Nutanix Cloud Platform and AHV Hypervisor enable IntraLAN to develop new services and satisfy the requirements of larger Customers
By making our IT infrastructure less complex, more scalable and easier to manage Nutanix has enabled us to press ahead with new product development, including a Direct Routing service for Microsoft Teams. Beyond that, it is providing the capacity and confidence to do more and not just plan to enter new sectors of the market but to implement those plans.
Challenge
As a provider of managed IT services, UK-based IntraLAN is reliant on its datacentre to support the majority of its business. The infrastructure in this datacentre, was approaching end of life and starting to show its age, both in terms of day-to-day performance and our future plans, as Technical Director, Matt Tyerman, explains:
“After years of successfully delivering IT services to, predominantly, small business customers, we’d started to near the processing and capacity limits of our legacy datacentre technology. That, in turn, was holding IntraLAN back when it came to rolling out new services, most notably a Direct Routing service for Microsoft Teams customers, a development which had become more urgent and important to the business given the surge in remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this would be the first deliverable in our plans to satisfy the needs of much larger customers and to continue to grow the business going forward.”
Solution
Whilst clearly needing to find a replacement for the legacy infrastructure, Tyerman and his team still favoured an on-premises solution over public cloud. Moreover, there’s a big difference between knowing what you want and identifying and sizing the best products for the job.
The company sought expert advice from infrastructure specialist Softcat. Softcat experts spent time understanding IntraLAN’s business together with their technical requirements before assisting the IntraLAN team evaluate possible platforms and ultimately, recommending the Nutanix Cloud Platform cluster. Softcat experts also suggested switching from Hyper-V to the Nutanix AHV hypervisor, which is included in the Nutanix software stack. then went out of their way to make sure it would do everything IntraLAN had specified.
“It was crucial that our business-critical applications would be compatible with AHV and fully supported by the vendor in that environment,” commented Tyerman. “Especially the AudioCodes Session Border Controller software which underpins our new Direct Routing service.”
Softcat were soon able to confirm compatibility, both for the new software and other workloads hosted by Microsoft Hyper-V. A result that not only gave the IntraLAN team confidence to proceed but, because AHV is bundled with the Nutanix Cloud Platform as standard, meant that they could choose a higher specification and still remain in budget.”
With Tyerman and the team now certain of their decision to proceed with a full Nutanix Cloud solution, an order was placed, and the new infrastructure was delivered ready for installation to the IntraLAN datacentre. Unfortunately, this was just before the first COVID-19 lockdown, which meant it would be a few months before the new platform could be configured and powered up for the first time.
Customer Outcome
When the team returned the migration proved very quick and importantly trouble free.
“We were told it would be smooth but still expected problems which in fact never happened,” said Tyerman. “It was just a case of telling the Nutanix Move tool what to migrate from our Hyper-V servers then leaving the software to get on with it.”
The process was completed by IntraLAN staff in just a few days with immediate benefits gained in terms of performance together with long term gains through the ability to deploy and scale new workloads on-demand. A new service implemented following the successful deployment of the Nutanix migration was IntraLAN’s new Teams Direct Routing service which went live shortly after the migration to Nutanix.
Tyerman is also very complimentary when it comes to the Nutanix Prism console used to allocate, monitor and manage both physical and virtual infrastructure resources, all without the need for specialist technical knowledge.
“One of the biggest benefits is the 1-click update capability,” he said. “With the old kit we had to roll out security patches and updates on an individual server basis, then spend hours troubleshooting mistakes and other issues that, inevitably, followed. With Nutanix, it’s all automated, minimising the risk of errors and freeing up a huge amount of time to invest on with other projects.”
Next Steps
Due to the delay caused by the pandemic, the team at IntraLAN continue to explore the capabilities of their new infrastructure but, having pushed ahead to successfully roll out the new IntraLAN Direct Routing service, there is more to come.
“Firing up VMs to develop and test new services is now routine with no need to think ahead or negotiate budget to increase capacity as was necessary with the previous platform,” commented Tyerman. “In the longer term we’re also looking to build a second datacentre with Nutanix top of the list when it comes to our requirements.”
Partner
Softcat
Established in 1993 and based in Marlow, Softcat is a leading independent IT specialist and Nutanix partner with staff and offices across the UK and Ireland. The company is particularly proud of its award-winning customer service, with over 12,300 customers and counting and an impressive 97% satisfaction rating.
