- Crystal Units Ltd
- Approx. 50 users
Based in London, Crystal Units is one of the country’s leading manufacturers of commercial glazing developments.
They are proud partners of Pilkington, Saint Gobain, Guardian and AGC, and with the approval to supply the full breadth of glass types available on the market today this provides Crystal Units with the versatility and flexibility to meet the requirements of any project no matter how complex.
Always thriving to be at the forefront of glass technology, they continually invest in quality, high-tech machinery and industrial science.
Key Outcomes
- System availability 24×7
- Recovery from a disaster in hours not days
- Remote Access to the IT system to support future office expansion
- Build in maintenance window capabilities
The Challenge
The IT Systems at Crystal Units are in use 24×7 to support the production of glazing units in the factory. The system has always been managed internally and had grown piecemeal to support good business growth. However, the system had also grown over time without much emphasis placed on resilience.
Managing the system became almost impossible as systems couldn’t be taken offline for maintenance due to the 24×7 nature of the business. The system suffered with ongoing problems as a result.
A computer virus spread throughout the network, infecting the system which caused havoc. Removing the virus was a challenge as the system couldn’t be taken offline due to product runs and meeting order deadlines, which would have resulted in customer orders not being fulfilled with a substantial loss in revenue as the result.
The virus needed to be removed and the system changed to allow for regular maintenance windows without affecting availability.
Air IT’s solution resolved all the issues we were having and we couldn’t be happier with the end result and service their team delivered to us.
Pankaj Gorsia
Director, Crystal Units Ltd
The Air IT Approach
Air IT’s technicians quickly isolated the computer virus, but with no disaster recovery systems in place systems could not be restored quickly.
To keep the existing systems up at all times, Air IT carefully migrated the data to a new IT system without infecting it with the virus. Meanwhile, we focussed on designing a new solution to allow 24×7 production with regular maintenance windows.
A system was designed around HP ProLiant Servers and SonicWALL Firewall Hardware, running the latest Windows Server Operating Systems.
Microsoft Exchange Server was used for the messaging system with an RDS Farm providing high availability and delivery for all the applications.
The system was backed up with a business continuity solution allowing the whole system to be recovered within an hour, onsite or in a serious disaster in an offsite virtualised cloud environment.
The Outcome
The project was completed successfully over a two-week period with very little downtime.
The new Server Hardware and Software provides Crystal Units with a more secure and centralised computing strategy that is easier to manage, allowing parts of the system to be taken offline for maintenance tasks while keeping the business running.
All users have the same desktop experience using RDS technology no matter what computer they use.
Remote access is provided through a highly available secure SonicWALL solution.
With business continuity in mind, the entire system is now backed up to ensure data can be recovered quickly whilst minimising any potential downtime in the event of a disaster.
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