Servtec Corp Solutions

Project Management & Methodology

Our project management services are designed to help drive strategic corporate and technology initiatives from project initiation to completion. Our highly trained and qualified professional services consultants help our customer from initial project planning, delivery to project completion and knowledge transfer. We work closely with your IT personnel to address your organization's unique requirements. We are confident that your critical IT initiatives will be well managed and all new solutions are delivered on time and on budget at all stages of the project lifecycle.

Understanding your requirements, challenges, and technology goals is the foundation of our customer-centric solutions. Servtec professional services builds solutions that address the complete spectrum of issues. Our team applies real-world experiences to optimally integrate our solutions with your business processes. We ensure that the solution fits your needs and performs effectively, even in the most dynamic and complex environments.

Project Management Description

Project planning

We deliver a broad scope of planning services for business critical projects that encompass the entire storage, data management and data protection infrastructure.

Project management

Our trained and experienced specialists, with field experiences and knowledge in multiple domains, are experts in project coordination and management.

Post Implementation

We understand the importance of post implementation phase. Before project closure, all reporting, project documentations and knowledge transfer are conducted to the satisfaction of the customers.

Deliverables

Project plan, scope of work, objectives and approach, as well as defining criteria for measurements of success.
Resource planning, development monitoring, escalation, budgeting etc.
A comprehensive project plan and schedule, with coordination on different resources to ensure the timely completion of a project.
Post delievery report, outlining learning points with recommendations for future improvements.

Methodology Description

Through years of experience, our professional services team has developed a proven service delivery methodology to achieve maximum efficiency and productivity for every customer engagement. The success of our service delivery is achieved with the following 4-step process: Assess, Design, Implement, Support.

Stage 1 - Assess

Our team works closely with the customer to evaluate and gather all requirements. Specific IT issues that need to be addressed are identified. During the assessment stage, we take a holistic view of your entire IT infrastuction. Coupled with our expertise in multiple domains and operating systems, we work towards a solution that is both state-of-the-art and one that takes into account the complexities of heterogeneous environments. When formulating the solution, we also take into account the factors such as ease of management, compliance and security requirements.

Deliverables

Technical Qualification: To qualify and verify the validility of the proposed solution to achieve customer requirements.
Preliminary conceptual diagram: 1st high-level diagram conceptual design of the proposed solution.
Requirements Studies: Defines the actions, deliverables, and milestones required to achieve customer acceptance.
Engagement Plan: The highest-level plan used to initially define the engagement activities. It serves as the project baseline.

Stage 2 - Design

After analyzing the customer business requirements and the existing environment, the team will come out with a detailed solution that is aligned with the key objectives. The design stage is an inclusive process with a high level of involvement from the customer. Key design considerations are discussed with the customer and feedbacks are more than welcome at this stage.

Finally, when the design is finalised, a document is submitted at the end of this phase. The content of the document includes the scope of work, architectural diagram, design considerations, build specifications and a broad schedule for deployment.

Deliverables

Statement of work: Describes the project and its objectives; identifies the delivery approach; lists key assumptions; defines roles and deliverables; maps a high-level project schedule.
Implementation Schedule: Defines implementation tasks, task owners, interdependencies and timelines.
Site Preparation: Pre-requisities, Site Planning and Installation activities required before implementation of project.
Interoperability guide: Verification of the detailed configuration information including: code levels, micro code, patch version, and other specific requirements for hardware and software components.
Architectural Diagram: A diagram that shows how the solution fits into the customer's infrastructure. Also shows how the various components in the solutions are logically or physically connected.
Build Specification: Document that includes product settings and configurations.

Stage 3 - Implement

During implementation, all risks and expected downtimes are made known to the customer. For critical systems in production, we provide a step-by-step guide on the steps we will be performing so that the customer may know the risks involved.

A rollback plan is also provided for critical activities such as migration. A backup of the current configuration is always taken before we perform any activity that requires changing the current configuration.

All implementation are carried out based on best practices from the principal vendors. However, we do recognize that all environments are unique and sometimes, we may need to deviate from the best practices to provide a best fit solution.

At the end of an implementation, we conduct a full knowledge transfer to the customers' adminitration supported by excellent and comprehensive documentation. Post-engagement, we remain fully available on a consulting basis, whether to answer routine questions or advise on upgrades and patches.

Deliverables

User Acceptance Test Plan: A test plan which is conducted with the client to test the expected behaviour and functionalities of the solution.
Training Documentation: Document showing how various settings and configurations for the solution can be changed.
Certificate of Completion: Customer acceptance of the solution.

