One of the mission statements that Aberdeen displays prominently on its Web site (www.aberdeeninc.com) is “Perfecting the science of scalability. Because one size does not fit all.” Put another way, Aberdeen has the experience, personnel, and ability to assist any company with its individual server and storage needs regardless of its size.
It’s this capability that G & G Squared Enterprises (www.gdickinson.com) discovered when it set out to replace its existing bank of aging servers and open the company to the new market of virtual data centers, says G & G CEO George Dickinson II.
Going Virtual
Originally operating as a private Web hosting provider for individuals and select companies, G & G took its offerings public in 2005. Today, Dickinson describes G & G as providing customers a “place where small businesses are encouraged to develop their Web potential through the use of Web hosting technology” and establish a Web experience to increase their Web awareness and audiences.
Dickinson says the company’s customer base ranges “from the little mom-and-pop shops to medium-sized business.”
In early 2011, the company found itself in need of upgrading its servers. Before ultimately selecting products from Aberdeen to fill its needs, G & G conducted research that involved comparing servers and storage servers from several other well-known competitors. “When comparing all systems configured the same, Aberdeen was the lowest price,” Dickinson says. After speaking with Aberdeen and downloading all the spec sheets, the company purchased its equipment from Aberdeen in April 2011.
G & G purchased an AberNAS 167LX NAS from Aberdeen’s AberNAS 160LX Series, which includes models based on Intel’s quad-core Nehalem Xeon E5506 platform. The models also include 3GB of ECC DDR3 memory, four RAID-optimized (0, 1, 5, 6) and hot-swappable SATA 3Gbps drives, and a SAS expansion port that enables connecting to various Aberdeen XDAS storage models.
Suitable for small businesses on up to high-end IT environments, the 1U VMware-certified, Linux-based (64-bit, enterprise-class), and iSCSI/IP SAN ready AberNAS 160LX Series models range from 2TB to 12TB storage included.
G & G also purchased an Aberdeen Stirling 56T Mini 1U Rack, a SuperServer 6015V-MRB Mini-1U Rack Dual Xeon server based on Intel Nehalem processors and offering up to 16GB of ECC FBDIMM DDR2 memory. Dickinson says the process from unboxing to implementing the new equipment only took about an hour and a half. And the products have “exceeded the planned project,” he says, something that has enabled G & G to open itself up for new projects in coming years.
A Warranty That Entices
Beyond Aberdeen’s experience, Dickinson says, he was also enticed by the standard five-year warranty Aberdeen offers, the off-the-shelf replacement parts provided, and its designation as a VMware-certified partner—all of which are offered at a “fraction of the cost of competitors,” Dickinson says. “After doing years’ worth of researching,” he says, Aberdeen was “exactly what the company needed” to complete its virtualization project.
It was the five-year warranty, however, that “was the first thing that enticed me,” Dickinson says. Aberdeen provides the warranty with all its fully configured rackmount servers, including preconfigured Stirling servers and custom-designed servers, warranting the models from the date they’re shipped to be free of material defects and covering workmanship defects for the product’s lifetime.
In addition, Dickinson says, “The support team is great. I have not had any issues with the equipment.” And, he says, G & G is “enjoying the added space and lowered utility bills” it has experienced since its purchase.
