Technologies would like to compliment the Majenta team for a virtualisation project completed to the highest standards. At every stage of our business together, Majenta have shown professionalism and dedication to their services and solutions. The process was a complete success with minimal downtime and our IT team and users are extremely pleased with what has been achieved” commented Ian Gowen, IT Manager, Ferranti Technologies Ltd.
Mark Channen, Marketing Manager at Majenta Solutions commented: “We were delighted to help Ferranti in the implementation of a resilient and reliable solution, thus securing Ferranti’s future operational IT requirements. We strive to ensure that each and every one of our customers receives a truly dedicated service from Majenta, no matter how small, large or diverse their business operation might be”.
About Ferranti Technologies
Ferranti Technologies has gained an enviable reputation as a supplier of high quality Power & Control electronic products and more recently, leading edge Avionics & Mission Systems for Air, Land & Marine forces. Ferranti products range from Helmet Mounted Systems, Avionics, Guided Weapon Systems and Training and Simulation, to Land Systems such as Force Protection Systems & Mission Management Systems.
About Majenta
With multiple UK office locations, Majenta Solutions provide enterprise storage and virtualisation solutions to a diverse customer base, spanning many industry sectors. Our aim is to deliver unmatched simplicity to the complex world of server and data management. We do this with data-centre proven solutions for virtualising, storing, managing, protecting, and retaining corporate data which is all delivered by our exceptional and fully trained professional sales and services team. Majenta Solutions is NetApp Platinum Partner Professional Services Certified.