Travelway Group International is a leading distributor of luggage and bags in the global marketplace. The Montreal head office recently re-vamped its IT server room through virtualization. Travelway, a long-time software client of Momentis Systems, has been utilizing Momentis’ hardware-related IT services for the past 4 years with on-site support and a service maintenance contract in place. During that period, Raffi Simci and his team have earned the trust of Travelway through proven payback for solutions implemented and delivering an on-time quality product and service.

Last fall, Travelway’s server room was at full capacity – there were 3 server racks that were almost full and the physical space was too small to expand. After a thorough evaluation, Momentis proposed a server virtualization project that would consolidate the number of servers while increasing performance, increasing reliability and providing for a more cost-effective disaster recovery solution. Travelway Group Int’l Inc. accepted the proposal in 3 phases and the first phase of the virtualization project went live at the end of 2008, second phase was in place at the beginning of this year with final completion of the disaster recovery phase in progress to be in place this summer.

Server virtualization consolidates multiple physical machines to one virtual server. This process optimizes storage and increases the capacity of the individual server. By reducing physical hardware, not only are maintenance costs reduced, but also the company’s carbon footprint – by decreasing cooling and overall energy bills. Travelway was able to cut its servers from 13 to 3 (now located on 1 server rack), and its UPS (uninterrupted power supply) from 2 to 1.

“At Travelway, we pride ourselves for keeping up-to-date with advanced technology. Working with the Momentis IT team and their breadth of knowledge gives us the confidence that we continuously meet this goal,” remarks Yiad Rassine, Vice President at Travelway Group Int’l Inc.

From a security standpoint, another benefit realized are single points of failure are eliminated – in the case of a server failure or crash, down-time is minimized. What used to take hours or possibly days can now be running within minutes due to remote server access through the virtual server.

From a disaster recovery perspective, the company’s critical pc’s are imaged and put on virtual machines to be stored off-site in case of a disaster. As a future phase, Travelway may opt for a full virtual solution, and eventually run all its pc’s too for a further cost-reduction.