• Home
• The Firm
  • Mark Walker
  • Peter Aston
  • Mark Bell
  • Rob Wells
  • Simon Collins
  • Sarah Harris
  • Alfie
• Services
  • Case Study
• Content Management
  • Adding a web page to your site
  • Adding images to a web page
  • Adding a video on your web page
  • Adding a map to your web page
  • Adding documents to your web page
  • Editing text on your web site
• Free Website Review
• Downloads
• Customer Comments
• Contact

A case study by South West Communications

 

South West Communications Group helps protect Webselect Internet Solutions’ servers from potential threats from the Internet with a fully managed, high availability and resilient virtualizedIT infrastructure.

WebSelect Internet Solutions is a website design company based in Chudleigh, Devon. It develops updateable, accessible business websites, e-commerce solutions, and is an expert in integrating databases. In addition, Webselect hosts and manages client sites on its own in-house web servers, registers domain names, provides full virus-scanned, anti-spam email accounts and offers a range of secure server solutions.

The challenge

Webselect was an existing customer and had been impressed with the service it received when it moved its servers to South West Communications Group’s data centre in Exeter 6 years earlier. Therefore, when Webselect was faced with a new challenge, it turned to South West Communications Group as its trusted data centre services supplier.

Against a backdrop of Internet threats that had damaged the integrity of businesses and organisations across the world, Webselect had a requirement to secure its servers against potential intrusion. This need was compounded by the rapid growth of Webselect’s client base.

The solution

South West Communications Group refreshed Webselect’s hardware with a managed solution that provided improved security, high availability and increased capacity. This resilient virtualized server environment replicated between 2 geographically dispersed sites created a new IT infrastructure that comprised:

Virtualization technology

Was implemented across 2 sites each housing host machines running multiple virtual servers and a pair of fibre-linked storage area network (SAN) devices each with a 3TB capacity. The design allowed for each site to be able to run in the event of a complete site outage with any lost virtual machines only being down for the time it takes them to automatically boot up on the surviving host. The resilience within the design is available through the combination of the multiple physical sites and the inherent benefits of VMWare’s extensive feature set.

Virtualization has also brought a rationalisationof the server infrastructure by drastically reducing the number of physical hardware devices and therefore gaining from the corresponding drop in support and running costs.

Fibre links

Between South West Communications Group’s data centre and secondary site allows for SAN to SAN replication at very high speed and this opened the possibility of hosting firewalls, physical hosts and SANs at separate locations. Moreover the existence of Internet connectivity at the second location operating on the same IP range as the data centre’s multi-homed Internet links, means that a truly resilient network was achievable.

Connectivity

To Webselect’s hosted web servers was achieved by using border gateway protocol (BGP) to ensure the servers, and the websites hosted on them, can be seen by the Internet via a range of diverse carrier links, including BT, Level 3 and Virgin. The BGP is also used for the secondary site so potential downtime is extremely unlikely in that if one carrier fails, another one seamlessly takes over; and if the primary site fails, the secondary one ensures continuity of service.

Resilient disaster recovery

Was achieved using the network detailed above. It means Webselect can seamlessly switch to the secondary site in the unlikely event of the primary site failing. Therefore, in the event of a loss of either a single host or an entire location, the interruption to service would only be as long as it takes for the automatic booting of the lost virtual servers on the secondary host.

Sophisticated, advanced intrusion protection (AIP) modules– formed part of the security provided by paired Cisco firewalls to boost Webselect’s protection against Internet threat. The AIP-SSM plug-in modules are intelligent pieces of hardware that help guard Webselect against a broad range of potential threats from the Internet without the risk of dropping legitimate traffic. They also provide Webselect with a high level visibility of attempted attacks on its network via a console which gives a detailed account of all adverse Internet activity.

Technical expertise

Is on hand as part of a managed server solution care of South West Communications Group’s experienced network and security team. This team is trained to the highest possible standards with accreditations from Cisco, Microsoft, VMWare, Dell and Alcatel-Lucent.

Solution delivery

Was deployed only once the entire infrastructure had been tested at South West Communications Group’s Exeter facilities. A PRINCE2–certified project manager oversaw the implementation including proactive and regular contact with Webselect to ensure an efficient, satisfactory and timely completion of the project.     

The result

It cannot be stressed too highly how important it is for Webselect to know its clients’ websites are always active and ready for use. Webselect had traditionally entrusted its co-location needs to a London-based data centre, so it was delighted to be able to access the same professional service right on its doorstep.

This professional service from South West Communications Group has developed Webselect’s confidence and trust in the former’s expert engineers and data centre facilities. Therefore, Webselect immediately turned to South West Communications Group when it needed advice them on how to improve its servers’ security.

The switch to a geographically dispersed virtualized environment gave Webselect the high availability, resilient IT infrastructure it required to ensure its customers’ websites would be protected from the ever-changing world of Internet threat and therefore ensure minimum downtime, while also realizing the economic and green benefits that virtualization brings with the reduction in power consumption and the reduced footprint. Furthermore, by investing in a managed service, South West Communications Group’s engineers are responsible for the maintenance of Webselect’s server environment leaving its IT team to concentrate on more productive tasks.