FAST FACTS

Industry: Transportation

Geography: The Netherlands

Business challenge: Maintaining an uninterrupted rail service. Realizing an uptime of 100 percent.

Migration Path: Migrating existing applications, including those that suffered problems with the performance of BEA Weblogic on OpenVMS. Building new applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Solution: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Global File System with cluster environment, Red Hat Directory Server, Red Hat Network Provisioning Module, Red Hat Certificate System, Red Hat Consulting, and Red Hat Training and Certification.

Benefits: Easy update policy, stable system, 100 percent uptime in the first quarter of 2008

”We wanted a stable, robust, yet flexible infrastructure and finally chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We also selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux for most new projects as the Red Hat operating system best suits our requirements and objectives for future business plans.”
– Mike Bos, infrastructure manager, ProRail

Download the case study [PDF]

BACKGROUND
ProRail manages the rail infrastructure in the Netherlands and is responsible for the Dutch railway network. The organization came into being through a merger of three organizations: the former Railinfrabeheer (responsible for rail maintenance and construction), Railverkeersleiding (rail traffic management), and Railned (rail capacity planning).

ProRail has been active since 1 January 2003. The organization has 2,600 employees who run the railway network, and guarantee reliability and safety. The rail infrastructure manager has an operating area of about 6,500 kilometres of track and carries 1.2 million passengers and 100,000 tons of goods every day. This makes the 6,500 kilometres of railway track in The Netherlands among the most used in the world.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
A failure in the system at ProRail has far-reaching consequences and represents a substantial loss for and industry commerce alike.

The technical challenge for ProRail, and the basis for achieving 100 percent uptime, was the introduction of a sound operating system. This means that the application has no unplanned downtime. ProRail works with OpenVMS (Virtual Memory System), a high-end computer system originally designed by Digital Equipment Corporation and now sold by HP.

OpenVMS, a multi-user, multiprocessing virtual memory-based operating system, functions satisfactorily. But in early 2000, the system was no longer available for all the products that ProRail wanted to launch.

Mike Bos, infrastructure manager at ProRail, explains: “At the time Open VMS was running behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows in terms of layered product applications available. The J2EE applications had performance issues. The need arose for a second operating system. With the addition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are moving to a shorter time to market model.”

SOLUTION
ProRail did not intend to replace the existing OpenVMS with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “It would have been an enormous job to migrate every existing application,” said Bos. “The applications that were easily migrated and/or had problems have been migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

Another decision ProRail made was to allow each new application to be built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “After all, you have to use the best tool for the job. We are working to achieve long-term objectives,” said Bos.

Red Hat assisted ProRail by implementing Red Hat Network Satellite for the testing and training environment. With Red Hat Network Satellite, different ‘virtual’ systems can be controlled as a single system. This means that systems can be added to a controlled environment. The ProRail IT network is spread across The Netherlands in 13 local offices. Red Hat Network proxies have been set up at those locations. Every system is installed and managed by the central Red Hat Network architecture, including custom software which needs to be delivered in RPM format by the projects. ProRail also acquired a mix of Premium and Basic Red Hat Enterprise Linux support subscriptions.

Pro Rail is also using Red Hat Global File System. Global File System contains embedded clusters, jointly providing an integrated software framework. ProRail needed to design a complete infrastructure for a new open source solution within its data centres. To help define the organization’s needs and design this new architecture, ProRail engaged Red Hat Global Professional Services, Red Hat’s consulting practice. The new architecture consists of an array of Red Hat tools and software, including:

• Red Hat Network products for provisioning and management
• Default installation profiles that consist of only the products needed by ProRail
• Red Hat Directory Server providing multiple master setup for the centralized user management and application needs.
• Default Red Hat Cluster Suite setups, including Global File System as shared file system with Oracle Real Application cluster
• Default High-Availability Loadbalancer setup (active/backup)
• Develop custom applications for current monitoring systems
• Plans call for Certificate System to be implemented Global Professional Services helped ProRail to develop a custom default architecture design to
  maximize its technology investment.

A Red Hat Consultant, specifically a Dedicated Enterprise Engineer (DEE), installed the framework within the production environment and continues to perform third-level support on-site at ProRail.

