CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
VLCM and Microsoft Azure Help Drive Fun Town RV to Success
Rapid growth is often idealized, yet it brings unique complexities, especially when an IT infrastructure lags behind the pace of expansion. This is the situation for Fun Town RV, a swiftly growing RV dealer confronting the intricacies of scaling up efficiently. In just thirteen years since being established, Fun Town RV has expanded from a one-location operation to a 22-site enterprise across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, and Indiana. Tasked with managing this growth is a small IT department responsible for nearly 1,000 users across these locations. The shortcomings of their on-premises servers were becoming increasingly evident and difficult to manage.
As Fun Town RV's footprint grew, so did the strain on its IT resources. Scaling became an urgent concern, matched by the need for stronger disaster recovery measures and better collaboration among geographically dispersed teams. It was clear that a transition to the cloud was not just an option but a necessity for sustaining the company's momentum and operational efficiency.
“Fun Town RV had a large number of locations across North America all being backhauled to their data center location, where several servers were operating,” comments Mark Summers, a Systems Engineer at VLCM, “This created a single point of failure and required management of a legacy data center that was undesirable.
After taking a close look at various cloud solutions, Fun Town RV zeroed in on Microsoft Azure. Several key factors tipped the scales in Azure's favor. Azure has been in the market longer than most of its competitors, offering proven scalability and robust disaster recovery options. Additionally, positive endorsements from industry peers reinforced Fun Town's confidence in the platform.
“We had an on-prem solution here at our old corporate office down in Cleburne, Texas,” says Malachi Salazar, Fun Town RV’s IT Director, “and the problem with on-prem was being able to continue to scale that solution with our growth without a heavy cost and having to find different backup solutions in case that primary solution went down. So we decided to start looking into the cloud, and that's when we reached out to Aaron Ross (Fun Town RV’s VLCM Account Manager). He said that VLCM has dedicated Microsoft Engineers who are skilled at Azure transitions, so we decided to look into that to try to minimize not only cost but also to expand with growth and to make sure that we have a really stable infrastructure for disaster recovery.”
“Moving a business to Azure is no simple task… but with the help of our engineers, a designated project manager, and an all-hands-on-deck approach, we were able to make this transition smooth and painless,” says Ross.
VLCM took the reins for the majority of the Azure deployment, effectively minimizing the workload on Fun Town RV's internal IT team. Our expertise in cloud solutions ensured that we adhered to best practices from the initiation stage through configuration to final deployment.
“VLCM did take a lot of that responsibility off of my team,” says Salazar. “Being able to work on the backend outside of business hours as far as downloading a whole copy of our servers and replicating it within Azure, creating different backups, and reestablishing VPNs with our Fortinet VPN. They took a lot of the heavy work off of us.”
"As for our approach, what really set us apart was our utilization of the FortiGate NGFW for Azure," explains Summers. “This was much cheaper than a similarly capable Microsoft Azure offering, and this allowed us to better integrate into the existing systems while still taking advantage of the Azure infrastructure benefits.”
The initial plan estimated a completion timeline of a full quarter. However, thanks to a well-coordinated effort between VLCM and Fun Town RV's IT team, the deployment was executed successfully in just half that time. This accelerated implementation not only reduced downtime but also allowed Fun Town RV to start reaping the benefits of its new cloud infrastructure sooner than anticipated.
“What impressed me the most about this project was VLCM’s organization throughout”, says Ross. “Every location had target dates that we hit, and before we knew it, Fun Town RV was up and running in the cloud!”
On cutting implementation time in half, Summers recounts, “Our time saver was using the Veeam backup and replication system to rapidly provision and replicate VMs to Azure. This reduced complications when setting up the Azure environment and allowed us to easily and quickly deploy an environment for testing and then redeploy for production.”
Azure's cloud-based model enables Fun Town to transcend the constraints of its on-premises setup, which had been a bottleneck when opening new locations. The cloud infrastructure is easily scalable, allowing Fun Town to open new locations without the high upfront costs associated with buying physical servers and storage.
Azure's disaster recovery options instill an extra layer of confidence. With multiple backup solutions and geographic redundancy, Fun Town can rest easy knowing their data and applications are secure, come what may.
Transitioning to Azure had an immediate impact on Fun Town's daily operations. “We've noticed that our speeds as far as employees being able to log into their desktops are a whole lot quicker,” says Salazar, “now they don't have to see the spinning circle when they log in the morning for about 10 minutes, having to go talk around or go get a coffee break. It spins up instantly.”
The transition to Azure positively impacted internal communication within the IT department. Traditionally siloed roles, like hardware-focused managers and network infrastructure analysts, found themselves collaborating more frequently even though they worked from different locations.
Another valuable outcome was the ability for employees to work seamlessly from different locations. Regional staff, for instance, can now login at any Fun Town RV office and access their personalized desktop setup, making the physical location a non-issue for ongoing work. Salazar says, “We never used to have this solution because it would boggle our servers, but when someone's working out of Cleburne but may need to go to Fort Worth, well, it's not ideal to take their whole bulky computer and go plug it into the Fort Worth location. Now, with Azure, a user can login wherever else in the company, and they are looking at all their saved downloads, desktop, everything that they need to be able to continue to function just at a different location.”
"We are a small IT department of about eight employees, and to be able to have someone like VLCM to back us up and take a lot of that workload off of us during this transition was remarkable,” says Salazar, “We couldn't have asked for another partner to partner with during that transition."
“I consider Fun Town RV not just a great customer of mine, but family,” says Ross, “I genuinely care for these people and wish I had 100 more customers just like them. I thoroughly enjoy the challenges and projects they throw my way–they don't call 'em Fun Town for nothing!”
For those considering moving to the cloud with Azure, Summers says, “It’s always good to make sure you have a decent internet connection. Maybe even temporarily upgrade during a migration if that is an option. Also, prepare to be flexible on operational details of exactly which technology you may use for each piece of the puzzle. You may find it necessary to change plans once the environment begins to take shape. When something isn’t working the way you want to, don’t be afraid to throw out your preconceived notions of how the environment should be set up and examine alternatives. Like non-Microsoft Azure Marketplace offerings.”
Fun Town RV plans to continue refining and expanding its usage of Azure to support its growth and operational efficiency further.
We extend our sincerest gratitude to Malachi Salazar for sharing his insights and experience throughout this Azure implementation journey with Fun Town RV. Your willingness to collaborate and your contributions have been invaluable.
If you're considering a move to the cloud or seeking to optimize your existing cloud setup, we invite you to consult with one of our Microsoft-certified engineers. Take advantage of the opportunity to streamline your operations and position your business for success.
To get started, please visit www.vlcm.com/contact-us.
To read more VLCM Customer Success Stories, please head to www.vlcm.com/success-stories.
Fun Town RV is the largest towable RV dealer in the United States, boasting an extensive inventory of RVs at multiple locations across Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Indiana. Its vast selection encompasses fifth wheels, travel trailers, toy haulers, and pop-up tent campers, catering to a broad range of RV enthusiasts.
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