SCRAP (Microsoft System Center 2012)

Description of a situation

The SKRAP Group (G) — the supplier more than 7000 names of consumer goods which implementation is made through large multiformat retail networks.

For stable work of important applications and services of SKRAP Group the solution which allowed to manage and carry out on a centralized basis monitoring of all IT resources of the company, to manage creation of backup copies was required. For the solution of the listed tasks in 2012 the company management made a choice for benefit of the corresponding software products of the System Center family.

Project Progress

Acquaintance of SKRAP Group to Microsoft System Center began in 2012 with Data Protection Manager 2010. At that moment in the company technologies of mirroring were used and the simple and reliable solution for creation of backup copies of mirrors of SQL databases, the Active Directory databases and file storages was required. The solution based on System Center Data Protection Manager allowed to manage and to flexibly configure the mode of creation of backup copies, plus to provide control of the level of occupancy of file storage.

For tracking of a status of network equipment, assessment of loading of servers and their performance, mirrors of SQL databases and processes of 1C System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2012 SP1 was implemented.

In process of growth of infrastructure and business development in the company other solutions based on a product family of System Center were tested and implemented.

So in 2014 SKRAP Group predicted growth, however the infrastructure status at that time could not provide the growing databases with free physical resources and guarantee fault tolerance of applications, important for the company. Creation of virtual environment and transfer in it critical business programs for increase in their availability and fault tolerance was the only way to expand business without increase in costs of the company at IT. For creation and control of virtual machines System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 R2 was set.

The solution based on VMM provided convenient management of the created hosts of virtualization and cluster services, allowed to distribute optimum server resources in virtual environment and to balance IT system pressure of work in general. For a full-fledged work of System Center were also updated to current versions set before DPM and SCOM.

Results

According to the results of all implementation project of solutions on the basis of Microsoft System Center in SKRAP group management process and monitoring by IT services, applications and servers was adjusted, information on operability of each element of infrastructure is consolidated, routine transactions of technical employees are automated and also the fault tolerance of important applications and the databases corresponding to them is provided.