Provisioning New Infrastructure:
F1Linux will rack the equipment, plumb it into the networking and label as necessary after which your administrators can then perform remote configuration.
Decommissioning Existing Infrastructure:
F1Linux will de-rack it and remove it to the DC’s loading dock where a third party the client instructs can remove it for storage or destruction.
Service Areas:
Presently the KAO Data Centre in Harlow is supported by default. However, as F1Linux is situated equidistant to both London & Cambridge DCs in these areas can still be serviced by prior agreement.
Selected Case Studies from large enterprise clients evidencing the proven experience to configure the hardware, networking, storage & OS host configurations
Queen Mary University London (“QMUL”) Campus Virtualization Platform, Computer Sciences & Electrical Engineering Dept
QMUL was standarizing on VMware and so EECS commissioned me to migrate their Linux XEN Virtualization infrastructure to VMware Enterprise Plus across (2) data Centres.
To ensure a solid base was laid for the VMware to live on, a full refresh of both data centers was performed.
Upgraded the firmware in Dell Hypervisors, Blades & EqualLogic storage as well as the HP meshed Switches.
Replaced batteries in all UPS arrays and cabled the Hypervisors across them.
Queen Mary University London (“QMUL”) Campus Virtualization Platform, Computer Sciences & Electrical Engineering Dept
After ensuring all the hardware was updated and had parity of firmware as well as ensuring that we had fresh batteries in the UPS for the switches, routers & blade chassis, I commenced with logical configuration of the VMware Enterprise Plus platform.
– Configured both physical and virtual networking- including a Virtual Distributed Switch.
– Configured VLAN’ed multipathing across the HP Meshed Switches from the EqualLogic storage.
– Configured the ESXi on USB sticks inside the blades to keep local blade storage as an ace-in-the-hole to run VMs from if the network storage had to be taken offline for any reason.
– Configured the VMware vCenter as a VM so it wasn’t tied to hardware
– Documented the complex networking mapping the physical to virtual networking
– Migrated an inventory of XEN vm’s into the new platform by swapping out the paravirtualized Kernels.
– I upgraded the the system from Enterprise Plus 5 to 5.1 the last week of the contract. This conferred on the client a HUGE benefit: the ability to backup & restore the Virtual Distributed Switch (“VDS”) which was a complex beast.
When I was working in Nigeria, I travelled to the capitol Abuja to inspect eHealth’s DC. Because of the problems with terrorism, all the key infrastructure lived down South. I immediately spotted an achilles heel in the Power configuration: power cabling had been “daisy-chained and key infrastructure was all relying on the same single 13 amp fuze. The DC had UPS, but they provide no relief if this fuze popped 😉
This was hardly shocking as in UK DC’s I’d seen all the infrastructure all loaded onto a single power feed- “A” or “B”- but not cross-loaded.