W&W/AFCO STEEL Fortifies Microsoft SQL Server Environment with DH2i

FORT COLLINS, Colo., Nov. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- DH2i™, Company, the leading provider of server application virtualization solutions, today announced that W&W/AFCO STEEL, one of the world's leading construction and steel fabrication organizations, has deployed its DxConsole™ software to ensure the high availability (HA), reliability and high performance of its Microsoft SQL Server environment, which serves as the foundation for its business critical applications and information.

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With more than 1,000 dedicated employees, six state-of-the-art fabrication facilities, nearly 2 million square feet under roof, as well as client work that includes such world-renowned structures as the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, The New York Times Building, and the National 9/11 Museum Pavilion, W&W/AFCO STEEL stands tall among the world's leading construction and steel fabrication organizations.  Its IT environment has grown steadily over the years, now supporting approximately 350 direct users.  Commensurate with its steady growth from a small into a midsize IT organization, its IT budget has grown from small to midsize as well.  However, maintaining its current budget, while supporting the company's unrelenting growth, was becoming a challenge, felt most acutely across its rapidly growing Microsoft SQL Server environment.

All of W&W/AFCO STEEL's primary applications run on Microsoft SQL Server.  Originally, SQL Server was selected as W&W/AFCO STEEL's IT management felt they could depend upon it, with very little management intervention.  However, as the environment continued to grow, the SQL Server environment began to experience performance issues.  Initially, to address this problem additional SQL Server instances were added, however this presented a new challenge – SQL Server sprawl.  A SQL Server consolidation effort was initiated, bringing everything back into two SQL Servers.  For a while, this appeared to be the perfect solution.  Until, there was a failure.  

"We had partnered with a professional services organization that were specialists in SQL Server migration.  Our goal was to migrate our SQL Server 2005 and 2008 to SQL Server 2012.  The Professional Services organization that we were working with continued to recommend Enterprise Edition, however it was not really a fit for our mid-size IT budget.  It is an incredibly expensive product and simply wasn't a viable solution," said Todd Park, Vice President Information Technology, W&W/AFCO STEEL.  "Then, we had a failure, which affected a very large portion of our environment.  We had to do something quick.  As luck would have it, that's when we discovered DH2i's DxConsole™ solution – an ideal fit for us from both a features and functionality standpoint, as well as a perfect fit for our budget." 

For Enterprise Edition, W&W/AFCO STEEL had been quoted a three year cost of over $50,000 for its two server consolidated SQL Server environment.  Add to that, W&W/AFCO STEEL's Professional Services Consultant had presented a SQL Server Environment Management Proposal, which included SQL Server migration, monitoring and management of the environment for one year that was over $30,000. 

"With DH2i's DxConsole, this expense is no longer necessary – it all goes away," said Park.  "DxConsole provides all of it.  Most importantly, it delivers the two things that matter most to us: failover and health monitoring." 

DxConsole enables W&W/AFCO STEEL to organize its SQL Server instances into virtual hosts, which can be moved around the cluster as needed.  If the system that is currently hosting a virtual host fails, the virtual host will automatically be restarted on another system with it's associated instance.  To choose the best system to host the virtual host, DxConsole will load the list of systems that are eligible, and eliminate systems that are unavailable or lack access to the storage required to run the SQL Server instances.  If more than one system fails, DxConsole will start the virtual host on the highest priority eligible system, and raise an administrative alert that the system is over-allocated.

"With DH2i, W&W/AFCO STEEL has increased its performance, ensured high availability and reliability, as well as dramatically simplified management – all while reducing costs by over $80,000," said Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i Company.  "Moreover, as W&W/AFCO STEEL's IT environment continues to change and grow, it will be able to leverage DxConsole's fast and easy application migration capabilities to dynamically move applications from one server host to another, in less than 30 seconds."  He concluded, "Bottom line, with DxConsole W&W/AFCO STEEL will remain continually and optimally prepared to respond to all business requirements and opportunities."

For further information, please read the W&W/AFCO STEEL case study found at: http://dh2i.com/resources/case_studies/ww_afco_steel.php.

Additional Resources:

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- Read and Discuss: DH2i Blog.
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About DH2i:

DH2i Company is the leading provider of server application virtualization solutions. Their products provide a unified operational model that orchestrates SQL Server management, high availability (HA), and disaster recovery (DR) across heterogeneous physical and virtual infrastructures. DxConsole and DxConsole HADR Edition provide individual instance mobility and policy-based monitoring, intelligently automating IT operations and maintaining required performance and availability SLAs. For further information, please visit the DH2i website, call: 970-295-4505 or +44 20 3318 9204, or email: [email protected].

© DH2i Company 2013. DH2i, DxConsole, DxSRM, DxTransfer and InstanceMobility are trademarks of DH2i Company. All other brand or product names contained in this press release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

PR Contact:
Nicole Gorman
Corporate Communications
DH2i Company
M: 508-397-0131
[email protected]

SOURCE DH2i

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