Case Study
Delivering
seamless IT
technology
whenever
and wherever
it’s needed
Applied Acoustic Engineering (AAE) is a leading company, with
25 years’ experience in the design and manufacture of a wide
range of subsea navigation and positioning products, and
marine seismic survey equipment.
Their innovative product portfolio is extensive
and uses acoustics, underwater sound waves, in
location, positioning and data acquisition
applications. AAE’s clients include the offshore
oil and gas industries, oceanography and
research institutes and defence and law
enforcement agencies.
AAE’s entire operation is housed in one
location in Great Yarmouth, where research,
production and sales work closely together. A
network of partners, suppliers and overseas
agents provide a service on a worldwide scale.
The challenge:
AAE invested in a new server in 2012 and,
during the summer of 2014, started to
experience some intermittent issues with
disconnections. It was during this time that
AAE approached Breakwater IT to ascertain
the underlying cause of the problem and
devise a strategy to resolve the issue. As a new
client, Breakwater’s technical team worked
closely with AAE to fully comprehend their
current software and applications and
resultant demands upon storage space and
server capacity.
Company Profile
Client:
Applied Acoustics
Website: www.appliedacoustics.com
Client size:
Vertical industry:
50
Engineering –
Ocean Technology
Location:
East Anglia
Following their consultation with AAE,
Breakwater identified that their network
backup system wasn’t performing to the
standard expected and had subsequently
exceeded capacity, impinging on the server
performance. It was essential that
Breakwater talked through AAE’s backup
requirements and developed a clear insight
into their backup data path to establish the
performance they should be expecting from
their server.
AAE required a resolution that would ensure
the dependability of their server and backup
system, ensuring it didn’t become a threat to
their operations. Breakwater needed to offer
a solution that would re-introduce reliability
and therefore increased productivity to the
business. With significant data storage
requirements, the backup system had to
become an unfailing way of recovering data
after its loss. AAE needed a secure and
economic solution for ensuring business
continuity and protecting their infrastructure.
The Solution:
Breakwater concluded that the most effective
solution for AAE would be to upgrade their
server. This upgrade would ensure the server
functioned as required, meeting the demands
of the backup system and the software that
depends on it. A new server Operating
System was also in the best long-term
interests of AAE, helping to avoid
expenditure on numerous software upgrades
simultaneously.
In order to follow best practice and avoid
making multiple upgrades with a single
shutdown; Breakwater upgraded AAE’s server
across the course of a few days, this was
achieved by utilising a loan server. In addition
to the server upgrade, the memory was also
Once the project was underway,
the transition was extremely
smooth. There was minimal
disruption to our day to day
operation, due to the fact that
Breakwater carried out as much
work as possible ‘out of hours’.
We now have a server that no
longer has any technical issues,
and due to improvements
suggested by Breakwater, is now
running better than before.
Breakwater now support and
maintain our servers, including
email, antivirus and backups,
leaving us to get on with our
core business activities.
“I would have no hesitation in recommending Breakwater IT
to any business, all the members of staff are highly
knowledgeable and very helpful.”
Steve Wiggins, IT Engineer
upgraded; this further improved the system’s
performance, helping it run more efficiently
and further alleviating the risk of any future
disconnections.
Breakwater implemented an upgrade of the
Base Operating System, from Windows 2008
to Windows 2012. This provided AAE with a
stable system, whilst also promoting cost
savings for the business and operational
efficiencies. The upgrade also enabled AAE to
take advantage of the new Hyper-V features
that Windows 2012 offers. Hyper-V virtualizes
hardware, meaning AAE can run multiple
operating systems simultaneously on one
computer. By introducing this technology,
AAE are in a position to look to the future;
they have a platform through which they can
increase virtual machine availability, gain
scale and flexibility.
To consolidate the reliability of the backup
system, Veeam backup protection was
installed and configured to a new Network
Attached Storage (NAS). Veeam provided a
reliable solution to the difficulties AAE had
encountered with its backup system. It gave
AAE the confidence that they had a flexible
and secure means of recovering virtualised
data and applications. Veeam also reduces
recovery time and the visibility of its
infrastructure enables AAE to pre-empt any
storage issues.
Once the server and applications were
functioning as required, a baseline test was
performed. This made it possible for
Breakwater to accurately record if
applications were achieving their
or visit www.breakwaterit.co.uk
performance goals and provided a
benchmark for future tests and potential
issues. The server will be reviewed again in
one year to ensure it is performing as
required.
Conclusion:
Breakwater’s services have provided AAE with
a new, reliable server and backup system.
They now have the confidence that their
systems are operating efficiently and can
handle the data they need to process. As a
new client, they have also found additional
comfort through Breakwater’s ongoing
support and monitoring of their new server
via their Kaseya management system. AAE
are working within a secure IT environment,
which enables them to foresee any
performance problems and rectify them
before they pose a threat to their operations.
From an IT perspective, they now have a
highly reliable server that will enable them to
benefit from future enhancements in
technology and efficiencies in operations.
“From our first contact with Breakwater IT
we found the process was handled in a
professional and highly proficient manner.
We had an existing IT system in place, but
were experiencing technical difficulties that
our current IT provider was unable to resolve.
Breakwater proposed a solution, to a budget,
and that was also highly competitive, without
the need to replace all of our existing server
hardware.