Norseman Gold Head Office is in Perth and operates Australia’s longest continuously running gold mining operation, having produced over 5.5 million ounces of gold over a period of more than 65 years from its Norseman Operations 725Km East of Perth.

Multipro has been providing IT services to Norseman Gold since January 2008. As part of that service, Multipro identified issues with the previous IT infrastructure. These issues represented a significant risk of failure and imposed limits on performance and capacity which were adversely affecting business operations.

The project addressed the following items for Norseman Gold:

• Network - Review key network elements, resulting in upgrade of Core LAN to Gigabit with Layer 3 switching. Network topology changed to improve performance, reliability and scalability.
• Server Virtualisation - Replace the mixed server hardware systems at Norseman and Perth with new Tier 1 HP servers running VMware ESX and hosting multiple virtual servers
• Storage Area Network - Implement a NetApp Storage Area Network at Norseman
• Email Migration - Migrate the Lotus Domino 6.5 environment to Microsoft Exchange 2007 and convert all Lotus Notes mail clients to Microsoft Outlook
• Network Security & Performance - Replace the current single email gateway with two Fortimail email security appliances and upgrade inter-site and VPN communications capacity and security.
• SQL Upgrade - Upgrade the core Norseman Microsoft SQL database server version and appropriately resource the server.
• Back Up - Update the Backup software, process and establish ongoing support
• PC’s – Replacement Program for the PC/Workstation Fleet
• Web Access - Establish web access control and reporting

The following benefits were realised:

• Implementation of a Storage Area Network (SAN) and VMware Infrastructure provided a reliable and scalable infrastructure to allow for storage expansion while virtualisation of the servers has dramatically improved server reliability by offering enterprise features such as high availability and dynamic load balancing.
• Standardisation of server hardware to a Tier 1 vendor improved the overall reliability of services.
• The Backup solution provides a robust element of Business Continuity and ensures compliance with Governance requirements.
• Migration of the Email System from Lotus Domino/Notes to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook reduced ongoing administration and support costs through improved server integration (with the existing Microsoft environment) and improved user productivity through improved desktop application integration (with MS Office) and greater application familiarity for users.
• Latency and speed in the core LAN/WAN network has improved. Firewalls are providing simplified, improved reporting and better filtering of malicious content into the network.
• One device in each site is providing fault tolerant email security. Users are able to manage their own spam settings reducing administration burden and improving user satisfaction.
• The standardisation of PC’s ensures PC’s are fit for purpose and has reduced the time to deploy and restore PC’s, improving user productivity.