Virtualization at Infrasupport

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Infrasupport is committed to virtualization because it makes economic sense.  Here is how we are set up and why we chose to do it this way.

Infrasupport runs several systems in 24X7 production.  These include a Microsoft Exchange 2013 email server, file/print server, firewall system, web server, public facing DNS server, and a few workstations, laptops, tablets, and cell phones.  These systems need to be available 24X7 and 99 percent uptime is not good enough.

Why does Infrasupport need high availability?  Because at any given time, a potential customer may want to look at this website and make a buying decision.  This means the website, Contact Us form, email server, and firewall all need to be up and running reliably.  Note that as of March 22, 2013, the Infrasupport firewall system uptime counter is an impressive 869 days.

Infrasupport also has several customers with HA firewall systems that monitor key customer systems.  When these monitored systems go offline, the customer firewall notifies Infrasupport and customers via email and/or cell phone text message.  The Infrasupport servers need to be up and running to receive these notifications.

As a tech support company, Infrasupport also needs a lab environment.   Ongoing technical training and certifications are a part of life here and the lab environment is our manufacturing facility to produce our only real product – knowledge.

Just like our customers, Infrasupport is also constrained with limited amounts of time, money, power, and space.  For those customers who complain about limited budgets, believe me when I (Greg Scott) say know how to work with a limited budget.  Infrasupport knows how to build enterprise caliber systems with a small business budget because we practice it with our own infrastructure.

Enter virtualization.  The web server hosting this website is a virtual machine inside a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization HA Cluster.  The email server, file/print server, public DNS server, and other transient lab systems are also virtual machines inside the same RHEV cluster.  For now, the firewall is a separate physical system, although we may virtualize it in the future to save a little more space and power.

Contact us for a tour if interested in details.

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