Sun assisted in sizing the company's needs. HNS took Sun's recommendation to install Sun Enterprise TM 3000 servers or the two largest facilities, each of which has approximately 1000 users, and Ultra TM 2 servers for three smaller facilities of 400 to 500 users each. They also equipped all the servers with Sun storage, including a Sun StorEdge TM A5000 disk array at headquarters. All installations went smoothly, according to Gray. Immediately HNS saw profound improvements.
Reliability is excellent.
Performance is good even when traffic is high, and we know we can easily accommodate a lot more users than we have today. Gray's group of only four system administrators is tasked with supporting the messaging and Web application activities of all 4,000 HNS engineers and other employees. Keeping up with the maladies of the previous environment used to be a full time burden. Now however, with only one very stable environment to support instead of several unstable ones, they have time to develop applications and conduct research. They have been helpful in planning the growth of our network, such as the step we're engaged in now to equip our sixth facility with a Sun Enterprise 450 server.