Figuring out how to reduce latency issues for a company with nearly 1,000 employees across nine offices in five countries is a challenge. Now, imagine doing it with just two IT staff. That’s what the new director of IT at an international retail company was tasked with.
“The IT director was hired to fix the latency issues the company was experiencing and was given just a couple of months to do it,” says MicroAge’s Adam Orlando. They were also focused on addressing their poor recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) and developing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy.
Fortunately, Adam was on hand to help — helping the client save his company a lot of money in the process.
Budget-friendly Upgrade Reduces Latency
To help address the client’s challenges, Adam suggested using Nutanix to manage and scale his IT infrastructure. Having previously used Nutanix, the IT director was already a fan. Next, by installing two Cisco Meraki switches with 40GbE backbone, they were able to reduce the latency issues the retailer was experiencing. Now they had a redundant connection in case one of the switches went down. And Meraki’s cloud features come in handy since the IT director lives 12 hours away from the company’s data center.
Adam also recommended consolidating their rack space at the data center, which reduced their monthly IT spend by nearly $2,000.
But that wasn’t the only time MicroAge saved the retailer money.
“After receiving all their hardware, they realized they didn’t have room in their distribution panel for a 220VAC breaker, and they would need an additional chassis from Nutanix, which would push the limits on their budget constraints,” Adam says. “By working closely with our local Nutanix rep and APC, we were able to stack additional discounts and apply them to a pair of APC Smart-UPS 3000s, which was right under their budget for this project.”
Addressing Disaster Recovery
While working with MicroAge to upgrade its network, the retail company discovered its current backup and recovery license renewals were overdue, which turned out to be good timing.
“Developing a good DR strategy became a top priority for the Florida-based retailer after Hurricane Irma rolled through in 2017, and they didn’t have a good RPO [recovery point objective] or RTO [recovery time objective],” Adam says.
Adam worked with the MicroAge solutions engineering team to find a robust solution that wouldn’t break the bank. On their recommendation, the retailer opted for a Synology Rackstation NAS appliance and HYCU, a purpose-built backup and recovery software solution for Nutanix.
The solution was exactly what the retailer needed.
“In the end, not only did we propose a backup solution utilizing the best NAS appliance and backup/recovery software,” Adam says, “but we came in under budget, which the client loved.”
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