Mount Arlington, NJ — July 24, 2009 — When Exigent Technologies proposed that a local law firm replace and upgrade most of its aging servers, the benefits of reduced infrastructure, energy and cooling costs through virtualization made the verdict easy.
Making the Case
Exigent Technologies is a VMware Professional partner that serves Robertson, Freilich, Bruno & Cohen (RFBC), a litigation boutique with a nationwide practice operating out of Newark, New Jersey. While the law firm prides itself on being technologically advanced, it doesn’t have a dedicated IT department. Instead, it relies on Exigent Technologies’ recommendations, its virtual IT department for 10 years.
“Exigent has done a great a job supporting us,” says Owen McKeon, member of RFBC. “In our case, Exigent led the horse to water. We wanted to get more speed and continuity. By demonstrating that our hardware was coming to end of life, it drove the immediacy of the project. And virtualization is an efficient use of our resources.”
About Virtualization
Virtualization allows users to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine. By sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments, different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer.
Planning and Implementation
“The success of the project is due to the extra hours our team spent planning the implementation,” says Dexter Lopina, Exigent engineer. “We spent time with the project team looking at how each server affects each client workstation. We also got software vendors involved early and throughout the process. During the implementation, the client saw very little downtime. In fact, most people didn’t even notice.”
The Solution
By virtualizing six servers on one VMware host server, there’s less hardware to maintain. “We took away 10 power supplies and now have one server with a single RAID array,” says Richard Eodice, Exigent project engineer. “Where the client once had two NICs per server, they now have one NIC per server. And they went from 4Us of server space to 2Us with more capacity.”
Some of the hardware and software behind RFBC’s virtualization solution includes Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, VMware ESXi 4.0 and an HP ProLiant DL380.
In addition to less hardware, the client saves money on resources while maintaining peace of mind. “A reliable system means that we don’t need to hire a full-time IT staff,” says Owen. “And we have redundancy. In the legal services business, clients expect their attorneys to be ready and waiting to meet their needs immediately, so avoiding system downtime is critical. We can’t wait until disaster strikes.”
Power Savings
And virtualization helps the environment. According to the VMware Green Calculator, virtualizing six servers down to one can help the client recognize a savings of $4,370 in annual utility costs. That’s the equivalent of planting 120 trees, or taking nine cars off of the highway.
“As an IT solutions provider, it’s very rewarding to see technology solve real business problems and provide a measurable return on investment for your customers,” says Dan Haurey, president and CEO of Exigent Technologies. “The fact that this particular solution produces a positive effect for the environment is really the icing on the cake.”
“Exigent did a phenomenal job,” says Owen. “It was beyond what I expected and in line with the unreasonable expectations of those who didn’t understand what was going on.”