The economics for building and maintaining customer-facing web infrastructures don't add up for many businesses. They find it more cost effective to outsource the responsibility to web hosting companies, which have developed their own specialist skills. But, the rise in demand for web infrastructure services has left hosting companies with a number of key issues – namely, creating scalable platforms that are simple to manage and energy efficient to operate.

Radore Hosting, based in Turkey, has grown significantly over recent years thanks to the country's dynamic economy. The company has taken advantage of the rapid growth in the manufacturing and service sectors and hosts web infrastructures for a diverse range of customers. As the business has expanded, Radore has continued to invest in its IT infrastructure, which underpins its hosting services and the company's administration.

Despite ensuring high availability of hosted services and boosting internal efficiencies, the resulting network of servers and storage created its own challenges. There was a continued rise in energy usage and cooling to support the growing infrastructure. In addition, a number of existing servers were unable to support the organisation's drive for widespread server virtualization. Management complexity was also affecting the productivity of IT personnel. Administering the system of directly attached storage was time consuming.

Among the many IT solution providers on the market, Radore Hosting asked Dell to help the company realise its goals. Zeki Kubilay Akyol, chief executive officer of Radore Hosting, says: "It wasn't a difficult decision. In the many years that we've worked with Dell, it has always delivered high performing, reliable technology and excellent support services."

Thanks to its experience in virtualization and storage technology, Dell partner Datacore helped Radore find a solution fast. The partner gave a demonstration of the latest Dell blade server technology and Dell EqualLogic storage arrays, and within a week a deal had been signed. In less than a month, the solution was on-site and Radore implemented the platform in seven working days.

"Thanks to the simplicity of Dell technology, we deployed the solution quickly, saving time and money," says Kubilay Akyol.

Flexible blades deliver leading processortechnology
IT personnel implemented a single Dell™ PowerEdge™ M1000e modular blade enclosure and began adding blades. First, they installed two Dell PowerEdge M600 blade servers with Intel® Xeon® Processors 5430. Soon after, they added two Dell PowerEdge M605 blade servers with AMD Opteron™ Processors 2384, and finally, they deployed three Dell PowerEdge M610 blade servers with the latest Intel Xeon Processors 5530.

Says Kubilay Akyol: "We chose the M600 blades because of the Intel Processors, which have always been high performing. Next, we selected two M605 servers because the AMD Opteron Processors gave us eight dual in-line memory modules at 800 MHz. Then Intel announced its Nehalem Processors, so as soon as a Dell blade became available with these new CPUs we bought three."

Blade-based solution consolidates around 50U of rack space
By choosing to deploy Dell PowerEdge blades, Radore has significantly reduced the number of servers in its datacentre. It expects to consolidate more machines in the future as it buys additional blades. "By implementing Dell PowerEdge blades, we consolidated our server environment by approximately 50U of rack space and expect this figure to increase," says Kubilay Akyol. "We have freed up a substantial amount of space in our data room, which we can use as the business continues to grow."

Virtual servers are around 85 per cent faster to launch
Compared with physical servers, the virtual machines at Radore are faster to implement and less time consuming to maintain. Both the Dell M600 and M610 blades are running Windows Server® 2008 Datacenter featuring Hyper-V™, a flexible high-performance hypervisor-based virtualization technology, and supporting approximately 50 virtualized machines. These deliver internal and customer solutions running on applications such as Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Internet Information Services. The Dell M605 machines, which are not virtualized, are running Windows Server 2008 Standard and work as web servers.

Kubilay Akyol says: "We had worked with VMware ESX server software in the past, so we knew the efficiency gains we could expect from virtualized infrastructures. When Hyper-V became available we wanted to roll it out across our Microsoft environment and take advantage of the available savings. The blade servers from Dell provided the opportunity to deploy Hyper-V in a high-performance server environment and today we can launch virtual servers approximately 85 per cent faster."

Simplified management cuts driver installs by up to one hour and blade system reduces cabling by around 75 per cent
The Dell blades and modular blade enclosures are designed for snap-in scalability, so Radore can add servers easily. In addition, Dell OpenManage™ Server Administrator 5.4.0 makes managing the environment more efficient, helping IT personnel cut the time to install Windows® drivers by up to one hour. Besides creating a highly scalable environment, the platform has substantially reduced cabling, freeing up space in the datacentre. Kubilay Akyol comments: "Expanding the Dell platform is simple: you insert a blade server in the enclosure and power it up. The combination of Dell PowerEdge blades and the blade enclosure has reduced cabling by around 75 per cent."

Dell solution cuts energy usage by approximately 70 per cent
The virtualized server and storage solution at Radore has created a more power-efficient IT infrastructure. Energy usage and cooling costs have been reduced, helping the company cut operational expenditure. "The Dell blades and modular blade enclosure represent some of the most energy-efficient IT technology on the market," says Kubilay Akyol. "Our Dell solution has cut IT energy consumption by approximately 70 per cent."

Storage volumes are available in minutes
By making Dell EqualLogic part of the solution, Radore has created a storage environment that is effective and simple to manage. Because information is now stored on a network instead of being attached to servers, data is more highly available. In addition, the virtualization technology in EqualLogic storage arrays ensures IT personnel can launch storage volumes fast.

Finally, the technology is easy to operate, so personnel avoided the need for specialist training. Comments Kubilay Akyol: "In less than one hour, we were skilled in using the Dell EqualLogic storage arrays. We can launch storage volumes in a matter of minutes."

Reliable backup and recovery eliminates downtime
Thanks to Dell EqualLogic storage arrays, data at Radore is better protected and easily accessible for great disaster recovery. In the past, the company performed backups using various scripting tools and third-party applications.

Because of the complexity of the previous solution, the process was time consuming and sometimes led to downtime. However, today Radore backs up data between two Dell EqualLogic PS5000XV storage arrays and uses automated snapshots to take easily recoverable copies at regular intervals. The process is simpler, quicker and more reliable. Says Kubilay Akyol: "We believe Dell EqualLogic is the best option for storing and recovering business data. With the EqualLogic system's more advanced backup techniques we don't have any downtime anymore."

Responsive support
Radore is optimising the performance of the environment with Dell ProSupport for IT, choosing the Mission Critical option of fourhour on-site support. According to Kubilay Akyol, Dell's support services are a major advantage of working with the IT solution provider, because it provides a range of support packages to meet the exact needs of businesses. Kubilay Akyol says: "Dell ProSupport for IT delivered the right level of service to protect our business-critical environment and maximise the performance of our platform for years to come."

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