Balancing the Load

Software vendors specializing in virtual computing solutions are betting that retail organizations will embrace a “less-is-more” view of their IT infrastructures.

For retailers, IT virtualization can put a dent in costly hardware deployments and upgrades, placing organizations in the enviable position of achieving significant cost savings through centralized application and desktop management while improving security and performance. In a virtual computing environment, organizations, in effect, farm out parts of the hardware function.

Fayetteville, N.C.-based apparel manufacturer and direct-to-consumer retailer M.J. Soffe embraced virtualization as a key component of the order entry and management enterprise resource planning project encompassing its 300-desktop computer environment.

“What we didn’t want to do is go around and do hardware upgrades on all of our desktops to get up to par to run client applications,” says Ian Thieme, IT infrastructure manager for the wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Apparel, which makes and sells branded and private-label activewear, athleticwear and headwear to specialty shops, department stores, mid-tier retailers and sporting goods stores.

Thieme says Soffe approached virtualization from a “terminal services perspective,” wherein 40 to 60 users would be connected to any one of five terminal servers. In such a configuration, Thieme needed assurance that IT resources dedicated to each of the terminal servers would be in balance: If too many users were logged into one server, slowdowns could occur.

Soffe turned to 2X Software, a privately held developer in the server-based computing market. Headquartered in Malta with U.S. offices in Addison, Texas, 2X deployed a centralized load-balancing server to each Soffe terminal server to coordinate the resources required by the desktops.

Smart computing
As a component of IT virtualization, resource-based load balancing allows for the native distribution of resources on each of the terminal servers, based on usage. The load-balancing server retrieves information about the terminal servers’ usage before establishing the connection, and is able to determine the appropriate load requirements. Load balancing can also determine in advance if a user has a disconnected session on any of the servers and can reconnect the user to the right server.

Monitoring capabilities of the 2X product made administration more efficient as well, Thieme says.

“The one thing we want to do is keep our desktops, which we have had in place the last three or four years,” says Thieme, whose testing and implementation program for the ERP project began in mid-2007 with full deployment a year later. “We wanted to put all our processing power into the back-end system versus putting the processing power on the desktop side.”

Reporting outlines which desktops are connected to the terminal servers during given periods and when a terminal server might be having operational problems, such as when memory is too low or central processing units require adjusting.

Thieme also appreciates that, in a virtual computing environment, updating custom software applications on the enterprise can be achieved centrally. “It made sense for us that if we did an application upgrade on five terminal servers, that would save us the time of having to go out and touch 300 desktops by hand,” he says. “It’s allowed us to publish updates a lot quicker than it would in a traditional client-server world.”