Case Study: VMWare & Smartpath Software
“We would not have been able to scale to support our growth rates without deploying VMware virtualization. It is very much entrenched within our business.”
Owen Batt, Co-founder and Chieft Technology Officer at Smartpath Software
CHALLENGE
Implement a scalable, responsive infrastructure that enables the rapid delivery of asset and maintenance software to customers and the cost-effective running of internal applications.
SOLUTION
VMware virtualization enables Smartpath Software to deliver applications as pre- packaged virtual appliances to customers with and without virtualized infrastructure and expedite the creation of new servers to support customer needs if hosting with Smartpath. Smartpath is also running key applications at lower cost and with higher availability than in a physical environment.
VMWARE AT WORK
• ESXi/ESX
• VMware Consolidated Backup
• VMware vCenter Update Manager
DEPLOYMENT ENVIRONMENT
• ESXi/ESX on Supermicro servers with dual or quad-core Intel Xeon processors running at 2.2GHz to 2.5GHz and 6-8GB RAM s
• Supermicro SAN with 3TB of storage
• Guest operating systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Mac OS X Server
• Virtualized applications: Apache Tomcat, PostgreSQL, Postfix email server, Bind DNS
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Founded in 2001, Smartpath Software delivers asset management software, maintenance and helpdesk services using Web 2.0 and Software as a Service (SaaS) technologies. Headquartered in Sydney and with an office in Melbourne, Smartpath also has a wide international presence. Fuelled largely by demand for its Loc8 asset management and maintenance suite, Smartpath has grown by 300 percent year-on-year for the three years prior to 2009. To deliver the IT resources to sustain growth, the organization leases space in a co-located datacenter in Melbourne, operates some hardware in Sydney for redundancy and is building its infrastructure internationally.
With datacenter costs and energy use growing and customer demand placing pressure on the business to increase the availability of server resources, Smartpath needed an infrastructure that combined scalability with centralized management to reduce the load on administrators. “We looked at virtualization around late 2007 when our physical server numbers had grown to about 30,” said Owen Batt, Technical Director. “We then implemented VMware ESXi with VMware Consolidated Backup and VMware vCenter Update Manager. The performance we achieved convinced us to upgrade to ESX. We are now evaluating features such as VMotion and High Availability to enhance the resilience of our infrastructure.”
The VMware hosts are running around 200 virtual machines, most of which are used to provide applications and services to customers. “We have been able to deliver pre-packaged applications as a VMware-based virtual appliance to customers that have a VMware installation in their own datacenters,”said Batt.“We are also running key internal applications such as email in a virtualized environment.” Smartpath also uses VMware’s Fusion product to develop its Linux- based virtual appliance in a Mac environment.
Results
• Avoided investment of A$1 million in new physical servers that would have to be housed in four to five racks
• Increased CPU utilization from 2-4% to 20-30%
• Improved quality assurance by delivering products in SOE integrated with VMware
About Smartpath
Founded in 2001, Smartpath publishes Loc8, a web 2.0 asset, maintenance, helpdesk and mobile workforce management software solution.
Headquartered in Sydney, Australia with offices in Melbourne, San Francisco, CA and Plano, Texas, Smartpath works across all industries, predominantly engineering, health, IT, petro-chemical, resources, manufacturing, transportation, building and construction and government.
Customers include Rio Tinto, ARA Group, Brookfield Multiplex, Spotless, Spastic Centre, Cue Clothing, Department of Human Services, Spotlight Stores, William Angliss TAFE, Nortel Networks, St John’s Grammar, and Microsoft.
For company information, please visit: http://www.smartpath-software.com or via www.twitter.com/smartpath.
PDF VERSION: apac_au_09Q2_cs_vmw_smartpath_software_english