EvidianDGA
Profile• DGA is in charge ofequipping the French
armed forces.
Users• DGA runs 80 arms
programs.
• It manages about 10billion euros of orders
in the industry.
• DGA employs 14,000persons.
Challenges• Centralizing andsecuring DGA’s
computer system
operations.

The French department of defense (DGA) ensures 24x7 availability andload balancing for its military applications with SafeKit.
Ensuring 24x7 availability of a computer system that manages DGA’s
15 test and expertise centers

For the French department of defense (DGA) the stakes of high availability are high:• DGA manages 10 billion euros of orders to industry,• DGA’s 14,000 employees depend on 24x7 availability of a new,centralized computer system,• DGA uses 6 critical applications to manage its day-to-day activity:
purchasing, planning, production, stock management, logistics and bookkeeping.
To solve its availability and rising load constraints, DGA has chosen Evidian’sSafeKit solution. The reasons for this choice: this solution is simple, works in the samemanner both in Windows and Unix and delivers load balancing, real-time file
replication and automatic failure recovery in the same product.

Easy deployment of clusters••Benefits• 24x7 high availability
and load balancing
thanks to EvidianSafeKit.
• 14 Windows and Unix
clusters deployed.
• Easy deployment andadministration of theglobal solution.

•DGA implemented 14 Windows and Unix clusters with Evidian’s SafeKit
software solution. No shared disk or appliance was necessary.
Administrators use a single console to manage all the Windows and Unix
clusters in the same manner.
It took just one day for the administrators in charge of the new computer
infrastructure at DGA to master the installation, configuration andadministration of the SafeKit clusters.

Evidian SafeKit is a software-based high availability solution

This solution secures easily and quickly the 24x7 operation of critical applications.
SafeKit runs on standard servers and works with the standard editions of OS andapplications.
While traditional high availability solutions are focused on the failover of physical or
virtual servers, SafeKit has chosen to focus on the failover of critical applications.

Case study > Data center and high availability

www.evidian.com

Unique on the market: 3 products in 1Traditionally, three different products are necessary to create an application cluster:• load balancing network boxes,• disk bays replicated synchronously on a SAN for data availability,• high-availability toolkits for application failure recovery.
SafeKit offers these three features within the same software product.

“Our production team
implemented the SafeKit
solution without any
difficulty on 14 Windows
and Unix clusters. Our
critical activity is thus
secure, with high-availability
and load balancing
functions.
The advantages of thisproduct are easy
deployment andadministration of clusters, on
the one hand, anduniformity of the solution in
the face of heterogeneous
operating systems, on theother hand”
Alexandre Barth,
Systems administrator,DGA.

To further reduce implementation costs, SafeKit runs on your existing standard
servers and with the standard editions of your OS and applications: Oracle,
Microsoft SQL Server or other database or file… and even with Windows 7.

Simple and effective application integration

When installed, SafeKit proposes two generic application modules:• either a mirror (primary/secondary replication and failover),• or a farm (network load balancing and failover).
The configuration of a module is done with a few simple tasks:• define the IP addresses of the servers and the load balancing rules,• select the directories of files to replicate,• determine which services to restart in case of failure.
Without additional integration effort, DGA has developed several modules forseveral applications: web front-end, application servers, databases.

Integrated and optimized administration

On the SafeKit web console, an administrator can remotely monitor the status of anapplication in a cluster (red, green, magenta) and act with simple buttons (start,stop).
The documentation provides tests to validate the proper functioning of theapplication in high availability mode and includes troubleshooting procedures.
Using a generic command line interface, critical applications protected by SafeKit fit
easily into specific monitoring consoles (Patrol, Nagios…).

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