Media opportunity: Canadian VMware customer The Brand Felt Ltd.
From: Adam Pletsch <Adam@stratamp.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 10:52 AM
Subject: Media opportunity: Canadian VMware customer The Brand Felt Ltd.
To: pr@itincanada.ca
Cc: Anita Wong <anita@stratamp.com>, Cindy Watson <Cindy@stratamp.com>, Jennifer Rideout <Jennifer@stratamp.com>
Solution
VMware vSphere™ Essentials Plus reduces
capital and operating expenses through
server consolidation and provides SMBs
with low-cost, enterprise-level services,
such as high availability and centralized
IT management.
VMWare at Work
VMware vSphere Essentials Plus, featuring
• VMware vSphere 4
• VMware vMotion™
• VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
• VMware Fault Tolerance
• VMware High Availability
VMware vCenter™ Server Standard
Deployment environment
Brand Felt has virtualized its mission critical
applications and operates nine
virtual servers, hosting mail, Web and
Microsoft SQL Server services in a high
availability cluster with two VMware ESX®
hosts and one storage area network (SAN).
Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 10:52 AM
Subject: Media opportunity: Canadian VMware customer The Brand Felt Ltd.
To: pr@itincanada.ca
Cc: Anita Wong <anita@stratamp.com>, Cindy Watson <Cindy@stratamp.com>, Jennifer Rideout <Jennifer@stratamp.com>
Hello IT in Canada team,
We wanted to make you aware of a Mississauga, ON-based company called The Brand Felt Ltd. that is making use of VMware technology to virtualize its IT environment. It has used VMware vSphere Essentials Plus to increase application availability, minimize planned and unplanned downtime and simplify IT administration. The company's servers are now 100 per cent virtualized, as are the firm's mission critical applications.
The Brand Felt Ltd., family owned and operated since 1959, manufactures industrial felts, engineered pressed felts and various technical felts for the automotive, chemical, steel and furniture industries, among others. From its headquarters, the company's two-member IT team supports approximately 50 users and also runs retail web sites.
The company has found vSphere Essentials Plus to be a perfect SMB solution, one that has opened up opportunities to be leaner and more efficient. Above all, it has provided high availability and simpler IT management -- critical for an organization with a smaller IT staff and less flexibility to handle sudden upsurges in IT maintenance and support.
Please get in touch if you would like an interview with The Brand Felt Ltd. and/or VMware.
A short case study can be found below this message, or on VMware's site at: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/customers/VMW_10Q1_SS_BRAND_FELT_USLET_EN.pdf
Best regards,
Adam
For more information please contact:
Adam Pletsch / Jennifer Rideout
StrategicAmpersand Inc.
(416) 961-5595
The Brand Felt Ltd.
Challenge
Replace aging physical servers, streamline
IT management and improve application
performance and availability on a limited
budget.
Replace aging physical servers, streamline
IT management and improve application
performance and availability on a limited
budget.
Solution
VMware vSphere™ Essentials Plus reduces
capital and operating expenses through
server consolidation and provides SMBs
with low-cost, enterprise-level services,
such as high availability and centralized
IT management.
VMWare at Work
VMware vSphere Essentials Plus, featuring
• VMware vSphere 4
• VMware vMotion™
• VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
• VMware Fault Tolerance
• VMware High Availability
VMware vCenter™ Server Standard
Deployment environment
Brand Felt has virtualized its mission critical
applications and operates nine
virtual servers, hosting mail, Web and
Microsoft SQL Server services in a high
availability cluster with two VMware ESX®
hosts and one storage area network (SAN).
Case study:
Family owned and operated since 1959, The Brand Felt Ltd. is a quality manufacturer of
industrial felts, engineered pressed felts and various technical felts for the automotive,
chemical, steel and furniture industries, among others. From its headquarters in Toronto,
Canada, the company’s two-person IT team is tasked with supporting approximately 50
users, as well as running retail Web sites.
Like many small to medium-size businesses (SMBs), The Brand Felt Ltd. faces the dual
challenge of maximizing IT resources and providing high availability and data protection
with minimal upfront investment. In an effort to stretch its IT dollars, the company
recently implemented a comprehensive virtualization program. “We were approaching
a major hardware refresh cycle when our IT consultant suggested we consider
virtualization, both for costs and for the future,” recalls Michael Paquette, network
administrator at The Brand Felt Ltd.
