The company's Novell Netware client/server network hadn't always been so troublesome. In a client/server setup, all the key files are stored on a "server," which is essentially a desktop on steroids. Employees work on the files locally, on their own computers (or "clients"), but save them on the server. The server can also carry out numerous other officewide functions, such as handling E-mail, backing up files, and hosting additional applications. As you might imagine, a server can receive a lot of use -- though it often may bear no visible signs of wear and tear. Unfortunately for Kirkegaard & Associates, says company associate Scott Pfeiffer, an acoustics expert and computer maven whom Kirkegaard eventually turned to for IT advice, the consultant who'd set up the company's network had skimped on the server: he'd used a Dell Optiplex, which is designed to be a desktop computer, instead of using a more robust model.
Although using a desktop computer as a server is not unreasonable if you've got a limited budget, it generally means less RAM and a weaker power supply and cooling system. With Kirkegaard & Associates' server crammed with five hard drives instead of the two it could optimally handle, says Pfeiffer, the cooling system was definitely being stressed.
Sure enough, the server -- specifically, the hard drive that housed the company's network software -- overheated and failed about a year after it was installed. Downtime was not supposed to be an issue, though, because the hard drive was mirrored, which meant that an exact replica of the software ensconced on it, including all changes and updates, was being maintained, in real time, on another hard drive. But tell that to the Optiplex. The first time the server failed, in 1996, says Pfeiffer, a new consultant concluded that the system had never been properly mirrored in the first place. The second time it failed -- more than two years later -- the mirroring was intact but the company had to call in yet a third consultant to get it started again. And the third time -- well, Kirkegaard wasn't about to let it happen a third time. "From an overall economic standpoint, it was time for us to make the move," he says. The president was ready to begin a major search to find long-term consulting help to upgrade the entire network.
Having learned firsthand not to go on paper credentials alone, Pfeiffer decided to take a kind of test approach in assessing IT talent. "The idea was to bring in a consultant and get him to work on a small-project-to-small-project basis," says Pfeiffer, referring to such projects as adding a color printer and fixing a computer that constantly crashed. "Once we were confident that he was good at what he did, we would then consider him for the big work." The added benefit was that consultants could learn about the system while they were doing their job, so that a costly needs analysis could be eliminated.
"Every consultant we talked to said that he wanted to conduct a needs analysis, which would cost us about $2,500. But we didn't want to spend a few thousand dollars to find out that we didn't like the consultant or his recommendations," says Pfeiffer. Three consulting companies and several projects later, Pfeiffer found a good fit with the people at EMO Computer Products, a computer-services company based in Naperville, Ill.
To get going, Pfeiffer bought the hardware setup that had been recommended by EMO: a Hewlett-Packard NetServer (it holds 256MB of RAM compared with the maximum 128MB of the Dell desktop) that was equipped with level 5 of redundant array of independent disks, or RAID. With RAID, a real-time copy of a hard drive is "striped," or duplicated across multiple hard drives, so that any one hard drive can completely fail and the server will continue to work without a hitch. Moreover, the hard drives were "hot swappable," which meant that any of them could be pulled out of the server without first having to shut the thing down. Most important, the server had a cooling system that was equipped to cool up to 12 drives.
Pfeiffer was able to save $1,500 to $2,000 on the equipment by going through CDW, based in Vernon Hills, Ill., a mail-order computer reseller with much greater buying power than EMO. He bought the equipment and had it shipped to EMO's offices.
Now he was ready to wrestle with software choices. The 3.12 version of Novell Netware that the company was running couldn't be easily maintained remotely and was Y2K incompatible. Pfeiffer considered two options: getting a later version of the Novell software (he'd already nixed the idea of installing patches) or switching over to the popular Microsoft NT platform. "The world said NT, but my experience with Novell was so good -- the software hadn't failed once during the past four years -- that I was reluctant to change," he explains. When EMO dug up a small-business version of the Novell software -- Netware 4.2 -- that addressed the company's concerns and was less costly to implement than either NT or the full-blown upgrade of Netware, Pfeiffer decided to stick with what was tried and true. EMO then began installing the system, a process that took two months.
All told, Kirkegaard & Associates spent about $16,000 on the upgrade, with a little more than half of that amount going for equipment from CDW. (Pfeiffer also bought a superfast digital-linear-tape, or DLT, drive to replace the company's DAT backup drive.) The rest went for software and services from EMO.
As of this writing, the new network has been in place for only five months. But the improvements in productivity at the company have been noteworthy. For starters, the increased capacity of the server means that it has to be cleaned out far less often, leaving staff members more time to concentrate on their clients. "Before, everyone was slowed down since they had to be involved in the decision making as to which files would be deleted or would stay," says Kirkegaard. And, of course, there's the peace of mind that the new server brings.
Mie-Yun Lee is the editorial director and founder of BuyersZone, an Internet-buying service that features expert purchasing advice and tools for small and midsize businesses. You can conduct your own search for a network at www.buyerszone.com/network/find_itp. Sandra Boncek contributed to this article.
