Insite Ltd, a developer of virtual computing and thin client technology, announced that it has installed a business continuity solution for Cofathec Heatsave, the largest provider of environmental and building services in the UK.

The new system protects against environmental failure in the computer room of Cofathec's London-based Headquarters. It also eliminates any single application - or business critical - server failure.

David Archer, IT director at Cofathec Heatsave, commented: "Our business continuity requirements were highlighted by several, high profile and well-publicized power outages, causing major problems and disruption, across the UK, in 2005. We also experienced an office fire, which resulted in significant disruption to our business. For me, Insite was the obvious choice - based on my previous working relationship with them, where they demonstrated the utmost professionalism and skill, in understanding our IT business needs."

A number of mandatory requirements were identified, as part of this contract. They included:

All Data from mission-critical applications using MS SQL 2000, MS SQL 7, MS Exchange 2003 and MS Server 2003, needed to be replicated at a location outside the M25 in real-time.

Secure access to business-critical applications was required, from regional offices, home offices and any of Cofathec's 400 Internet-enabled PCs.

The time taken to invoke the solution, following a disaster, would be no longer than four hours. Cofathec Heatsave was not to incur the upfront cost of hardware or software, so the chosen solution was to be supplied as a managed service.

James Barden, Managing Director, Insite Ltd, said: "Access to data is vital for any company, whether it is Exchange, SQL or just file data. Without it, most companies are unable to operate efficiently - and this can lead to lost revenues and damaged relationships with customers. Recent London terrorist activity has, also, proved that companies, reliant on their IT infrastructure, need to make provision for the worst happening and have a reliable backup."

For the exclusive use of Cofathec Heatsave, Insite created five servers in its VMware ESX infrastructure, at its data centre in Tunbridge Wells. VMware ESX is server virtualization software that allows a single piece of AMD or Intel hardware to be partitioned into a number of isolated, virtual servers referred to as virtual machines. The current generation of AMD dual-core processors allow up to 48 virtual machines to be supported on a single piece of physical server hardware.

Insite's recommendation for using VMware virtualization software was based on its greatest benefit - the production server infrastructure is duplicated at an alternative location for a fraction of the price of individual servers.

The company configured Double-Take software as part of the managed service proposition, as this addressed Cofathec's real-time, data replication requirement. Four pairs of servers were configured with the software for mission-critical applications, running a variety of Microsoft packages.

Following a comprehensive set-up and testing period, Cofathec Heatsave now has a reliable and robust business-continuity solution, which fulfils its needs throughout its ten regional offices and London head office location.

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