The company considered Citrix XenServer and Parallels Virtuozzo but ultimately chose
VMware® vSphere™ Essentials Plus specifically for the newly released VMware High Availability
feature. “What really sold us on VMware was vSphere Essentials Plus. Finally, an affordable
high availability solution for SMBs, which was nonexistent up until now,” says Paquette.
Since implementing virtual technology, The Brand Felt Ltd. has virtualized approximately
90 percent of its IT environment, including all of its mission-critical applications. Within
six months, the company expects to be 100 percent virtualized. “vSphere Essentials Plus
has really opened doors in terms of high availability and simplified IT management. We
don’t see ourselves ever turning back from virtualization. It’s something we’re going to
be sticking with for a very long time,” concludes Paquette.
Results
• Increase application availability. “Users definitely notice the difference since we
implemented VMware. In terms of email and Citrix, everything loads up much faster,
so they’re able to get more done without calling me. And I don’t need to bother with
freeing up blocked sessions and database crashes and freezing,” says Paquette.
• Minimize planned and unplanned downtime. “Since implementing vSphere Essentials
Plus, we haven’t had any unplanned downtime,” comments Paquette. “Everything
we’ve experienced has met or exceeded our expectations. And it continues to do so.”
• Simplify IT administration. “Using vCenter is like going right through to any Windows
platform and taking Linux to a whole new level. We do everything through vCenter—
all of our HA management, our file-level copies. It’s a one-stop shop for all of your
virtualization needs,” says Paquette.
• Improved application performance. “The configuration of our virtual infrastructure
greatly improves application performance,” Paquette states. “For example, the IIS
Web server is on the same ESX host as the SQL server, which means that they’re on
the same network path; so there is very little communications traffic, and there is no
streaming through the LAN.”
• Simplify security. “In terms of security, we have more organization and more ability to
lock everything down from one central point, since everything is centrally managed
from vCenter,” comments Paquette.
industrial felts, engineered pressed felts and various technical felts for the automotive,
chemical, steel and furniture industries, among others. From its headquarters in Toronto,
Canada, the company’s two-person IT team is tasked with supporting approximately 50
users, as well as running retail Web sites.
Like many small to medium-size businesses (SMBs), The Brand Felt Ltd. faces the dual
challenge of maximizing IT resources and providing high availability and data protection
with minimal upfront investment. In an effort to stretch its IT dollars, the company
recently implemented a comprehensive virtualization program. “We were approaching
a major hardware refresh cycle when our IT consultant suggested we consider
virtualization, both for costs and for the future,” recalls Michael Paquette, network
administrator at The Brand Felt Ltd.
The company considered Citrix XenServer and Parallels Virtuozzo but ultimately chose
VMware® vSphere™ Essentials Plus specifically for the newly released VMware High Availability
feature. “What really sold us on VMware was vSphere Essentials Plus. Finally, an affordable
high availability solution for SMBs, which was nonexistent up until now,” says Paquette.
Since implementing virtual technology, The Brand Felt Ltd. has virtualized approximately
90 percent of its IT environment, including all of its mission-critical applications. Within
six months, the company expects to be 100 percent virtualized. “vSphere Essentials Plus
has really opened doors in terms of high availability and simplified IT management. We
don’t see ourselves ever turning back from virtualization. It’s something we’re going to
be sticking with for a very long time,” concludes Paquette.
Results
• Increase application availability. “Users definitely notice the difference since we
implemented VMware. In terms of email and Citrix, everything loads up much faster,
so they’re able to get more done without calling me. And I don’t need to bother with
freeing up blocked sessions and database crashes and freezing,” says Paquette.
• Minimize planned and unplanned downtime. “Since implementing vSphere Essentials
Plus, we haven’t had any unplanned downtime,” comments Paquette. “Everything
we’ve experienced has met or exceeded our expectations. And it continues to do so.”
• Simplify IT administration. “Using vCenter is like going right through to any Windows
platform and taking Linux to a whole new level. We do everything through vCenter—
all of our HA management, our file-level copies. It’s a one-stop shop for all of your
virtualization needs,” says Paquette.
• Improved application performance. “The configuration of our virtual infrastructure
greatly improves application performance,” Paquette states. “For example, the IIS
Web server is on the same ESX host as the SQL server, which means that they’re on
the same network path; so there is very little communications traffic, and there is no
streaming through the LAN.”
• Simplify security. “In terms of security, we have more organization and more ability to
lock everything down from one central point, since everything is centrally managed
from vCenter,” comments Paquette.