Istanbul Grand Airport

Solution

Following the trend away from mainframes towards more flexible, distributed architectures, B+S Banksysteme sought to make its standard software solutions futureproof and easier to deploy on different platforms.

GA prepared a proof of concept (POC) scenario for IT vendors to participate in. A technical scoreboard was created to present the findings for each vendor. OpenText™ teamed with local IT partners Duosis and Netaş to prepare a bid. Together, they demonstrated automated virtual and physical server provisioning directed by a standard workflow. This did not just include server OS provisioning, but also database and application installation and configuration. Mr. Bayarçelik was impressed: “Micro Focus (now OpenText), Duosis, and Netaş received the best technical score in the POC evaluation. Micro Focus (now OpenText) was also fully compliant with our cloud project tender, provided out­of­the­box integration with our existing applications, and could provide a complete, single­vendor solution with the addition of its established suite of end-to-end monitoring and automation solutions.”

Selecting the right vendor and implementation partner was key, and we are very pleased with our choice for Micro Focus (now OpenText), Duosis, and Netaṣ. The component parts of our IT infrastructure fit together perfectly, and are as beautifully designed as the architecture of our airport terminal; ready to shape the future of aviation.

The IGA team worked closely with OpenText and the partners over the following six months to implement OpenText solutions at the heart of the IT architecture, following a defined project lifecycle. OpenText™ Hybrid Cloud Management (HCM) provides a self­service portal for delivering hybrid and multi­cloud resources and services. This is now used by internal customers to submit a server provisioning request. Previously, these requests were processed through IT administration. This was a manual, error­prone, and time­intensive process. Burak Çetinkaya, Datacenter & Network Manager for IGA, explains the automated process: “The request is received in the HCM portal which starts an end­to­end server provisioning process. Server installation includes agent installations, DNS registrations, IP and hostname settings, database and application installation and configuration. Incredibly, HCM completes the provisioning process automatically within minutes of receiving the request. We have provisioned nearly 850 virtual servers through this tried and tested method.”

GA uses both public and private cloud environments, depending on which customer it serves. The OpenText suite of solutions enables IGA to manage this hybrid environment from one single interface, as Mr. Çetinkaya explains: “We are delighted that we don’t need to use different vendor tools in our multi-Hypervisor architecture. Our ‘what­if’ capacity modeling operates automatically through HCM without needing a Hypervisor console.”

e is equally impressed with the provisioning capabilities: “We provision physical and virtual servers from the same interface. HCM includes a library of over 8,000 workflows and actions to leverage and automate typical IT processes and repetitive actions. These are easily integrated into our own systems and increase our productivity immediately. We also leverage Operations Orchestration, a key component of the HCM suite, to transparently track all provisioning steps in orchestration flows.”

Post-Provisioning, Monitoring and Automation

After the server is provisioned, OpenText™ Server Automation takes over and installs antivirus, audit, backup, monitoring and vulnerability agents to provide maximum protection and monitoring. Automated patch management, including OS patches, is also part of Server Automation. OpenText™ Operations Bridge works in close partnership with OpenText™ Network Operations Management (NOM) to monitor all system endpoints.

When an event occurs, log correlation is critical in determining the level of alarm severity and the correct response. Every alarm is linked to many others. For instance, when a network switch is down, there will be a critical alarm for this, but also for all the endpoints connected to this device. This can cause confusion and duplication of effort in identifying the root cause of the problem. Operations Bridge and NOM hold the topology of all defined relationships and can easily determine where the resolution effort needs to be focused.

Operations Bridge Reporter (OBR) manages service availability and performance reporting. OpenText™ Universal CMDB Configuration Manager is deployed to monitor server inventories, analyze the OBR performance logs, and leverage ‘what­if’ modeling to confirm a healthy balance of resource usage after the provisioned server goes live. Full data analytics are provided by the OpenText™ Vertica™ Analytics Platform. This analytic data is used for predictive maintenance, operations planning, commercial area planning, and marketing purposes by the IGA operations departments.

The output from all OpenText solutions are captured in a clear visual representation of the real-time state of the three data centers. It shows values for capacity, datacenter sensors, network performance, cloud usage, and compliance. An executive dashboard shows a status summary of all IT and non-IT endpoints, giving a clear overview of the health of Istanbul Grand Airport.

Incredibly, HCM completes the provisioning process automatically within minutes of receiving the request. We have provisioned nearly 850 virtual servers through this tried and tested method.

Results

Istanbul Grand Airport IT operations is still in its early stages, and the team have many plans for the future, to further automate and standardize IT processes, as Mr. Bayarçelik comments: “We will be defining additional automation rules within Operations Orchestration to include areas such as baggage handling and airport management systems, and are also planning to implement auto­remediation rules within Operations Bridge. Our cloud services portal will be extended to our external customers which will further streamline our service delivery.

Implementing end­to­end cloud service provisioning and automation with OpenText and the partners has already delivered great benefits, as Mr. Çetinkaya comments: “We analyzed the time it took to provision servers without automation support, and calculated that HCM accelerates our delivery by 12 times. In addition, the full Micro Focus (now OpenText) suite has increased our IT administrator’s productivity by 80 percent.”

The OpenText monitoring solutions enable full log correlation from both systems and networks. This pinpoints root cause more quickly, with less manual effort and reduces issue resolution time. Because the solution is so transparent, production issues are often highlighted and addressed before users are able to notice the concern, resulting in more robust systems.

Mr. Bayarçelik concludes: “To reduce IT administration effort and human resources, it was clear that we needed to simplify IT complexity in our infrastructure, through provisioning, process automation and standardization. Selecting the right vendor and implementation partner was key, and we are very pleased with our choice for Micro Focus (now OpenText), Duosis, and Netaş. The component parts of our IT infrastructure fit together perfectly and are as beautifully designed as the architecture of our airport terminal; ready to shape the future of aviation.