The Icelandic IT service provider Thekking expended much resource managing large workloads in a multi-solution environment while also experiencing high costs related to the handling of multiple production clusters. The resulting fragmentation and lack of a protected management environment was time-consuming when dealing with more customers, making it difficult to handle outage and back-up. By standardising on vSphere 6.5 and vSAN 6.6, Thekking now handles workloads more efficiently thanks to a modern, high-performing server setup in a more stable business environment. Additionally, the new system has also streamlined the storage of client data, improving the overall customer experience.
Thekking is an Icelandic IT service provider covering hosting, communication, security and helpdesk services for Icelandic businesses, mainly in the retail sector. The customers range from smaller businesses to some of the biggest retailers in the country. The business is a leading local player in the Icelandic IT-industry with 70 employees based in Akureyri in Northern Iceland and in Kopavogur in the capital region. The name “Thekking” is the Icelandic word for “knowledge” – referring to the ambition of providing competent staff and services. Thekking runs two data centres, one in Akureyri and one in Kopavogur.
Challenge:
Thekking has many different customers from small businesses to large retailers with different challenges that all require various services. Some need data storage solutions, some require a service provider to run their Intranet, while others need help to manage servers and hardware on location or
remotely.
With such an extensive portfolio of customers and a diverse range of services, Thekking wasted resources by running a number of virtualisation platforms resulting in too many tools for similar tasks, which made it impossible to manage systems and support them efficiently. At the same time, Thekking had trouble with migration between hosts and increasing costs of having multiple clusters, some of which were small and heavily utilised.
Another pressing issue was the risk related to not having a protected management environment to handle hardware breakdowns in the production environment. For instance, if a customer experienced downtime in the form of an outage, Thekking did not have an efficient management environment in place to quickly handle back-up and restore data. This meant that operations in the production cluster were easily interrupted, resulting in more downtime for clients. At the same time, the support team was not provided with a full overview of the situation, having to deal with several systems.
Ultimately, many resources were spent fixing crashes manually instead of just solving problems on the spot. This issue needed to be solved to make the solutions more time-saving and cost-efficient for Thekking and its customers.
The Solution:
Thekking needed to consolidate a mixed-solution environment that included Microsoft’s Hyper-V. As Thekking searched the Icelandic market for possible solutions to their challenges, they quickly realised there was no alternative to what VMware could supply. VMware is the only company to offer a stable solution with proven technology on a reliable platform. VMware’s extensive ecosystem and tools also matched Thekking’s existing skill set well and was an important factor when it came to choosing the right platform.
“We decided to invest in VMware’s vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM) Enterprise Plus 6.5 and vSAN 6.6 to standardise our systems and completely remove our existing Hyper-V solution. With the new solutions installed in both our data centres, we are able to provide a unified platform for all workloads and storage with easy management and reduced costs as a direct consequence,” explains Marteinn S. Sigurðsson, Infrastructure Architect at Thekking.
Today, all Thekking’s 700 VMs are running on vSphere with 95 percent of their servers virtualised, which has helped integrate the many different systems they previously ran for their customers. With vSphere, Thekking also has access to Log Insight to easily monitor VMs and hardware, as well as vRealize Operations Management for environment right-sizing and capacity planning. The new solution also makes it possible to run scripts on just one system. With vSAN a management cluster has been created that helps Thekking run vCenter as well as several other infrastructure applications to handle monitoring, backup and storage. In case of an outage, vSAN also provides stable protection for management, making it possible to help customers immediately.
