The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the organisation responsible for the sequencing of one-third of the human genome, is to standardise most of its Microsoft® Windows® data centre systems on Marathon Technologies software to provide guaranteed high-availability and continuity of provision of genomic data for its research users.
Marathon Technologies, the leading provider of fault tolerant-class software for Microsoft® Windows® environments, has provided everRun HA and FT software licences which will be integrated throughout the year by Marathon Elite Partner EACS. The Sanger Institute is currently integrating a new ERP system to support its finance, purchasing and HR operations, and have chosen Marathon following positive experiences with the technology previously.
The mixture of everRun HA and FT licence deployment will provide a combination of fault tolerance across mission-critical systems that can’t tolerate any downtime, such as bulk processing, and high availability for less-critical systems such as web servers.
Doug Constance, Team Leader Windows development for the Sanger Institute comments, “Running a highly-available IT system is much the same as turning on a light when you walk into a room. When it works, no one notices. When it doesn’t, the IT team gets to know about it pretty quickly, so it’s important we get it right, for the business and for ourselves.”
“We have actually already been working with Marathon everRun FT for the past year while it provided fault-tolerance for our Exchange e-mail server. Previously, our old exchange servers had to be rebooted frequently; we haven’t had to reboot the new once in the last year. Ideally, this is the level of reliability we want on all our systems so we’re looking to Marathon’s everRun products to help us attain this.”
Marathon’s software was originally integrated following the completion of the Sanger Institute’s fully-redundant multi-room data centre, when the Institute looked to new technology. Marathon everRun FT’s ability to create a virtual environment for servers working in lock-step appealed to the IT team. Following a successful demonstration, the company moved ahead with the Marathon implementation in partnership with EACS.
Constance explains why the Exchange server was a good testing ground for the Marathon technology, “Because the Sanger Institute is primarily an academic institution, everyone here has been using e-mail since the very early 90s. Sanger employees aren’t just used to it; they rely on it totally and can’t manage without it. When the server used to go down, the IT department had to rally just to stop the phones from ringing.”
The Sanger Institute has also already had experience of everRun HA when it implemented its first license into the Mouse Genetics department, to support its reporting processes.
“Downtime for the Mouse Genetics group is still an issue, but only if it’s for just a minute or two. Reporting for this team is important, but it’s not as constant or as intensive as elsewhere in the Institute. This level of downtime would allow the team to carry on its work with just a small interruption, but much longer and projects quickly start to get held up. With our new systems, we have all our system redundancy needs covered off,” concluded Constance.
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About Marathon Technologies
Marathon Technologies Corporation is driving the convergence of high availability and virtualization technologies through its v-Available™ initiative. Marathon is the only company to deliver a complete range of automated, mainframe-class availability and disaster recovery software solutions for all essential Windows applications. The company’s everRun™ product family protects businesses by ensuring continuity of operations in virtual and physical environments. Marathon is a privately held, venture-backed corporation based in Littleton, Massachusetts, USA, with offices worldwide. For more information please visit www.marathontechnologies.com.
About EACS Limited
EACS Limited is a leading, award winning, trusted IT advisor and provider of information technology to UK businesses - delivering practical, innovative & cost effective IT products, solutions and services to help businesses become better, faster, leaner and more collaborative. Founded in 1994, EACS provides a valued IT partnership to organisations of all sizes throughout the UK and endeavours to assist UK businesses with worldwide projects when requested.
EACS, a Microsoft Gold partner, has promoted solutions from Marathon Technologies since 2005 and is now a Marathon Elite Partner. For more information please visit www.eacs.com or call 0845 3379 146.