Red Hat and BakBone help Contegix support 400% growth rate

Industry: Hosting services

Geography: St. Louis, MO

Opportunity: Build a hosting business providing excellent value, support, and low prices; implement scalable backup and restoration solution that could support phenomenal growth rates

Migration Path: Novell Linux Enterprise SUSE to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux; Red Hat Global File System and Cluster Suite; Red Hat Network; JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Hibernate; MySQL, Oracle, and Postgres databases; BakBone NetVault: Backup

Hardware: Dell PowerEdge Series servers

Benefits: Helped achieve phenomenal customer growth rates by facilitating sales and customer support and supporting scalability of new backup and restoration system

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Background
Established in 2001, Contegix LLC is a premier provider of managed hosting and advanced connectivity solutions that simplify network and data center operations and enable customers to focus on business rather than infrastructure management. From comprehensive managed hosting solutions to colocation and managed applications, Contegix offers a range of services to meet the unique needs of each small, medium-size, and Fortune 100 customer. The company is known for its Beyond Managed Hosting® services, which provide customers with a virtual extension to their IT departments— complete with state-of-the-art infrastructure and experts who specialize in server administration.

Opportunity

When Contegix decided to offer hosting services in 2003, the company required an enterprise-class, affordable Linux solution from the right vendor. “Hosting customers expect the utmost network reliability and protection from their service providers, and we wanted to create a completely worry-free data center experience for them. The operating system we chose would play a key role in that experience,” said Matthew Porter, CEO of Contegix. Within a few years of deploying Red Hat, the company is now growing between 300 and 400% annually. To provide continued reliability and uptime for its quickly expanding customer base, Contegix required a more scalable backup and recovery solution. “Although we were running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on 99% of our servers, our backup solution ran on Novell’s Linux Enterprise SUSE, which was difficult to administer. We knew we needed to find a backup solution that ran on Red Hat,” said Porter.

Solution

To help build its hosting business initially, Contegix chose Red Hat for its expert Linux knowledge and responsiveness to customer needs. “Red Hat really understands the hosting market and meets our customers’ needs for specific services such as indemnification protection. In addition, Red Hat’s subscription model is based on number of servers not license fees, enabling us to offer the best pricing to our customers,” said Porter. When it was time to find a new backup solution earlier this year, Red Hat played a huge role in the decision. “We chose BakBone because it enabled maximum scalability, provided excellent support, and offered Red Hat ready software,” he said.

BakBone worked closely with Contegix to design and implement a backup and restoration solution around its NetVault: Backup software, ensuring the new deployment was up and running within ten days. The choice to use BakBone enabled Contegix to transition its backup servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and improve system administration. “By implementing Red Hat Global File System and Cluster Suite we were able to overcome the clustering and file system issues we experienced with SUSE. Plus, Red Hat supports SAN as well as Fibre Channel SCSI devices, simplifying our backup processes even further,” said Porter.

Contegix operates thousands of Dell PowerEdge Series servers running RHEL 3, 4, and 5 and a variety of MySQL, Oracle, and Postgres databases. Three backup servers run the BakBone NetVault: Backup solution. Many customers also run a range of JBoss solutions including JBoss 3 and up and Hibernate on Contegix managed servers.

In addition, Contegix fully utilizes all Red Hat services including Red Hat Network, Red Hat Exchange, and the Red Hat Hosting Program. Red Hat Network notifies Contegix of new RHEL updates and patches and facilitates managing upgrades and configuration changes to customer servers. “Red Hat Exchange informs us of new applications tested on RHEL and delivers them through Red Hat Network. We then offer those applications to our customers as part of their fixed monthly cost. Thanks to the Red Hat Hosting Program, which specifically designed a subscription model for our needs, our customers pay a low price, yet receive extra value,” said Porter.

Benefits

Red Hat has helped Contegix cultivate its commitment to excellent customer support since the start of the company. “We answer every support ticket in five minutes, so it’s critical that the vendors we choose have the same level of commitment to us. Red Hat has always provided the support we needed when we needed it,” said Porter. With the company’s rapid growth, Red Hat’s understanding of the hosting business has proven even more essential. “Every one of our customers is unique, so the support experience of our vendors has to be very broad. Red Hat and BakBone are not only responsive, but also have a deep understanding of a wide variety of user environments, helping us resolve even the most difficult technical issues,” he said.

Red Hat plays a significant role in expediting the Contegix sales process. Most engineers are familiar with the reliability and support benefits of working with Red Hat, alleviating any concerns they might have regarding the management of their infrastructures. In addition, Red Hat’s wide network of certified vendors reassures customers that their applications will work smoothly with RHEL. Red Hat also provides ready-made FAQs and RFPs, which Contegix uses in its sales process when necessary. “Showing customers we use Red Hat makes for an easy sale. They know Red Hat means lower costs and better solutions for them,” he said.

Over the last four years, Red Hat has helped Contegix grow its customer base at phenomenal rates. “Red Hat enabled us to grow unbelievably fast by providing customers continuously with new solutions at low prices. We couldn’t have achieved our 400% annual growth rate without Red Hat,” said Porter. Today, the new backup system deployment provides Contegix with the scalability it needs to support continued growth. “Before our Red Hat-BakBone implementation, we were spending more than 40 hours per week managing backups and recoveries. The new system speeded restoration time by five times and eliminated the need to hire an additional engineer,” he said. In the future, Contegix plans to open its first data center outside of St. Louis, populating its servers with Red Hat and BakBone solutions. “We love Red Hat and BakBone,” said Porter.