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Web Developer Seneca Virtualises Hosting via LeaseWeb
6-18-2008 |
Migration of hosting customers: from 50 Physical Servers to 10 |
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Amsterdam, 4 June 2008 - Seneca, a leading Dutch web developer with 125
employees, is virtualising its hosting environment at hosting provider LeaseWeb
with VMware. Seneca hopes to complete the full hosting migration of all its
customers within a year. ‘By that time, the current 50 physical servers will
have made way for a maximum of 10 physical servers.’
‘LeaseWeb has
offered us the opportunity to set up a VMware-based virtualisation platform at
the modern, CO2-neutral Dutch data centre EvoSwitch,’ says Jeroen Bezemer, who
is responsible for Seneca’s hosting department. ‘LeaseWeb has supplied the
facilities at the data centre and helped us conceive and build the hosting
solution. This collaboration resulted in a virtualised hosting environment based
on VMware’s ESX platform. Once all of our customers have been transferred, we
will need a maximum of 10 physical dedicated servers, whereas in the past, we
needed 50!'
Hosting CMS
Seneca supplies the hosting service as
part of a total solution for the ‘Smartsite’ product, a content management
system built by Seneca that is being marketed via resellers, among other
channels. About 80 of the company’s customers are small and medium-sized
townships like Hengelo, Leidschendam-Voorburg and Hoorn. ‘Hosting is not a core
operation for us, but we do want to offer our customers a total picture for
their CMS. This is why LeaseWeb handles the hosting of the web applications for
us.’
Dedicated server
Until recently, Seneca used a physical
dedicated server for each customer. Smaller customers could share a physical
server via co-location. ‘We found that this situation resulted in problems more
and more often,’ says Bezemer, ‘because we were unable to allocate the available
server space to customers in a flexible manner.’
Seneca considers
virtualisation to be the future of hosting. ‘We will be extremely versatile via
virtualisation,’ asserts Bezemer. We can roll out new servers ourselves very
quickly, and shift the available space around. Virtualisation also makes it
easier to accommodate server failures. At this point, we have migrated about
half of our customers. As soon as the contracts of the remaining physical
servers expire, we will also transfer them to a virtual environment. We expect
that process to be complete within the year.’
Server hosting
In
actuality, the existing hardware for Seneca will be reduced from 50 dedicated
servers to about 6 physical dedicated servers. ‘But we do need other servers to
keep an eye on the virtual platform. Monitoring servers, in other words. And not
all of our servers can be migrated to virtual servers, such as database servers.
We prefer to keep those physical because we would have to adapt the entire
hosting infrastructure and change interfaces.'
Virtual
hosting
Initially, Seneca felt that the investment needed for the VMware
platform was rather steep. ‘Two years ago, we felt that we would not be able to
implement virtualisation due to the licensing fees and the costs for heavier
hardware,' explains Bezemer. ‘But the investment in virtualisation resulted in
savings with respect to hardware. We were able to convert those savings into
higher availability for customers by building in more redundancy and making
higher SLAs. So it has improved our service. Once we have migrated completely,
we will have done more than reduce the physical server pool significantly.
VMware also means that we do not need a licence for every processor. A
data-centre licence suffices, which means that we also make a return on the
investment costs.'
About Seneca
Seneca (www.seneca.nl) is the ICT service provider for
effective solutions in the field of web technology and electronic services.
Seneca targets the larger, leading organisations in the Benelux in which
service, via the web, plays a strategic role. To this end, Seneca supplies
high-quality content management-related products and services to support its
customers’ communication, interaction and transaction processes. A Microsoft
Gold Partner, Seneca supplies Smartsite, a Content Management System (CMS) that
the company developed in-house. Seneca’s customer base includes such clients as
BOVAG, Sint Lucas Andreas Ziekenhuis, and townships like Leidschendam-Voorburg,
Hengelo and Hoorn.
About LeaseWeb
LeaseWeb (www.leaseweb.com) is an international
provider of hosting solutions that focuses primarily on the professional market.
The company is in the global top 20 of hosting providers and offers services
that include domain name registration, web hosting, dedicated servers,
co-location, server virtualisation, and streaming. LeaseWeb operates a
first-class network offering a bandwidth of over 210 Gbps, which extends across
four data centres in the Amsterdam region via the major telecom carriers.
LeaseWeb is also present on Internet exchanges in Amsterdam, Brussels, London,
Frankfurt, New York, Vienna, Stockholm, Warsaw, Zurich, Prague and Madrid.
Through this network, LeaseWeb enables companies all over the world to create
and maintain an online presence in an affordable and reliable manner. Founded in
1997, LeaseWeb now manages nearly 11,000 servers. Its customer base includes
Hyves, Telegraaf Media Groep, Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé, PricewaterhouseCoopers,
AVRO, Starbucks, Direct Wonen, and
Univé.
| Source: www.webhostdir.com | | | | |
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