Starting point.
La Rozavère wanted to bring their IT infrastructure up to the cutting edge, and renew their hardware and software as their warranty had elapsed. Their IT infrastructure was outdated and unstable, they were lacking the capacity they needed, and the small IT team had to spend a great deal of their time managing the infrastructure.
Project objectives.
In order to handle all of the various departments’ requirements and to be able to establish themselves as the providers for other retirement and care homes, La Rozavère foundation seized the opportunity and refreshed their infrastructure in order to implement a comprehensive, reliable, flexible, and scalable IT solution. Management of these solutions, however, had to be carried out by a small team and also offer a global overview of workplaces.
Challenge.
Bechtle proposed a global IT solution (server, storage, backups, workplaces, and virtualisation) to be installed by experienced and certified workers. The proposed infrastructure is based on implementing solutions that are tried and tested. For servers and network, we worked together with Cisco while for storage we opted for NetApp solutions in combination with Veeam for data backup and the hard drive disaster recovery plan. VMware solutions came into play for infrastructure virtualisation, while application and workspace virtualisation was managed on Citrix XenApp, run on Microsoft operating systems. Anti-virus from Symantec protects the entire system. This project resulted in a long and tight-knit collaboration between La Rozavère and Bechtle. As a strong partner, Bechtle has brought the foundation’s infrastructure up to the cutting edge while simultaneously redesigning and realising the IT team’s product concept catalogue. “We have been working with Bechtle for over ten years and have had only positive experiences. The IT infrastructure Bechtle proposed meets our needs and the long-term support means we can rely on Bechtle’s technical experience,” says P. T.
This project was really conducted by experts; all of our expectations and requirements were met. “Thanks to the chosen solution, we have been able to implement a new, high-quality, extraordinarily reliable, and scalable IT infrastructure. In implementing the project, Bechtle fully met our expectations.
M. Pierre Ethenoz, Director, Fondation La Rozavère
Solution.
Bechtle took care of the design, rollout and deployment of the solution in addition to training the IT customer service team. The redundant and highly available infrastructure is based on a NetApp FAS2240 storage platform with two SAS controllers, a core network consisting of two Cisco Nexus 3048 switches, two Cisco UCS C series servers and a VMware ESXi cluster. Deployment is via a Cisco Small Business SG500X and a cluster with two CISCO ASA 5500 firewalls ensures internet access. The data backup and disaster recovery plan on an FAS2220storage system with a single SATA controller are realised with a Veeam solution that ensures consistent applicative securities and a granular data recovery. Veeam saves the data to an external tape on a weekly basis, completing the backup system. The Veeam solution also offers predictive monitoring of the various resources of the virtualised infrastructure, where resource use and development trends can be observed. The infrastructure hosts Microsoft Networking (DNS, DHCP, ...), Active Directory, MS SQL - database server, and MS Exchange services business applications in addition to a Citrix XenApp server farm for publishing applications and for remote offices. Users can access their remote office and applications via Wyse thin clients, a fat client via the Citrix client or a web browser.
Business benefits.
Simplified management of workstations, absolute reliability, a better overview of the current IT infrastructure status, and a more efficient backup solution with data recovery are the biggest benefits of the new solution. “Thanks to the solution proposed, we were able to not only simplify processes, but also maintenance of our workstations. We were also able to substantially improve the overview we have of our IT infrastructure,” says Pierre Ethenoz. Another benefit that the new infrastructure has for the foundation is the automation of processes to simplify service management of a smaller team. “Thanks to the chosen solution, we have been able to implement a new, high-quality, extraordinarily reliable, and scalable IT infrastructure,” P. T says in conclusion.
Partner.
