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Victorias Milling Company improved its sugar mills by adopting Charon and increasing the performance of its AlphaServers.
Victorias Milling Company felt that its AlphaServers showed less stability, with recurrent breakdowns during maintenance work. The problem persisted despite several measures.
In less than a day, migration was completed, and Charon-AXP was working as expected. The next day was spent in testing the system, which proved its operational viability.
Victorias Milling Company is committed to providing the highest quality products and services for all its stakeholders, from planters to millers, sugar traders, and consumers. Consequently, its operations are highly developed, highly mechanized, and highly computerized. An efficient, stable, and reliable IT system is critical for the mill to keep running smoothly around the clock. For almost a decade, VMC’s system was based on the popular HP AlphaServer DS20 and DS20E running on Tru64 Unix. The servers controlled all the company’s sugar-production applications, which were developed on Progress software.
After running smoothly for many years, the AlphaServers were beginning to show signs of instability, with more frequent breakdowns during maintenance. Fortunately, these occurred mainly during the off-season. To overcome these problems, VMC started to investigate several options, including the purchase of a factory-refurbished AlphaServer, a hardware maintenance agreement with a local company, and the migration of the legacy system to SAP. The challenge was to find a cost-effective solution that would ensure a smooth migration without disrupting operations.
The search for the right solution was a long and carefully considered process. VMC started by testing Stromasys’s Charon cross-platform virtualization software. They were impressed by the CHARON-AXP DS20’s ability to meet the needs of their crucial systems, as well as the ease of integration and migration. Charon enabled VMC’s legacy hardware to be replaced by new, Intel-based servers running Windows Server.
Although initial estimates indicated that it would be two years before VMC saw a return on its IT investment, after taking into account the risk that would have resulted from the old AlphaServers breaking down, it became clear that the virtualization project would pay for itself. At that point, VMC was certain that it had found the solution it was looking for.
“What impressed us most about the Stromasys CHARON-AXP cross-platform virtualization software was its ease of integration and deployment. Since our AlphaServers ran one of our most important systems, we needed the new system to be immediately operational. The migration was carried out smoothly and way ahead of schedule. This is certainly one of the best and most cost-effective IT programs we have ever implemented,” said Llowen Miraflor, VMC’s IT manager.
The smooth and speedy migration process was attributable largely to careful preparation by Stromasys. Before implementing, Stromasys met with VMC and its IT partners, Finsoft and Macrologic. Stromasys personnel were on hand during the entire migration process, which was completed within a day. The following day was spent on testing and observing the new system, which performed without a glitch.
With Stromasys CHARON-AXP, VMC no longer needs to worry about its AlphaServers and the IT team can now focus on other important tasks. “After the Stromasys CHARON-AXP was installed, it simply continued to run efficiently on its own,” says Miraflor. “Based on our experience with CHARON-AXP, we would certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to get the most out of their servers.”