"The Siberian generation company" completed virtualization of 1.5 thousand jobs

On June 27, 2016 it became known of transfer of jobs of SGK company in virtual environment. The project was implemented by AMT Group company^[1].

Project Tasks

When in February-March, 2014 I got acquainted with SGK company, I visited several generating enterprises (combined heat and power plant, state district power plant) and found out that the company has very old park of the computer equipment, the oldest computers were 2001-2002 of release, and average age of personal computers was 10 years. On these computers even the easiest modern software was already hardly started. The server hardware at stations was also in a deplorable state, somewhere to servers primotana thermometers were an insulating tape, self-made conditioning systems somewhere were collected, and the staff of IT directorate at stations with soldering irons in hands heroically supported all this park in working order. At the same time in management company there were new computers of Apple on which the Windows operating system was installed. The situation was aggravated with the fact that the company used the equipment of all producers famous to me, starting with world leaders, such as HP, Dell, Fujitsu of Siemens, Hitachi, IBM, Lenovo, finishing the Russian companies, such as Depo and Aquarius. Andrey Tikhonravov, Chief information officer of SGK

Office of "Siberian generation company", (2013)

In 2014 the decision to transfer users to virtual environment was made

Project Progress

The company was faced by a problem of standardization of the equipment used in workplaces and the main objective in that for the minimum money to upgrade the huge park of an obsolete equipment. Two options were considered:

• purchase of the cheapest personal computers
• purchase of servers and thin clients using virtualization.

The analysis showed - the majority of computers were used as the unified jobs for the solution of standard working tasks. This fact and also need of use of thin clients for the tasks which are not connected directly with job responsibilities of employees, the company began to consider virtualization as an alternative to personal computers. After calculations of cost of both projects, the company made the decision to work in virtual environment.

{{quote|author =
Andrey Dyl, the head of department of IT infrastructure of SGK|the Choice of a program configuration we began with the fact that got acquainted with the leading solutions. Watched VMware Horizon – we already use the VMware platform for virtualization of corporate infrastructure, and use of a system of the same brand would remove issues of the correct integration. Watched Citrix XenDesktop as for delivery of applications to remote users in the company Citrix XenApp is used.

Calculations showed that at the total cost of ownership in our case it is more profitable to take the solution Citrix because we already had a pool of licenses of Citrix used for Citrix XenApp, covering both solutions. This choice suited us and in terms of support of the solution because experience with products of this company was already available.

At a solution development stage we addressed several of our old partners, carried out numerous calculations of different configurations, analyzed the available virtualization implementing solutions. After final settlements, considering a field of activity of our company, the open competition according to 223-FZ "About purchases of goods, works, services as separate types of legal entities" based on which the AMT Group company submitted the best offer which suited us from the technical point of view on delivery dates and total cost.} was announced }

The project began in the second half of 2014 with market research. By the beginning of 2015 the test virtualization platform on which in the company rolled the available software was assembled, studied his behavior and possible difficulties when scaling on thousands of users.

At the first stage of the project were going to use specialized devices and, whenever possible, old computers, as thin clients. Developed most facilitated image of a system on the Ubuntu OS platform for terminals. The problem of delivery of applications to the device of the user demanded optimization of programs for work under server OS as which Windows Server 2008 R2 was selected.

Project Results

For June 27, 2016 quantity of virtual work places in SGK of 1.5 thousand.

The company has a distributed infrastructure and in a project deliverable the VDI infrastructure covering the enterprises of the company in the cities of Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Republic of Khakassia is created. In the Kemerovo region and Altai Krai virtual infrastructures extend to the enterprises of regions.

Three separate infrastructures of virtualization of jobs are created. The first two are identical on the equipment. In Altai Krai the equipment which is earlier entering corporate infrastructure is used.

For June 26, 2016 more than 1.5 thousand jobs of users are virtualized.

Notes