Bernicia Group has completed an overhaul of its IT infrastructure, adopting a virtualised environment and reducing its disaster recovery (DR) period from days to less than 30 minutes. Work conducted by virtualisation specialist SITS Group has enabled the housing provider to cut costs, speed up its processes and bolster security.
The firm worked with SITS to virtualise over 80 physical servers and switch from Microsoft Hyper-V to VMware software. Bernicia’s storage architecture has now been reduced from 18 rack units to just three and, with a second virtual infrastructure deployed securely off-site, the firm’s total complete systems recovery time is now an average of just 28 minutes.
Where previously Bernicia’s DR processes would have taken days to complete, they can now be activated, and continually tested and monitored, at the push of a button using VMware’s Site Recovery Manager.
SITS has also implemented a resilient virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) using VMWare Horizon View, providing a faster and universal experience for remote and in-office staff.
All 300+ users can now access software via virtual PCs running centrally on Bernicia’s servers. Existing PCs are being converted into thin clients and are now centrally managed by Igel’s device management platform. The Horizon View software has also been installed on laptops, tablets and off-site PCs, all of which are being increasingly used by Bernicia staff as the organisation expands and remote working rises.
Gary Hind, head of ICT, Bernicia Group, said, “Management of our desktop estate has become much easier as upgrades, patches and application rollouts only need to be performed centrally and we have much better control of our software licensing.
“Overall, our new technology infrastructure has allowed us to make major savings in several areas, including in licensing, power consumption and DR contracts, as well as significantly improving our productivity.”
