INTACT • Upgrade and enhancement of computing cluster

Customers problems to be solved

Use of obsolescent and deprecated equipment;
High load of processing powers and random-access memory (RAM);
Additional requirement of data storage capacity;
Inability to scale current virtualization system licenses.

Tasks

To upgrade existing server complex, to set up DellEMC rack shelves for VNX5200 Data Storage System, to install VMware license;
To design working papers on solution implemented integration into the current IT-infrastructure of the Customer;
To set up and configure an existing Data Storage System;
To transfer existing virtual machines to new servers with minimum system downtime.

Solution

Under the project, the computing complex with 288 2,1GHz computing cores in total and more than 1,1TB RAM was set up. Thus, we managed to significantly increase the pool of computing resources and enlarge Data Storage System.

BullSequana S solution for servers was used in the configuration of computing complex. The key benefit of Bull servers is the opportunity to be scaled up to a server with 32 CPUs without necessity to replace the existing equipment.

BullSequana S800 and BullSequana S400 servers were set up. With partition function, servers were divided into 3 (Three) computational units with equal computing resources. Each unit had 96 computing cores, 386Gb RAM, separate LAN and SAN connection.

In addition to Bull servers, we upgraded existing EMC VNX5200 Data Storage System by setting up additional rack shelves. As a result, total accumulated raw data storage volume was enlarged to 105TB.

To set up virtualization environment, we set up VMware vSphere 6.5, which included ESXi virtualization hosts an vCenter main management server. INTACT team also transferred virtual machines from existing Vmware vSphere 4.0 system. Vmware vRealize Operations Manager Monitoring System was launched to increase the reliability of the total complex and operational control over virtualization environment system.

The following works were conducted to reach the goals of the project:

Set up and switching of the equipment;
Installation and configuration of virtualization environment;
Update of existing virtualization hosts without any interruption of services.
Migration of services to Bull servers.
Atos (Bull’s brand), Dell-EMC, VMware solutions were used to build up IT-infrastructure.

Customer Benefits

The lack of computing resources was recuperated;
Opportunity to scale implemented solution: ability to increase productivity by scaling BullSequana S servers;
Reliability of the system was increased as a whole.