Verdict : Guildhall Chambers “not guilty” of putting their IT infrastructure at risk

Who are Guildhall Chambers?

Guildhall Chambers, one of the largest sets in the South West, is a modern, forward-thinking set with 66 barristers (including 6 QCs) who practise within specialist teams covering commercial, crime, insolvency, personal injury & clinical negligence, and property. Approachable, professional, specialists - the three words that our clients tend to use when asked to describe the people at Guildhall Chambers.

Why Guildhall Chambers chose Computerworld as their trusted IT partner?

Guildhall Chambers engaged with a number of IT companies to assess their options in regards to architecting and delivering a server consolidation and business continuity project. Computerworld were chosen on the strength of their comprehensive understanding of the project objectives, deliverables and success criteria. Guildhall Chambers were also keen to ensure they selected a company who would provide “cradle-to-grave” project management services and had the resources to directly support the environment post-installation.

The chosen solution

The key success metrics from this project were to reduce their physical server count whilst also delivering a solution that was easily manageable, had high levels of availability and most importantly would enable an effective business continuity plan. Using their vast amount of experience within the virtualisation market Computerworld recommended VMWare’s vSphere ESX Enterprise server on the basis of its feature set, extremely high proven reliability and VMWare’s continued investment within their product to ensure it remains the number one virtualisation platform. Mindful of the requirements for an easy and effective disaster recovery solution as well as the need for high performance, Computerworld chose the award winning Dell Equallogic PS series iSCSI SAN hardware as well as the HP DL range of servers as the platform on which to deliver an enterprise-class virtualised environment.

Delivery and implementation

Once the project was awarded to Computerworld our project management team set about completing the project scoping documentation and agreeing all deliverables with the team at Guildhall Chambers. As part of the scoping requirements Computerworld reviewed the existing domain topology and after this consultation period the decision was taken to migrate most of the environment utilising VMWare’s built-in Physical-to-Virtual migration tools. These powerful tools help ensure a smooth transition between the physical and virtual worlds and the semi-automation that they provide also helps to minimise the typical downtime associated with any major IT upgrades.

Computerworld’s team of accredited VMWare VCP, Dell Equallogic and Microsoft MCSE engineers were able not only able to install the VMWare ESX and SAN environment but also to help and advise as to any changes required in the Microsoft environment, thereby giving a true one-supplier solution. In line with our standard diligence checks each newly migrated virtual server was performance tested alongside the existing physical server and in all cases the performance of the virtual servers outstripped their counterpart physical servers.

As with most businesses Guildhall Chambers are heavily reliant on their Microsoft Exchange Server and were looking to improve availability beyond the high resilience provided by VMware’s VMotion and High Availability features. VMware’s current version ( vSphere ) answered that question with its revolutionary new Fault Tolerance module, providing zero downtime in the event of a server hardware failure.

Computerworld’s experience in the virtualisation and storage area, and in-depth Microsoft knowledge ensured that all key milestones were achieved on time and the project was delivered within the original budget and to the agreed timescales.

The benefits and impact on Guildhall Chamber’s business

The success criteria for this project was to reduce the physical server count within Guildhall Chambers main data centre whilst also delivering a virtualised solution that was fully scalable, lowered the risks associated with a typical “physical” server environment, was easy to manage and enabled the next stage of the project; an effective business continuity environment that would ensure the business could continue to operate in the event of loss of service from their main site. Computerworld’s chosen solution and meticulous attention to detail during the project delivery stage ensured that all key success criteria were achieved, and even surpassed in some areas.

This investment in technology has ensured Guildhall Chambers are now able to look forward to building on this solid foundation to deliver yet more services to their loyal customer base .

Customer quotations

The decision to use an external supplier for a major project like this was simple, as we didn’t have the skills and expertise in house. After reviewing the quotes supplied by several suppliers, Computerworld were chosen due to the fact that they fully understood our requirements, they had engineers available locally and they offered a great ongoing support service for this key part of our IT architecture. The fact that the quote came in within our budget also helped!

Working with the Computerworld engineers was a pleasure. They were consistently professional and helpful, finding solutions to every problem that arose during the migrations, even those that were not directly related to the work being carried out. They were committed to the project, staying late to get the job done when necessary. They also took the time to fully explain the work they were doing and provided demonstrations of each new system. I would happily recommend Computerworld to anyone looking for a reliable, experienced and dedicated IT supplier.

– Daniel Wiltshire, IT Manager