SIAC Construction

In 2008, SIAC chose Novosco to design, implement and support its new virtualised and mission-critical IT infrastructure.  The virtualisation project using VMware technology, provided SIAC with a flexible and resilient backed infrastructure and allowed SIAC to enjoy the benefits of a virtualised IT environment; including ease of management, increased server utilisation, increased availability and recoverability, as well as simple and effective disaster recovery.

SIAC Construction Reception

Founded in 1913, SIAC is a large multi-disciplined construction group with significant operations across Ireland and the United Kingdom.  “From the outside, the construction industry looks very traditional, however it is in fact large scale engineering at its most agile,” says Eamonn Buckley, Group IS & T Manager for SIAC Construction Ltd.  “Construction sites are in effect once-off factories with port-a-cabins, sometimes housing up to 50 staff with desktops. SIAC, one of Ireland’s largest construction companies, has over 500 IT users at locations ranging from a site office in Inishmean to a steel plant in Brighton.”

Server Virtualisation & EMC Storage

VMware was the chosen technology for server virtualisation. This enhances resilience and availability at SIAC’s primary site in Dublin by utilising an ESX HA and DRS cluster which is back ended with a fibre attached EMC storage array.

 The entire swap out of SIAC’s enterprise Windows servers was achieved within six months, including Exchange and Active Directory upgrades, with a business impact of less than two hours. In addition, by using live migration technology, production servers never need to go offline, so routine maintenance can be carried out during normal working hours. This was a strategic project, meaning that the majority of SIAC’s server infrastructure now runs on VMware, including mission critical systems such as ERP ‘Enterprise Resource Planning’ and email messaging system.

Disaster Recovery

All servers are now resilient using VMware’s high availability features.  Using VizionCore technology, SIAC also has a backup solution and a two hourly replication solution to the Disaster Recovery site. Disaster Recovery (DR) testing of key functionality such as Exchange is easily achieved by bringing up the replicated Exchange server on the DR site within a non-live virtual switch. VMware VirtualCenter also delivered the added benefit of an excellent remote management tool for SIAC servers.  This platform protects against single component failure and server failure and in addition provides for the most optimal use of server resources at the primary site.

At the DR site, where the emphasis is on recovery in the event of a disaster, a single ESX host with another EMC CX SAN is implemented. This DR implementation was designed to provide enough storage to house Virtual machine images and allow SIAC to take advantage of replication facilities while also providing SIAC with an environment that can be used to test and develop for future services. As virtual machines were encapsulated into a small number of files, backup and recovery was simplified.

For the purposes of Disaster Recovery, copies of the virtual machine files are required at an offsite location. esxReplicator allows the replication of live virtual machines from one ESX Host to another without the need to maintain a live virtual machine on the destination saving on licensing costs and providing a simple, effective and controllable DR model.