Cloud Infrastructure Maintenance and Support for a European SaaS Provider
Customer
The Customer is a European SaaS provider with a park of 300 servers that delivers complete IT systems and solutions for enterprises.
Challenge
Initially, the Customer asked ScienceSoft to help out with issues such as configuration of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and a Citrix XenApp-based desktop environment. As the results were satisfactory, the Customer desired to prolong cooperation with ScienceSoft and thus required an 8*5 DevOps service to carry out a number of tasks including creation, migration and modernization of services and infrastructures and consulting for performance improvements.
Solution
The Customer had a cloud environment of 300 servers running Windows and Linux with multiple virtualization platforms such as XenServer, KVM and VMware vSphere. As it was hard to maintain the multitude of hypervisors, ScienceSoft built a new cost-effective infrastructure by consolidating the servers with VMware. This allowed the Customer to manage the entire data center from a single control point and facilitate its maintenance significantly.
Since some of the services were configured inadequately, ScienceSoft investigated the cases and provided solutions with a detailed documentation.
To maintain and improve system uptime and security, ScienceSoft DevOps regularly revise (modernize, optimize) the internal services, namely database systems (have consolidated them into clusters), anti-virus protection, monitoring systems, CMS, file-server systems, local network and more. In addition to that, they are responsible for hardware consistency and support.
The DevOps use PowerShell scripts to enhance the experience of tech support staff. The scripts facilitate such routine activities as user creation, application setup, updates automation and others. Moreover, ScienceSoft engineers constantly update the knowledge base with user and troubleshooting guides to help the staff solve issues.
In the course of maintenance and support, ScienceSoft provides timely consultations on how to upgrade or modify the infrastructure for an improved scalability and performance.
Results
The Customer enjoys a cost-effective and competent DevOps service without the need to hire a dedicated team of administrators. Thanks to ScienceSoft’s consulting, the Company is now able to benefit from introducing more efficient and quality services.
Technologies and Tools
Operating systems: Windows Server 2008 R2 and Server 2012 R2, Debian Linux, VMware vSphere 5.5
Database management systems: MS SQL Server 2008 R2 and 2012
Network management systems: Nagios
Scripting languages: PowerShell, Bash
Integrated scripting environment: SAPIEN PowerShell Studio
Data protection software: Symantec Backup Exec
Virtualization tool: Citrix XenApp
Other tools: Citrix NetScaler, Citrix StoreFront, Citrix ShareFile, HP Storage, HP BladeSystem, MS Office, MS Visio, MS Failover Cluster, MS SQL Server AlwaysOn, vSphere HA & DRS
