Case Study

COMPANY SECTOR:
Agricultural

Bernard Matthews Farms

Bernard Matthews gets secure backup with NETGEAR ReadyNAS 3200

COMPANY:
Bernard Matthews

CHALLENGE:
The company was undergoing an overhaul of its IT systems to ensure maximum value and to simplify the amount of technology within the company, including consolidating server and storage systems while looking to improve costs around its backup processes.

SOLUTION:
2 x RNRX4420-100EUS NETGEAR ReadyNAS 2100 8TB 1 x RNRX4410-100EUS NETGEAR ReadyNAS 2100 4TB 1 x RN12P0610-100EUS NETGEAR ReadyNAS 3200 6TB 1 x RN12P1210-100EUS NETGEAR ReadyNAS 3200 12TB

Background:
Bernard Matthews Farms is headquartered near Norwich in Norfolk and employs just over 2,000 people across East Anglia. The company rears and produces turkeys and turkey-based products for sale in the UK. Bernard Matthews Farms is a subsidiary of Bernard Matthews Group, which also consists of Saga Foods in Hungary, Lincs Turkeys in Lincolnshire, and Bernard Matthews Oldenburg in Germany. Bernard Matthews launched his business in 1950 with just 20 eggs and a second-hand incubator. The company is now the largest turkey farmer in the UK, rearing and farming over seven million turkeys each year at its farms in Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire. Bernard Matthews turkey is Quality British Turkey (QBT) and Assured Food Standards (Red Tractor) certified and the companys farming practices are also in line with the Farm Animal Welfare Councils Five Freedoms. The firms also provides UK retailers and the pub, restaurant and wider foodservice market, with a wide range of turkey products, appearing in supermarkets under their own brand, on menus in schools, in gastropubs and in leading hotel groups.

Bernard Matthews needed a more centralised approach to its technology, while at the same time reducing the cost and time it required.
Donald Thompsett Sales Director, Network Technologies

Situation:
As an organisation, Bernard Matthews has been through a transition over the past several years, rebranding as a healthy option to other types of meat and employing the services of a celebrity chef to help boost its cause. Alongside this rebranding, the firms IT department has also been through a shift; server sprawl and server management was draining the resources of the IT staff for day-to-day fire fighting, rather than technology helping to move the business forward.

By simply increasing the number of servers they were using each time the company required additional applications or data storage, not only were they paying for the additional physical space, they were also wasting valuable management time. Multiple servers require a bigger footprint as well as more cooling systems. As the support contract renewal date for Bernard Matthews multiple file and storage servers drew nearer, the company began to consider an alternative method for its IT infrastructure. Our old servers were expensive to maintain and it would have been financially prohibitive for us to buy new like-for-like servers for our requirements, said Darrell Rundle, IT Support Manager at Bernard Matthews. We increasingly realised we needed to think differently about our approach.

We increasingly realised we needed to think differently about our approach.

Darrell Rundle IT Support Manager, Bernard Matthews

Impact:
Bernard Matthews has now reduced its servers from more than 40 to just two virtual hosts with shared storage and disk-based backup, resulting in significantly less management time. Less time is spent maintaining the old servers so the IT team are now available to be more innovative with their technology and continue their project of simplification. This server consolidation also means the company is saving costs on heating and cooling numerous servers, and also on the support contracts required to maintain them. Bernard Matthews now has peace of mind that its previous aging storage technology has been replaced by reliable, affordable and simple ReadyNAS systems, including its centralised backup console and additional security features. We were fast running out of storage space and we know costs would be a challenge if we wanted to continue our previous infrastructure. Now we have a much easier-tomanage system that allows us to do everything we need to and for a price our CFO found more than acceptable, said Rundle.

Resolution:
Bernard Matthews engaged with trusted NETGEAR reseller Network Technologies & Associates to help it resolve its technology challenges. The company decided to replace its NetApp FAS270, NAS file storage system with two NETGEAR ReadyNAS 3200 network storage systems. The devices are connected via iSCSI to Bernard Matthews Windows Server 2008 R2 file servers. The firm also now has two virtual host servers that are backed up at the firms remote office in Suffolk using iSCSI/NFS on two additional ReadyNAS 2100s which are also used to run low priority virtual machines. Predominantly, Bernard Matthews use the ReadyNAS equipment for backup and storage, for virtualisation and the NETGEAR ReadyNAS 2100 for virtual machines. According to the company, the NETGEAR devices give the IT department all the functionality they need, but at a much lower cost, both in terms of hardware and support, than the NetApp systems. Bernard Matthews is also expanding the project as part of a bid to simplify its wider technology infrastructure, involving consolidating other application servers and increasing levels of virtualisation. The complexity of managing multiple servers, combined with the aging technology and support contracts meant that Bernard Matthews needed a more centralised approach to its technology, while at the same time reducing the cost and man hours it required, said Donald Thompsett, Sales Director at Network Technologies.

Now we have a much easierto-manage system that allows us to do everything we need to.
Darrell Rundle IT Support Manager, Bernard Matthews

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