Implementation of the failsafe computing system in AFI Development company (Moscow)

Implementation of the failsafe computing system in AFI Development company (Moscow) based on the equipment of HP, EMC and the software of VMware About the customer

Region: Russian Federation, CIS countries
Sphere of activity: Construction, real estate investments, development

AFI Development is created in 2001 in Cyprus. Today it is one of the leading Russian companies in the field of the real estate. Africa Israel Investment Ltd., the international investment holding having more than 70-year work experience in the field of development holds a controlling stake of AFI Development company.

Requirements of business: 80% of time – the analyst; 20% - implementation of the project on construction of the facility of the real estate.

Activity of profitable development company of a full stroke which AFI Development is, assumes distribution of all time of the project as follows: 80% of time are given to the solution of a number of the most difficult analytical researches, preparation of the feasibility statement, the investment attraction for implementation of the demanded project, involvement of tenants, hiring of the contract construction organizations. At the successful solution of preparatory tasks start of construction of the facility of the real estate is possible.

In competitive environment of promptly developing western developers the automated computing system for structure of business processes of this sort with a mass of updatable data, should ensure the maximum safety of information and a fast razvertyvayemost of applications for its processing.

IT environment status prior to the beginning of the project

• Lack of opportunities for scaling of resources;
• Poor performance of computing resources;
• Need for new computing powers;
• Acute shortage of a free physical space in DPC;
• Low indicator of utilization of server resources;
• Complexity of administration and management of IT services;
• Low degree of fault tolerance of a system.

Situation

AFI Development IT infrastructure by October, 2007 represented the classical hardware and software system created on the basis of HP servers, which was not assuming opportunities for scaling of resources and potential of development of a system in general.

Internal risks were aggravated with a situation of the developer market by the end of 2006 which top trend – qualitative and the proliferation connected with appearance of new players. "The number of professional western developers who entered the Russian market increased, grows professionalism and the Russian players, the new companies which activity is connected with implementation of developer projects are created", - as notes Kommersant (No. 39 of 3/7/2006).
The most adequate solution in slowly heated situation – redistribution of material flows: investments in increase in speed of intellectual processing of knowledge at decrease in operating costs on the auxiliary systems and personnel.

Requirements of business became tougher, but linear development of the current IT infrastructure could not be effective – it was interfered by the developed restrictions: space of the server premises, number of IT personnel, engineering infrastructure of the server room. For this reason the AFI Development company realized need for transition to other scenario of development of IT infrastructure – the consolidated system led by reliable storage system and data processings.

Head of department of IT of AFI Development Vitaly Hokhrin: "We set for ourselves the task of an intensification of the available resources: their more effective use with minimum risks for preserving of data".

Tasks:

• Centralization of management and monitoring of a system.
• Increase in flexibility of management and setup.
• Performance improvement.
• Increase in fault tolerance of services.
• Increase in efficiency of use of service lives.
• Increase in level of protection of business applications.
• Increase in efficiency of monitoring of operability of the equipment and software tools, available resources.

Reasons of the choice of HOST Group

The HOST group was selected owing to flexibility of approach to the satisfaction of the imposed requirements against the background of reasonable price policy. Also experience of implementation of similar projects, the recommendations of equipment manufacturers and clients was considered.

Solution

For solution of the problem of decrease in tasks on operation and ensuring fault tolerance of the computing system with optimal the software package VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 on the platform of HP servers DL380G5 and storage system of EMC CX3-10 connected in SAN was recognized.

All servers and storage system are provided with duplicative components and actually have no uniform point of failure. Servers and DWH are connected in SAN with duplication.

The storage system from EMC was selected as the most effective failsafe solution for medium business with optimal price relation and qualities.

Advantages

• Decrease in operating costs due to utilization up to 70% of resources.
• Possibility of simple and flexible scaling of a system.
• High speed of deployment of applications.
• Risk minimization of data loss and their instant recovery in case of machine failure of the server.
• Providing resources on demand; decrease in probability of idle times during the regulated system maintenance.
• Centralized operation and service of IT infrastructure from a uniform point (Virtual Center).

Results of Implementation

"All technology tasks set for the beginning of the project were successfully solved. We received the failsafe computing system with a uniform operations control room and monitoring; increased system performance", - the head of department of IT of AFI Developmentvitaly Hokhrin concluded.

The implemented system will provide painless consolidation of databases Moscow and AFI Development regional offices in a single system without stopping of lifecycles of business processes.