EGIS Praha, spol. s r.o.: Virtualization Has Met Expectations

A subsidiary of Egis Pharmaceuticals, a generic manufacturer based in Hungary. Activities in more than 15 countries.

We were looking for a supplier that would guide us safely into a virtualized environment and teach us how to use it for a reasonable price. Infinity’s proven experience with similar large-scale projects also played a significant role. We have been cooperating with Infinity for many years and so they are familiar with our IT facilities and were able to fully meet all of our requirements. Petr Czak, IT Manager, Egis Praha

Task

The company expected virtualization deployment to lead to a radical reduction in the number of hardware servers and subsequently to the simplification of their operation and an increased availability of services during their maintenance. The number of hardware servers exceeded the acceptable limit and their operation was no longer cost-efficient. Virtualization was the only possible outcome, taking into account growing demands for flexibility, management, and availability.

Solutions

Virtualization was implemented with VMware tools that were chosen due to their broad software support of Microsoft operating systems as well as various Linux distributions. Another, and not insignificant, reason was continuity with the manufacturer’s desktop platform (VMware Workstation) that had already been used in the company.

The implementation process also included the deployment of the new HP Data Protector backup system which, in cooperation with the new virtualization environment and a deduplication unit, significantly reduces the time required for data and complete services recovery.

Egis plans to choose a higher variant of virtualization than the current standard, specifically the enterprise version, especially because it is easier and more comfortable to migrate virtualized servers between hosts. The company also wants to buy a third server and several optical switches to increase availability.

Achievements

The selected virtualization environment fully met all the requirements and ensures the smooth operation of the existing infrastructure, leaving sufficient space for further growth in services. In addition, the simple management and flexibility of the virtualization tools comfortably ensures safe future upgrades of the existing systems and introduction of new services with the option to rapidly return to the original configuration (the snapshot manager tool). Last but not least, Egis welcomed the significantly reduced energy consumption demands.

Business Impacts

Smooth operation of the existing infrastructure with sufficient space for further growth in services.