The DEE is also responsible for product development and implementing new products from which ProRail can profit. Examples include:

1. Creating a default workstation install, from which several different workstations could be installed. Before this, every workstation type (differs by application use), had its own installation profile and was built by different partners, so every setup looked different and cost a lot in maintenance effort. The new default modular approach significantly reduces maintenance costs.
2. Virtualization setup within the test/training environment. This makes it possible to mix test setups and training instances on a small amount of hardware and is a good start ahead of Proof of Concept for virtualization within the production architecture. ProRail asked Red Hat to help them define the skills needed and execute a training program giving ProRail’s system administrators the appropriate knowledge to support projects which would use the new architecture and set the default framework in production. This service was also delivered by its (DEE) consultant. Together with the Red Hat DEE, ProRail set up a training track for the current operations managers, so they can cover first-line support on the new architecture using Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) skills. To get the maximum performance out of the system, the operations managers at ProRail had to take two Red Hat training courses. “We wanted our people to benefit from thorough training and examination,” said Bos. Besides training its own personnel, for second-line support ProRail hired Red Hat Certified Engineers (RHCEs).

BENEFITS
Thanks to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, ProRail now has a stable and flexible environment. In the first quarter of 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux satisfied the requirement of an uptime of 100 percent. “There have been no incidents so far. Hopefully, by the end of 2008, we can realize our goals. Thanks to Red Hat,” said Bos.

The maturity and robustness of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is important to ProRail.

“We don’t want any new, unproven products. Infrastructure managers are conservative,” said Bos. “Red Hat’s expanding presence in the market is proof of its reliability, and we know that the system is viable for a long lifecycle.”

Bos praises Red Hat’s update policy too. “Updates can be done very easily with Red Hat. With Red Hat we created a more flexible, reliable environment which is easy to maintain and this leaves us free to concentrate on new projects. We’re very happy with the flexibility and reliability we’ve achieved with Red Hat.”

Industry: Higher Education

Geography: New Hampshire

Opportunity: Experiencing major issues and frustration with password replication that caused headaches for end users and IT staff

Migration Path: Sun ONE Directory Server to Red Hat Directory Server

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Directory Server

Benefits: Eliminated replication issues and increased security in seamless transition

Download the case study [PDF]

“The multi-master replication was a huge issue for us previously. Red Hat Directory Server has solved that completely. Students, faculty and staff are our end users and this solution gives them the ability to make password changes effectively and securely so they can focus on their work.”

- Michael Pettinicchio, Systems Administrator, Dartmouth College

BACKGROUND
Dartmouth College is a private, liberal arts university located in Hanover, New Hampshire. A member of the prestigious Ivy League and one of the nation’s oldest universities, Dartmouth has nearly 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students in 29 academic departments, 3 graduate schools and 19 graduate programs. Dartmouth employs close to 600 tenured and tenure-track faculty members and is known for its highly selective and rigorous academic program. In 2007 U.S. News & World Report ranked Dartmouth eleventh among undergraduate programs at national universities.

Technology is an important part of Dartmouth’s academic and residential life, and the school has been ranked as one of the most technologically-advanced colleges in the world by Newsweek and Yahoo!. The entire campus is covered by a wireless network with more than 1,400 access points, while the campus network uses software phones and VoIP technology for local and long-distance calls. Dartmouth’s BlitzMail, the campus e-mail network, is widely used for both academic and social purposes. About 100 public computer terminals around campus are dedicated to BlitzMail use.

OPPORTUNITY
Dartmouth College was previously using Sun ONE Directory Server for identity management across the university but was having problems with multi-master replication. Students would often change their passwords on one computer, only to discover that the change was not enacted on another computer running on a different server. For example, if a student changed their password – as they are instructed to do regularly – on their computer in their residence and then went to a school computer terminal to print a document, the student would discover that the new password would not work on the second computer. The result was confusion and frustration, both for Dartmouth’s students and its IT staff, which had to quickly identify and correct the problem. Michael Pettinicchio, systems administrator at Dartmouth, estimates that the replication issues each took between 15 minutes and one hour of the IT department’s time to solve.

In addition to the time-consuming and frustrating issue of replication for both IT staff and end users, Pettinicchio and his staff were also concerned with disaster recovery and security, two identity management issues that could have a great impact on the large university community and its academic success.

SOLUTION

As the replication issues continued and end users grew more frustrated, Dartmouth’s IT department knew it needed an identity management solution that could centralize user profiles and application settings while maintaining strict security policies. Already using the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Pettinicchio and the IT staff at Dartmouth turned to Red Hat Directory Server to address their identity management challenges. Red Hat Directory Server’s competitive pricing and easy-to-use open source technology made the decision a simple one for Dartmouth’s IT department.

