SoluLAN: Small company, big appetite
Small company, big appetite
Founded in 1999, SoluLAN is an Anjou, PQ-headquartered IT consulting firm specializing in systems integration and maintenance. When Blainville, PQ-based PMG Technologies, an SMB that specializes in road vehicle safety test evaluations, went looking for an IT solution to help meet its demanding storage requirements, they relied on SoluLAN’s expertise. Result? SoluLAN recommended that PMG’s Microsoft® application environment would work best on Dell equipment.
A flexible storage solution
PMG’ auto testing clients include Transport Canada and large auto manufacturers. Their vehicle testing has to be filmed with a large sampling rate in order to analyze impacts, and at 200 frames per second, in high definition, it’s crucial to have hardware that’s up to the task.
"PMG’s technical requirements are quite interesting and quite specific, namely some very sizeable storage needs," says Patrick Brodeur, vice-president of SoluLAN. "Therefore, affordable storage, for large volumes, is a constant challenge."
Flexibility is also important. PMG has to shift large quantities of data. Moving several terabytes from one server to the next can be a long, complex, and difficult task.
"With regular servers, we had a hard time achieving that," says Jean-Marc Fiore, a project manager at PMG. "Dell eliminated that issue. The solution was affordable and allowed us to work without having to copy or duplicate the data."
Specifically, PMG found that the high availability of the Microsoft® Hyper-V™ virtualization solution has made it easy to move servers, with a Dell storage system in the background integrating perfectly with Microsoft® cluster services.
The right decisionFor PMG, the decision to invest in new technology came down to the need to free up resources and increase capabilities, and to do that within defined budget requirements.
"We analysed the work that was already done, the time it took, and then determined what to aim for in terms of production times," says Fiore. "We then analysed the solutions that were available to us in the market, and that matched our budget requirements."
SoluLAN was an important part of this equation, given that PMG was working in a Microsoft® environment and SoluLAN, being a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner specialising in SMB virtualisation services, had the Microsoft® specialists on hand to get the job done.
"For example, SoluLAN helped us with backup solutions – the one we had previously took a long time, and that was a big issue’" says Fiore. "We recently moved to Microsoft® Data Protection Manager™. It takes care of our backups in a much smarter and dynamic way than what we had before. This is much, much faster."
The partnership between Dell and Microsoft® also makes deployment a lot easier, and ensures that a solution will maintain its value within both the Microsoft® and Dell product lifecycles.
"Dell will supply automatic installation systems so that the Windows system fits perfectly in the Dell server, with all the support it needs, including pre-installed Windows Small Business Server 2008," says Fiore. "Everything is developed so that Microsoft® products will work perfectly on Dell servers. This ensures that our users can also enjoy added functionality with, for example, Microsoft® OfficeProfessional 2010 and Microsoft® ExchangeServer 2010." And, as is crucial when dealing with critical IT infrastructure decisions, trust is essential.
"At Dell, you deal with real people," says Fiore. "We loved their advice, their approaches, their flexibility, the customized service we got. We always appreciated those things from Dell."
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