Fujitsu virtualizes the entire corporate communications network of the Junta de Andalucía

Fujitsu develops a project “turnkey” for the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Junta de Andalucía thanks to Red Hat virtualization technology.

Fujitsu developed a project “turnkey” for the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Government of Andalusia. It was about creating a platform to manage and administer the interconnection nodes of the entire corporate communications network of the Junta de Andalucía.. Thanks to virtualization technology Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Fujitsu was able to simplify this infrastructure 64 physical servers to 4, with the consequent cost savings, space and energy. In this project, Fujitsu has been aware of the importance of the energy sustainability strategy that is being implemented by the Junta de Andalucía in all design tasks., operation, control and management of IT services.

A more economical solution

Fujitsu had the challenge of replacing the infrastructure of the Junta de Andalucía with a new, more economical solution. At the same time, Fujitsu set out to improve the service coverage of its client's communications network and adapt the system to new market trends and its client's modernization plan..

Fujitsu proposed a complete infrastructure to manage the Board's communications network. The previous communications platform required a management console for each of the software or hardware products that make up the infrastructure.. This amounted to a total of 40 consoles installed on physical servers with a duplicate configuration on two sites. These servers were based on 2 company platforms, most on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the rest on Microsoft Windows.

This project was a textbook case for properly betting on virtualization: despite not involving a heavy workload, each console had to be hosted on an individual server. As it is a critical infrastructure, had to be replicated in two data centers. All of this meant around 80 physical servers, with the obvious complexity that this entails in terms of wiring, infrastructure size, etc. Not to mention the cost that this would entail…

Once Fujitsu made the decision to virtualize its client's infrastructure, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization was one of the first options, for its high performance, flexibility and scalability. Since Red Hat has been a Fujtsu partner for a long time, the company trusted Red Hat solutions to virtualize its client's corporate network services.

José Patón Lozano, IT Architecture consultant in the Fujitsu Integration Department, recognizes that “Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is a perfectly affordable and flexible solution. The solution stands out for its rapid adaptation to business needs thanks to its cloning capabilities and the ability to generate new virtual servers in a few minutes.”.

Virtualize to simplify

Through server consolidation with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Fujitsu has managed to drastically simplify the Board's infrastructure, reducing the number of physical servers 80 a 4, with the consequent saving of space and electrical consumption. Besides, Application deployment time has also been reduced, since most virtual servers have been cloned thanks to the management tools included in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager.

The final virtualized infrastructure consists of four Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization hypervisor host servers, organized across two replicated platforms, each with two Fujitsu Primergy RX600S6 servers. Each physical server hosts approximately 20 virtual servers running a mix of Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux workloads. With this replicated design, Fujitsu was able to significantly improve availability. The infrastructure can now continue to operate and effectively support all workloads even in the unlikely event that three of the four physical servers are down.

Administration of the entire deployment has been simplified to a single point, under the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager console. This single platform allows you to control and manage applications such as Checkpoint consoles, Fortinet, firewall software, the administration of communications and the entire network and communications network of the client.

For the Government of Andalusia, this is a highly critical platform. Even though the infrastructure workload is relatively low, The installed applications and systems are those that allow the entire network infrastructure to be managed, so a hypothetical failure would put the entire system at risk, converting availability 24×7 in a mandatory and indispensable requirement.

Open Source Virtualization

For this public sector client, Combining Fujitsu and Red Hat technologies has resulted in greater network responsiveness, in addition to greater efficiency, effectiveness, quality and scalability.

For Fujitsu technicians, It was the first virtualization project with Kernel-based Virtual Machine technology (KVM) integrada en Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. For this reason, one of its objectives was to test and verify first-hand its reliability, stability and efficiency. After this first experience, Fujitsu plans to have Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in more projects and adapt its solutions and services to be able to replicate this type of installations in future projects.

“The Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Government of Andalusia has been fully satisfied with the solutions implemented by Fujitsu and Red Hat throughout the process. Para Fujitsu, This first experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has been completely satisfactory, both for the qualities of the product, as well as for the good response of Red Hat during the implementation and start-up of the infrastructure. We hope to collaborate again on other projects in the future.”, added Patón Lozano.