Integrator Helps Retailer Find A New Home For Its Online Applications

Colocations are secure infrastructure providers that house hardware, software, and connections for Internet-based businesses. They offer superb connectivity along with assault and natural disaster protection, but what if the infrastructure provider goes out of business? That's what happened to Hifi.com, the Internet arm of Cambridge SoundWorks (Newton, MA), a manufacturer and direct marketer of high-performance stereo and home theater products. In addition to its online presence, Cambridge SoundWorks has 27 retail locations in New England and the San Francisco Bay area.

A Move With No Time For Downtime
The soon to be defunct ASP held the key to Hifi.com's online order operations. As such, Cambridge SoundWorks needed to move its Hifi.com operations to a new colocation in a very short period of time and did not want to incur any loss of revenue from downtime. When the crisis developed, Cambridge SoundWork's CIO remembered Corporate Technologies, an integrator he had worked with when he was employed by another company. Based on this prior relationship, Corporate Technologies had already made a good impression. But, even though it was sure it had the job, Corporate Technologies put together a contract that allowed its customer to back out if the integrator did not finish the solution satisfactorily within the timeframe.

Corporate Technologies designed a new architecture, implemented the solution, and oversaw the transition to a new infrastructure provider, which was geographically removed, but in the same state. The new system would include server/host systems running on a UNIX operating system and 10 different networking technologies.

"We designed the new system from the networking components all the way through to the database and transaction processing, " said Kurt Rosenfeld, director of systems engineering. "The new system was designed to withstand failure at any point in the architecture and still continue operations."

The new system included third-party application software, which the consumer sees on the Web site. Eight Sun UNIX servers, two Sun storage devices, load balancing switches, and firewalls were other components that went into the new system. Having two firewalls provided security of the infrastructure from malicious attack from the Internet by ensuring that hardware or software failure wouldn't bring the system down.

Software Plays Big Role
The software component of the new installation was significant. This included three VERITAS (Mountain View, CA) products - Foundation Suite, NetBackup, and Cluster Server. The VERITAS products provided high availability operation of the backend operation. It manages all access to the disk storage, provides system startup and recovery, and allows for reconfiguration without taking the system down. It also allows a hot backup mode, which allows tape backup without taking the system down. This alleviates the worry of changes to the system during the backup resulting in an incorrect backup copy.

The installation involved 10 days of design, three weeks of installation, and two weeks of testing. Rosenfeld said the expertise that was necessary to make the new system work was not a problem, but completing the project within a short timeframe was a challenge.

"With so many moving parts, we needed to get implemented and coordinated all at once," said Rosenfeld. "This involved network, Web server, applications server, and data base design." It also required connectivity to the Internet, configuring the VERITAS software. The old site had to remain active and functional until the moment the new site was ready to go, and it also had to be able to reclaim the processing responsibility if the new site didn't work.

An internally-developed software that allows for rapid builder systems helped Corporate Technologies complete the job. The program applies a series of automated software installations without engineer guidance. It can build multiple systems at once, and it applies a series of best practices for configuration.

The project was completed before the short deadline, and the system has stayed up and running. The old site is just a memory now, and Hifi.com continues to process large volumes of data while maintaining 99.999% uptime.