Apr 2021
Building a resilient platform for growth
Enva is a leading provider of recycling and resource recovery solutions. Their growth has been fuelled by acquisitions across the UK and Ireland, but with each new purchase the complexity and scale of their IT infrastructure has grown. How can an organisation support, back-up and manage several different infrastructures at multiple locations, at the same time? We worked with Enva to deploy a hyperconverged Nutanix solution which delivers reduced complexity, lower support costs and risk, improved resilience, and the ability to integrate further infrastructure platforms when the need arises.
Results at a glance:
- Consolidated disaster recovery in a single backup solution
- Simplified, stable and scaleable platform ready for future growth
- Full data and systems recovery within 24 hours
- Air-gapped backups for recoverability and security
Following the completion of a number of acquisitions a project to reduce risk and consolidate cost was needed, so Enva turned to us, a long-term technology partner with in-depth knowledge of their business and its infrastructure, to help.
We engaged with Enva’s IT team, and a multitude of different suppliers to create in partnership with them a wide-ranging plan for delivery of the project. We proposed a new Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure, which would allow the myriad of virtual servers in use to be migrated to a single platform; but with over 100 virtual machines (VMs) in use across Ireland, England and Scotland, this was going to be no small task.
We managed this complex project in partnership with Enva, ensuring progress stayed on track, and to quickly identify and mitigate risks and issues as they arose; all the while co-ordinating the activities of different suppliers to ensure a smooth transition to the new architecture.
“Working in partnership with Waterstons, the Nutanix solution implemented gives Enva the benefit of greatly reduced risk, better recoverability, and greater scalability and flexibility as we continue to grow.”
Dan Bloor
Head of IT Service Delivery
During the migration we took a fresh look at the server estate. A roughly 30% reduction in the number of servers and the removal of end-of-life server operating systems was achieved, not to mention reducing environmental impact and running costs via a significant reduction in power usage from >12kW to under 3kW. The migrations and testing were undertaken without incident, bringing all the servers onto a single Nutanix cluster for the entire organisation. In addition, a reduction in infrastructure complexity will lead to reduced support cost going forward. With room to grow in the future, Nutanix provides a stable platform for the business now and going forward, and will greatly simplify the integration of further infrastructure for organic growth, or should any more acquisitions take place. With so many systems to migrate, it’s no surprise that previously there had been a wide variety of backup solutions in place. This project offered the opportunity to consolidate all the disaster recovery capability in a single backup solution with globally defined recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPO/RTO).
The new resilience and backup solution uses Veeam Backup and Replication to bring all the backups together in a single unified strategy, with ‘air-gapped’ backups used to ensure recoverability and security for the business’s critical data and services.
Covering on-premises and Azure cloud-based systems, the backup solution also employs Veeam for Office 365 to ensure even data in Microsoft’s public cloud infrastructure is securely backed up and recoverable.
With hyperconverged infrastructure, supported directly by Nutanix, and the new backup solution deployed, tested, and successfully made live, Enva are in a strong position to benefit from a single RPO/RTO which ensures they are able to bring critical systems and data back online well within 24 hours from a failure point. With Enva’s growth continuing, the stable, scalable platform will ensure their business is able to thrive well into the future and beyond.
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