With unbelievably large amounts of data to manage and secure, legacy blade servers just weren’t cutting it for a large online marketplace. The system administrator needed to act quickly to prevent potential downtime—a disaster for any online organization. By turning to MicroAge’s Tracy Modersohn, they achieved a future proof infrastructure.
Tracy has provided the organization with rack servers and other custom data center technology for years, but the company procured their blade servers elsewhere. When the system admin began to doubt the durability of his current blade servers, he called on Tracy to find a reliable solution.
Tracy visited the client to assess their blade server environment onsite and understand their needs.
“Security is their main concern,” says Tracy. “They have opted to stay out of the cloud and instead employ a co-location mirroring their data center. With that in mind, I researched current blade server technology and came up with two options for them.”
In addition to a traditional blade server, Tracy sent the client a trial HPE Synergy 480 blade server.
“HPE Synergy is the direction all blades are going in the future,” says Tracy. “They provide a faster, more flexible composable infrastructure, encompassing compute, storage and networking with smart software and a unified API. This comprehensive approach means that resources can be automatically configured and delivered as quickly as needed, and then repurposed with changing needs. Traditional blades require more manual attention.”
In addition to the agility the Synergy blades offer, Tracy highlights the larger platform for a more future proof infrastructure.
“I advised my client that even though the Synergy blades may be more than they need today, they give them room to grow,” says Tracy. “I didn’t want them to have buyer’s remorse in a couple of years if they went with the traditional blades and found that they couldn’t accommodate the new chips that are expected in the coming months, or extra fans if they wanted to add them down the road.”
After testing the two options, the client agreed with Tracy that the HPE Synergy 480 blades and Synergy 12000 frames made sense for their operations and placed the order for a rip and replace of all their blade servers.
Tracy worked with HPE Compute Specialist Kody Duff on the large project, creating a plan for a three-phase rollout for the two data centers.
“HPE is a partner-first organization,” says Kody. “And Tracy is the kind of account executive we love to work with—her awareness of the HPE product line made my job so much easier. She is an advocate for her client, and they trust her recommendations. It’s hard to find a partner who is as engaged with an account as Tracy is with this one.”
“Space is usually an issue for this kind of project,” says Tracy. “Kody was instrumental in managing the orders, deliveries and engineers as we had planned with the client, so they were not overcome with more product than they had room for while they removed the existing blades. It’s really like a puzzle—receiving new product in and stacking it; taking old product out and stacking and removing it while installing the new. There’s really an art to it.”
The rip and replace was deployed without a hitch and on schedule. This client can rest easy knowing they are secure and well-equipped now and in the future.
Ready to make your next move?
Let’s talk
MicroAge can help you future proof your organization while you scale. Speak with an expert today, call us at 800-544-8877.
