The problem Coles faced was that its ageing server fleet deployed at stores around the country was encountering increasingly frequent hardware failures leading to outages.

Instead of simply refreshing the hardware, Coles chose to deploy two-node clusters running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V. One virtual server runs the point of sale system, the other runs a variety of applications, including automated replenishment and inventory management.

With this arrangement, if one of the physical servers fails, its workload is automatically transferred to the other. "In most cases, store personnel are not even aware that a server has failed," said Craig Morton,
store technical services manager at Coles.

A full case study is available here.