The solution we jointly arrived at was to consolidate the five servers down to two, with one located in Australia and one in New Zealand. Each server has IBM i and AIX partitions and has IBM storage, a tape library, and a Hardware Management Console (HMC). In addition to installing the new hardware, we loaded their new systems with the upgraded Operating System release (V7R3) along with a copy of Brown Brothers Engineer’s data so they could perform application testing. We then delivered their new systems and used their Maxava HA software to synch the systems and cutover to the new systems. After the initial O/S upgrade had been proven, the machines were then upgraded to V7R4.
It was also important that the growth aspirations of the business were kept in mind as part of the project, allowing for anticipated expansion in the future and the capacity to handle this growth from a technology perspective.
At Truis we understand the need for making IT simple and keeping projects transparent, so as part of this upgrade project we held regular meetings with Wayne and the Brown Brothers Engineers IT team – from the project sign-off until completion, and ongoing reviews kept all parties updated and aware of progress.
“Unfortunately, there is a lack of people with knowledge and skills in this specific area [IBM hardware]. Truis have this and they are good genuine people to work with.”
Wayne Millow | AS400 Systems Manager | Brown Brothers Engineers
A Managed Services Support Agreement was also developed during the hardware upgrade project to alleviate some risk from Brown Brothers Engineers internal IT team. The agreement allows our support team to monitor the onsite machines 24/7 with an agreed notification path. This also includes a number of support hours per month, which Brown Brothers Engineers can use on an as needed basis. A recent example of this was to upgrade their Hardware Management Consoles for the log4j vulnerability.
