BUILDING DISASTER-PROOF SOLUTIONS IN WAR, OR HOW TO COMBINE SDWAN, STARLINK, IBM CLOUD, AND VMWARE TECHNOLOGIES TO BUILD DISASTER-PROOF INFRASTRUCTURE

The war brought changes to all areas of activity without exception, and for any business manager, the need to ensure business continuity has been added to the problem of establishing remote work. As a result, the following questions have become relevant::

  • How do I transfer data and services to a secure location?
  • How can I ensure user access to data and restore the smooth operation of teams?
  • What should I do if the communication channels are damaged?

Ми звернулися до експерта з побудови серверних інфраструктур компанії Seeton, Ярмака Павла, і попросили поділитися своїми доробками в цьому питанні на прикладі реального реалізованого проекту:

"Every day of the war comes the understanding that it is necessary to adapt to the changes that have taken place and try to do everything to contribute to our victory. At first, the actions were chaotic, but getting more and more similar requests, as the search for solutions to problems began, the necessary solution architecture began to emerge. Given that the vast majority of companies use VMware products in their infrastructure, the need to integrate the ground infrastructure of VMware with the VMware infrastructure of a cloud provider located outside of Ukraine was taken as a basis.

Several cloud solutions were tested, of which IBM's services were the most attractive. During the analysis, the following features of IBM Cloud in comparison with other suppliers determined the strategic choice of partnership::

  • Possibility of individual configuration and provision of computing power;
  • Availability of configurations that are officially certified for SAP use;
  • Full administrator rights to use the Vmware infrastructure;
  • Ability to select versions of VMware infrastructure components, such as vSphere ESXi, NSX-T, vSAN, vRealize, and others;
  • Provision of equipment for rent based on IBM Power processors, which significantly reduces the cost of licensing Oracle databases;
  • No billing of incoming traffic and traffic between IBM Cloud data centers;
  • Ability to negotiate the use of already purchased VMware licenses.

Subsequently, within one week, our team prepared the IBM cloud infrastructure for further integration with the existing ground infrastructure in Ukraine using the Site-to-Site VPN functionality between VMware NSX-T in the cloud and Cisco ASA in the ground data center.

Декількома днями пізніше довелося вирішувати проблему з каналами зв’язку, які оперативно знайти не вдалося. З’явилася ідея скористатися технологією SDWAN трохи не в традиційному вигляді. Враховуючи те, що замовник на той момент вже мав більше десятка комплектів Starlink, була запропонована та протестована одночасна робота кількох тарілок Starlink, LTE модему від Vodafone, наземного каналу зв’язку інтернет зі швидкістю до 100Мб/с та SDWAN рішення, що виступає в ролі агрегатора всіх наявних каналів в один захищений канал із високою пропускною здатністю. При цьому, у хмарі IBM було розгорнуто віртуальний SDWAN Edge та побудовано з’єднання Point-to-Point між IBM Cloud та наземним ЦОД.

Using the backup system software, a policy was set up to create backups first in the ground data center storage, and after that, automatic replication to Object Storage in IBM Cloud with the possibility of further data recovery already in the dedicated virtual cloud infrastructure.

At the moment, to optimize user access to the resulting hybrid infrastructure, an increase in the number of SDWAN gateways and their distribution between divisions in Ukraine is being considered."

The Seeton team is always in touch to ensure the continuity of your business: Sales@seeton.pro

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