Seventh Generation – Virtualization and Infrastructure Design

Virtualization solution and strategic infrastructure design help enable the eco-friendly company to grow exponentially

With individuals and businesses paying ever-increasing attention to “going green” and the importance of “corporate responsibility,” Seventh Generation (SVG) has seen increased interest in their environmentally-friendly product line as well as in their in-depth information about how to live a less toxic life and leave less of a footprint on the environment. Fast Company recently awarded Seventh Generation with its 2008 Fast Company Social Capitalist award for their work “using the tools of business to enhance the greater good and solve some of today’s most urgent challenges.” But with a growing business comes a growing need for a solid IT environment to maximize the efficiency of the organization and to allow continued service to a growing customer base. To meet this need, SVG partnered with C2 to upgrade their technology environment.

C2 worked with the SVG team to understand their needs and objectives and then designed and implemented an environment that would provide the business with an IT infrastructure capable of providing the performance, stability, features, and reliability that had become critical. This was achieved by virtualizing existing servers – each running multiple applications and services – into 8 virtual servers (all running Microsoft Windows Server) and implementing Systems Center Operations Manager, Veritas Backup Exec, HP System Insight Manager, SQL 2005, an Aventail appliance for remote access, a SAN for increased storage, and a power protection system as well as rebuilding the Exchange environment.

With the introduction of Virtualization, SVG went from 7 servers down to 3, resulting in significant cost savings, providing a more flexible environment, and reducing their carbon footprint. This was one of many initiatives that contributed to their Computerworld Green IT award. As a result of their design and infrastructure upgrade, SVG IT was able to play a significant part in enabling the growth of their business over the last 4 years, average 50% per year. They also scored high marks on their security audit last year in the area of backup and recovery because of failover and redundancy built into the design. Additionally, the implementation of Terminal Services has enabled SVG staff to work from home and has brought efficiencies to their Order-to-Case process. The new enterprise-level IT environment provides increased performance, higher availability, redundancy, enhanced and proactive systems management, increased storage, and centralized backups as well as easy and reliable remote access; better positioning SVG for business growth.

Learn more about C2's Server Virtualization solutions.