BACKGROUND
Ford & Warren is an independent commercial law firm of almost two hundred personnel based in Leeds. Established in 1817 and trading under the same name since 1876. Ford and Warren is a member of the Primerus International Network and therefore their business is now Global.
The firm has 3 main divisions:
Litigation: this is work related mainly to courts and similar bodies, but mediation and conciliation figure high on priorities
Business and Commerce: this is work related to all aspects of business and property
Private client: this is work related to the private business of individuals
The company is a long standing customer of SICL and together have collaborated in design and implementation of a functional, scalable, resilient and highly secure network and server infrastructure. In 2009 Ford and Warren’s existing server estate was approaching end of life and it forecasted a future shortage of storage. Ford and Warren was also keen to incorporate Disaster Recovery solutions within the required design and solution.
www.forwarn.com
SOLUTION
In consultation with SICL, Ford and Warren chose to adopt an approach of virtualising servers where possible and to also deploy SAN data storage following analysis and design.
Ford and Warren selected Dell EqualLogic as the main storage solution with VMWare ESX servers to control the Virtualised Environment. Special pricing from Dell allowed implementation of an interim Disaster Recovery solution using a separate EqualLogic array to be deployed at a remote location.
SICL migrated Ford and Warren’s server estate to the EqualLogic array in planned stages over the course of several weekends to ensure minimum disruption to the normal running of the offices.
The new arrays provide Ford and Warren with a much more flexible environment where storage can be moved between virtual servers as and when required. Disaster Recovery is also catered for by the secondary array.
RESULT
The storage and virtualisation solution has proved to be a great success, providing increased storage with greater flexibility, more cost-effective asset management through virtualisation and providing key elements of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
“We worked with SICL to design and implement a solution which fulfilled our requirements from a technical and budgetary perspective. The installation was completed with minimum disruption to our staff and the results have proven this solution a worthwhile investment.”
Dave Swift
IT Consultant
Ford and Warren