Storage Technologies
E-mail Keeps Fuel Flowing
Maintenance tool provides management
capabilities for Exchange environment.
For Port Consolidated, a leading distributor
of high-quality motor fuels, lubricants and
additives for markets that include Florida,
the Caribbean and Latin America, e-mail is
not merely a convenient way of
communicating, it is at the center of its
business, and critical to the company’s
profitability.
For more than 45 years, Port Consolidated has been delivering millions of
gallons of fuel each month to its customers in such diverse industries as
industrial manufacturing, marine, automotive, aircraft and agriculture. Whether
as regular, recurring scheduled deliveries or just-in-time short orders, Port
Consolidated’s state-of-the-art fleet gets the fuel to its customers when they
need it, where they need it, from any of its six facilities that span Florida
from Miami to Jacksonville to Tampa.
Left unchecked, Exchange database growth,
errors and overall degradation impair system
performance and stability.
Port Consolidated’s commitment to
customer satisfaction is not just about
delivering high-quality, competitively
priced products. Prompt, courteous,
error-free delivery also is important. With
e-mail the principal means of communication
with clients for order placement,
modification and confirmation, there is no
room for e-mail data loss or system
downtime.
More than 75 of Port Consolidated’s 200
employees have e-mail accounts they use to
conduct business on the company’s Microsoft
Exchange Server system. Those users access
the corporate Exchange server to send and
receive e-mail from their office
workstations in any of the company’s six
office locations, from home offices or from
the road, via notebook computers. The
company’s main 3-GHz server, with dual Intel
Xeon processors and 4 GB RAM, runs Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 with Microsoft Exchange
2003, and holds the Exchange store.
Because redundancy, fault tolerance and
fail safety are critical, the server
connects to a Level 5 RAID system with
high-speed SCSI hard drives that spin at
15,000 RPM. The RAID system has multiple
fail-safe features, as well, including dual
power supplies, to ensure reliability and
uptime.
Remote workers connect to the server
across the Internet, by way of a virtual
private network. The field sales people
initiate their connections from wherever
they happen to be, via notebook computers
that use LaptopConnect service from AT&T or
broadband access from Verizon Wireless. For
them, reliable inbound and outbound e-mail
service from the home office server ensures
that orders and fulfillment instructions are
sent and responded to in a timely manner.
Timeliness not only means that customers
get critical fuel deliveries on time, it
also ensures that the sales team has the
correct pricing for the day’s bids. Prices
for the constantly fluctuating commodity
products that Port Consolidated sells are
sent via e-mail at 5 p.m. each day, so
getting that e-mail to every member of the
sales team is essential, or customers could
be quoted the wrong prices.
“The first thing that I knew we had to
do, once we had this highly efficient
Microsoft Exchange-based system in place,
was to get some third-party management
tools,†says Richard Ramcharitar, head of IT
for Port Consolidated and chief technology
officer for Computer Solutions Group, the
company that Port Consolidated contracts
with for IT management. “Microsoft doesn’t
provide nearly enough tools to manage an
Exchange environment.â€
Database health has always been the
weakest link in most Exchange environments.
Left unchecked, Exchange database growth,
errors and overall degradation impair system
performance and stability, he says, as well
as the ability to maintain effective backup
and recovery operations.
Ramcharitar began the search for a
product that he says could serve as the
“eyes inside the Exchange store.†As the
search concluded, Ramcharitar narrowed the
choices to two solutions, finally choosing
Lucid8’s GOexchange.
“We had experience with other Exchange
tools, and looked at a few new ones as we
set this system up,†he explains. “We chose
GOexchange because it looks into the data
store and shows us what’s in there. Without
it, we just had no way of knowing when
Exchange would crash. GOexchange logs
performance statistics, sends warnings about
potential problems and inconsistencies, and
saves database disk space.â€
GOexchange Preventive Maintenance from
Lucid8 automates maintenance for Microsoft
Exchange 5.5, 2000 and 2003. Designed to
optimize the performance of Exchange
servers–and the critical e-mail, calendaring
and other personal productivity tools that
depend on them–GOexchange comes with
built-in maintenance routines that help
prevent costly data loss or server failure.
GOexchange saves time for Ramcharitar by
running automatic expert preventive
maintenance routines to optimize the
system–both in terms of space and of
performance–and minimizes downtime,
ultimately preventing crashes that result
from poorly maintained, unstable and
inefficient databases. Its ability to see
into the Port Consolidated MS Exchange
database and its functions facilitates
checking warnings and correcting errors.
Because it re-indexes and defragments the
database, it permanently removes white space
and deleted items to free up disk space.
GOexchange works to remove hidden,
accumulating database errors to increase
disk space and rebuild indexes, Ramcharitar
adds, while optimizing the Exchange
database. On average, he says it reduces
Microsoft Exchange storage requirements by
30 to 55 percent, and, when used with a
third-party e-mail archiving solution, the
storage savings can reach more than 90
percent.
The end result for Port Consolidated is
increased performance and stability. Since
GOexchange was installed, Port
Consolidated’s e-mail system has been
crash-free. “We implemented GOexchange just
a few months after we got our mail server,
so we’ve maintained a healthy Exchange
environment ever since,†comments
Ramcharitar. “While our Exchange database is
growing each day, GOexchange helps me
recover about five gigabits of storage each
year.â€
For more information from Lucid8:
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