"IFD of Kapital" will organize "cloud" reserve DPC

On January 8, 2014 it became known of creation of IFD of Kapital of reserve data center for the MUZ.RU portal on the basis of Windows Azure "cloud".

Project Tasks

On the example of one of projects in "IFD-Kapital" were convinced of cost efficiency of cloud model and are going to expand use of Windows Azure. The company began pilot deployment of reserve DPC in a cloud for financial services "IFD-Kapital".

IFD of Kapital companies during creation of a prototype of the National register of digital content were required considerable computing powers at high access rate to content, but with unpredictable loading. Predeterminate volumes of the data warehouse necessary for the full-scale solution of a similar task, it was not represented possible, and uncertainty of initial parameters did extremely unprofitable creation of a system on the basis of local DPCs.

"Cloud" is capable to provide the necessary volume of resources (servers and DWH) on demand, to quickly release not used capacities, to guarantee the necessary performance of access and reliability of storage. At the same time the user pays only the consumed resources.

Selecting a cloud platform offers of a number of the Russian providers are considered, however fully the public cloud of Windows Azure of Microsoft company conformed to requirements. This platform is selected for project implementation.

Project Progress

In a work progress over a prototype of the National register of digital content content of the MUZ.RU portal is transferred to a cloud of Microsoft. It served as an incentive to go to the next stage of mastering of the Windows platform of Azure in IFD of Kapital company — to implementation on its base of a reserve data processing center of the MUZ.RU project.

Need for the reserve platform for a data processing center of the MUZ.RU project arose in connection with updating of a hardware and software system of the main DPC. For the period of upgrade work of the portal was decided to be transferred to Windows Azure "cloud" as all content of MUZ.RU — various digital audio-and video records, was stored there.

"Existence of all digital content in Azure significantly facilitated to us a task — Sergey Sichkar, the board member of the IFD group of Kapital, the director of IT development noted. — Upon transition to a cloud by the most labor-consuming process of migration of large-scale storage is. Transfer of workloads and a configuration of infrastructure for providing MUZ.RU services took place in our case quickly and with hardly any trouble at all".

During works on upgrade of the main DPC, the cloud platform of Windows Azure undertook functions of the main data center of the portal and provided high-quality and reliable providing services to users, in anything not conceding to work of the project in the normal mode - the speed of loading of media content of MUZ.RU on the basis of Windows Azure was 50 MB/s of DPC that allowed to save up to standard service of users of the portal and to provide for operation specialists so comfortable working conditions, as well as at access to infrastructure of local DPC. Speed and latency of return of content is optimized for stream transfer of digital materials more than 100 thousand users.

Having convinced that the quality of work of the MUZ.RU portal based on a cloud of Microsoft does not cause complaints, specialists of "IFD of Kapital" made the decision on creation for this project of permanent reserve DPC on this platform. Now the reserve data center of MUZ.ru based on Azure includes about hundred virtual machines of different power which manage more than 150 Tbyte of data. For MUZ.RU the scheme with active reservation is implemented — the cloud platform can be used for providing services to users of the portal not only in case of failures or planned updates on the main platform, but also in need of balancing of loading.

Specialists of "IFD of Kapital" configured monitoring of the Windows Azure environment in general and the virtual machines working in it through System Center Operations Manager.

"Deployment of a reserve data processing center of MUZ.RU in Windows Azure became for Microsoft the most important stage of cooperation with the IFD of Kapital Group. We are glad that cloud services of Microsoft help active development of the Russian business projects" — Alexander Lipkin, the head of department of promotion of infrastructure solutions of Microsoft in Russia.