Stage 4 - Support

If required, you may purchase support on your solutions from us. Our engineers are on standby 24/7 to meet the strictest of SLAs. Our commitment to you need it ensures that you are able to meet your business objectives. Our long-term commitment to your business success is further proof that we believe in our solutions and we will always stand by them.

Business Continuity

Our business continuity service is designed to protect your applications and data from the unexpected. Should any disaster strike, our solutions ensure that your environment is ready to recover applications and data at a remote site with minimal data loss. Depending on the Service Level Agreement (SLA) required, we will recommend the most cost-effection solution for your environment.

Even if you have an existing DR solution, you might like to evaluate your DR strategy from time to time. Customers often neglect the aspect that even minor changes to applications can cause your DR strategy to fail altogether. Also, data growth can significantly affect the time taken to perform a service failover and lead to failure in meeting your SLAs.

Service Description

To build a comprehensive DR solution to give confidence to the customer that should disaster strike, they will be able to fail over their services to the remote site within their SLAs.
To develop disaster recovery solutions, procedures and documentations to help you restore your applications at an alternate location after a catastrophic event.
Conducts a detail testing on the disaster recovery plan through the conduct of the DR exercise to validate and verify current disaster recovery strategies.

Deliverables

Design and implement disaster tolerant cluster and storage across geographically separated data centres.
Detailed disaster recovery procedures for the selected platforms.
Develop a disaster recovery test plan: Includes a detailed and comprehensive scenario testing and assignment of testing responsibility.
Simulate a disaster and carry out the DRP.
Detailed test analysis report with problem resolution strategy.
Provide a written report outlining our findings and recommendations for improvements.

Data Protection

This Implementation Service is designed to help you in planning and building your data protection environment by leveraging on existing or new investments in technology along with data protection best practices and procedures. Through our interaction with many customers, most issues that we encountered are due to inaccurate sizing and capacity growth planning from the onset. Through our expertise and conduct of a review on your existing backup strategy, data profile and backup infrastructure, we are able to very accurately predict the additional investments required to meet the overall objectives of your data protection strategy.

The Servtec team is also well versed in data protection technologies for your virtual machines environment. We are also skilled in the areas of scripting, off-host backup, deduplication and database backups. Our data protection implementation service incorporates planning, testing, and deployment thereby ensuring that the proposed solution fits your needs and performs effectively even in the most dynamic and complex environments.

Service Description

Assessment service to help customer fully understand their existing backup infrastructure and identify areas where improvements can be made to enhance the current data protection strategy.
Implementation service will leverage on the deliverables from the data protection assessment service. The implementation service includes:
Assessment phase to accurately size up the backup environment. Sizing includes capacity growth planning.
Ensuring the compatibility of all components in the backup environment.
Plan and design backup policies, schedules and data retentions to meet customer's objectives.
Perform implementation and testing of required hardware, software, and infrastructure required to support the new data protection solution

Deliverables

Current data protection infrastructure setup
Newly proposed data protection infrastructure
High level project plan to implement the proposed solution
Detailed design and documentations of the new data protection solution
Implementation planning includes rollout, data migration (if any), test and rollback plans
Installation of disk/tape device/library to be used by the backup software
Installation and configuration of backup software
Configuration documents
Knowledge transfer with training document that details the management of the new data protection solution

High Availability

When building a high availability solution, it is also important to note the business requirements and SLAs as these can affect the design of the solution altogether. In addition, it is crucial to note what we are protecting against in a high availability solution. In all our engagements, the Servtec team will conduct a pre-implementation study on: a) the objectives and requirements of the high availability solution, b) the applications we will be clustering and c) the hardware and infrastructure available and translate all these into a design that meets your business requirements.

If you have an existing HA solution, you might also like to engage our assessment service on your current HA strategy. Very often, even a slight change in resource or application configuration can affect the success of recovering of your applications in the event of a failure. Our assessment service takes a thorough look at all resource & resource group configuration, and their inter-dependencies to ensure that your HA strategy is sound.

Service Description

Implementation service to build a high availability solution for critical applications in order to meet customer's business requirements and SLAs.
Pre-implementation assessment to determine the business requirements and objectives of the clustering solution.
Pre-implementation study on the applications to be clustered and how the cluster fits into the existing IT infrastructure.
The implementation service ensures that the proposed high availability solution is capable to meet the organization's business requirements
Identify the risks and downtime involved if an existing solution is to be converted to a HA solution.
Assessment service to evaluate the current high availability solution on whether it is able to meet the customer's business requirements and SLAs. A report is formulated at the end of the service with recommendations on areas that can be improved.

