Maine Hosting Solutions and Virtual Servers Challenge
Maine Hosting Solutions (MHS) is a leader in web design, web promotion and website hosting. MHS hosts thousands of websites from Nexus Management’s data center in Brunswick, Maine and stakes its reputation on providing maximum uptime. As with many web hosting providers MHS was working with a number of dedicated and multi-tenanted physical servers.
MHS faced some common challenges in regards to their physical servers such as typical hardware failures requiring physical reboots and a limited amount of resources to be shared among occupants. In addition to these challenges MHS also had to cope with the strain a recurring upgrade cycle puts on time, logistics and budget. So when their aging equipment was nearing the end of its life they searched for a solution that addressed these issues and also made good business sense.
Solution
Nexus Management suggested its High Availability Virtual Enterprise Network (HAVEN) built specifically to meet their needs. The virtual environment is not only more reliable but it makes perfect business sense for Maine Hosting Solutions.
The first major advantage of HAVEN over traditional physical machines is in the case of a hardware failure; because virtual servers are hosted using multiple physical machines even if one fails the virtual environment will remain operational. Whereas a hard drive failure can cause up to a week of downtime for a physical machine, a virtual machine will use its remaining resources until another hard drive is added. HAVEN is also monitored and managed 24/7/365 by Nexus engineers and technical support so MHS can focus on what they do best.
Even if a physical server fails the virtual environment remains functional
Another advantage of virtual servers is their scalability. The HAVEN environment is designed and scaled to fit the specific requirements of businesses so that they aren’t paying for unnecessary resources. Anytime more resources are needed they can be provisioned quickly and easily. This is an important benefit for MHS as it allows them to efficiently use resources and quickly add more as they acquire new customers or as existing clients request additional storage, bandwidth, etc.
HAVEN utilizes the latest physical hardware, and upgrades are managed by Nexus so MHS doesn’t need to focus on purchasing or installing new equipment. Hardware is upgraded by Nexus Management’s engineers, the virtual environment doesn’t ‘realize’ that its running on different hardware, and the upgrade process is completed seamlessly without MHS ever needing to worry.
Result
Maine Hosting Solutions can now boast to their clients about the maximum uptime of HAVEN, and as MHS continues to grow additional resources are quickly provisioned. By moving to virtual servers MHS broke the upgrade cycle that puts a strain on so many businesses, and now they use server resources more efficiently.
“We were impressed by the HAVEN product and it made perfect sense for our business model. Nexus helped us make the transition smoothly from our aging physical server environment to HAVEN. The greatest result of moving into HAVEN is the significant decrease in the volume of tech support inquiries; leading to the ultimate goal of happier customers. This leaves us with more time to grow our business and invest into technology development. With 15 years of experience managing servers we’ve found that HAVEN is by far the most stable environment we’ve experienced, providing a 100% hardware uptime since our initial migration. We recommend it to others for a new peace of mind.”
- Daniel Eosco, President and COO of Maine Hosting Solutions.
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