Deliverables

Design and configuration document with architectural diagram.
Installation and configuration of high availability software. Setup of application resource groups, application resources, logical IP, shared storage and mount point resources. Create dependencies among resources.
Conduct functional acceptance tests to demonstrate that the high availability software is installed and configured according to your requirements. Also ensures that the HA solution meets the user's business requirements.
Optional operating guide for high availability solution.
To deliver a one-day, hands-on, on-site training session for administrators. Additional topics such as upgrades and patching procedures are also covered.

OS & Device Services

We provide the following installation and configuration services for most Operating Systems in the market:

Patching and upgrades of Operating Systems
Migration of filesystem data
Setting up of commonly used services: NTP, DNS, NIS/NIS+, Apache, Samba etc.
Security hardening of Operating systems using industrial standards (for e.g., CIS) or based on company's security / audit requirements.
OS scripting and cron job configuration
Performance review of systems through monitoring statistics on hardware resources such as CPU, memory and disks.

Service Description

Provide common OS implementation services for users.
Pre-implementation assessment to determine any risk and downtime required for performing the required activities.
Sanity check on the OS before carrying out any activity.
Implementating the required service with user acceptance test to verify the functionalities of configured components.

Deliverables

Implementation plan for activities that require major comfiguration changes to be made to the OS.
Change configuration document
For review related services, an audit or analysis report on the reviewed components.
User acceptance documents for activating and configuration of new OS services.

Storage Services

Our service professionals have extensive experiences in deploying many enterprise and mid-range storage products including:

Data Replication (Host-based / Storage-based)
Remote Replication (Host-based / Storage-based)
Deployment of Snapshots & Point-in-Time Copies
Data Migration (Host-based / Storage-based)
Storage Expansion
Storage Lifecycle Management
NAS Deployment (Host-based / Appliance based)
Data Archival
Storage Management (Provisioning, capacity and storage utlization monitoring)
Storage Virtualization (for more efficient use of physical resources)
SAN Fabric Migration
SAN Fabric Expansion (Switches / Directors Add-on)
SAN Devices Firmware Upgrade
SAN Topology Changes
SAN Security and Encryption

We are also well-versed in storage assessment and tuning. From our experiences, 8 out of 10 performance issues seen at the host end often points to a bottleneck on the storage unit. Performing a thorough performance assessment on the storage requires in-depth knowledge in its architecture as there are multiple components within a storage unit in which bottlenecks may occur. Engaging our storage assessment service allows you to pin-point the exact hot-spots with recommendations on how you can resolve the issues.

Service Description

Implementation for any of the above storage-related services. Services may include installation and configuration of host software.
Pre-implementation phase includes risk assessment on activites to be carried out
An activity plan with schedule is worked out for complicated activites such as data migration.
Sanity check and configuration backup for existing host or storage prior to any configuration changes.
Host level sanity check before and after implementation.
Performance assessment service to identify any bottleneck in a storage unit.

Deliverables

Configuration document with architectural diagrams related on hosts and storage.
Risk assessment and detailed procedures prior to implementation for high risk activities. Rollback and contigency plan are included if required.
User acceptance test document to verify the correct operation of host / storage after a configuration change.
Engineer standby for stability issues after a major configuration change.
Transfer of knowledge on current configuration to administrators. May include additional training on monitoring and management.
For assessment service, a detailed report with recommendations and resolutions for any issues identified in the storage unit.

Virtualization Services

Many companies have already jumped onto the virtualization bandwagon and it is time you consider doing so as well. Virtualization allows companies to consolidate multiple physical servers into a single physical server for better resource utlization. This also leads to lower cost of ownership as you save on energy costs.

These are the services that Servtec provides for customers on x86/x64 environments:

VMWare vSphere Setup & Configuration changes
Physical to Virtual Machine (P2V) Migration
Data Protection for VMs
VMWare ESX Server Upgrade
OS Installation for new VMs
For customers with Solaris Sparc environments, these are the services we provide:
Containers / LDOMs configuration for Solaris Sparc servers
High Availability for Containers
Solaris 8/9 to containers migration
We also perform deployment of Oracle VMs for customers interested in running their RACs on virtual machines.

Service Description

Implementation for any of the above virtualization-related services.
Pre-implementation phase includes risk assessment on activites to be carried out.
An activity plan with schedule is worked out for migration-related activities.
Full data backup prior to migration-related activities.
All activities and steps carried out during actual implementation are documented for future references

Deliverables

Configuration document with architectural diagrams.
Risk assessment and detailed procedures prior to migration activities. Rollback and contigency plan are also included.
User acceptance test document to verify the correct operation of servers after a configuration change or new setup.
Engineer standby for stability issues after migration.
Transfer of knowledge on current configuration to administrators. May include additional training on monitoring and management.