Pettinicchio and his colleagues were impressed by the ease and speed of deployment for Red Hat Directory Server and noted that full deployment took just a few hours. “The migration from Sun ONE to Red Hat Directory Server was seamless, and the deployment was simple and straight forward,” said Pettinicchio. Quick deployment was particularly important to Dartmouth as the college works on a year-round quarterly schedule with many students, faculty and staff on campus even during summer. The Dartmouth IT team made a few customizations while deploying and has enjoyed tremendous success since, placing just one support call in more than a year.

BENEFITS
Since the Red Hat Directory Server deployment, Dartmouth has solved its replication issue . “To my knowledge, we have not had a single instance where a change failed to replicate since deploying Red Hat Directory Server,” said Pettinicchio. “The multi-master replication was a huge issue for us previously. Red Hat Directory Server has solved that completely. Students, faculty and staff are our end users and this solution gives them the ability to make password changes effectively and securely so they can focus on their work.”

The change has helped not only with user passwords, but also with essential campus tasks like user authentication, printing and data maintenance. A web interface tool allows the IT staff to detect a problem so that IT professionals don’t need to check each system independently, allowing them to spot any problems easily. and An internal website also allows staff members to quickly replicate any changes made, eliminating confusion resulting from having disparate information. Pettinicchio also noted that disaster recovery with Red Hat Directory Server seems easy because an administrator can run another system online, maintaining the status quo for end users.

The security features of Red Hat Directory Server have given Dartmouth the confidence that the appropriate people are accessing the appropriate information. “The security features of Red Hat Directory Server are strong,” said Pettinicchio. Users can access what they need to and no more. We don’t worry about students seeing faculty-only materials or vice versa because we know the identity management system is secure.”

FAST FACTS

Customer: Basel University

Industry: Education

Geography: Switzerland

Opportunity: Replace two obsolete OpenLDAP servers to guarantee a greater level of reliability

Migration Path: Fedora to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Directory Server

Hardware: Three servers with 3 GHz Intel Dual Core Xeon processors, each with 4 GB RAM and each with 2 x 76 GB SAS hard disk drives, distributed to two server rooms.

Benefits: Increased reliability, ensured stability at peak access times, enabled monitoring and failover functionality, enabled the modification of configuration during operation

Download the Case Study PDF
Download the German Case Study PDF

BACKGROUND
Basel University was founded in 1460 and is the oldest university in Switzerland. Throughout its 500-year history, it has always been a forward-looking institution in terms of research, teaching, and internal organisation. The university’s attractiveness as a place to study and quality of offered courses are subject to its ability to take on new developments and subjects and make these accessible to students and teaching staff alike. The task of the university’s IT Department is to provide its 15,000 IT users with permanent access to the corresponding electronic resources. This also includes ensuring that students can access both the University’s database and its archives.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
In 2007, the team headed up by Professor Dr. Fritz Rösel, Head of IT at Basel University, made plans to replace the existing OpenLDAP servers, which provide user-access control to services on the network. The existing servers ran on the Fedora Linux distribution in a master/slave configuration that could not provide the reliability and availability necessary for the university’s systems.

“Our directory is a central component and one of the most important services of our infrastructure. Because of its importance, we needed the commercial support of a reliable source, like Red Hat,” said Bernd Sindlinger, Project Manager of Basel University’s computer centre.

SOLUTION
In search of reliability and strong support, Basel University turned to Red Hat solutions. “We had been intending to set up another Fedora Directory Server, but then we decided to implement Red Hat Directory Server because we didn’t want to go without the support that could be provided by Red Hat,” said Sindlinger.

For preliminary planning and conception of the Red Hat implementation, the university contracted the services of an external consultant, Jens Kühnel, a professional consultant who specialises in open source and directory servers. Throughout the entire testing and installation phase of Red Hat Directory Server, Kühnel supported the university, providing both advice and practical assistance.

After a short evaluation phase, the IT department began installation of the production system. The required measures were worked out and prepared during a three-day feasibility workshop with Kuhnel’s external expertise. Simultaneously, a necessary tweak to the directory structure involving an installation and adjustment period of around 10 days was completed.

The complete solution combines Red Hat Directory Server, running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux onthree servers with 3 GHz Intel Dual Core Xeon processors, each with 4 GB RAM and 2 x 76 GB SAS hard-disk drives, distributed to two server rooms.

“By using multimaster replication and installing a load distribution system, monitoring, and failover functionality, the Red Hat Directory Server solution meets our requirements,” said Sindlinger.

BENEFITS
After completion of the university’s initial implementation phase, there are 15 running server services and a large number of applications accessing the directory, including e-mail services, SAP, practical training rooms, web applications, and file servers. In addition, Red Hat Directory Server now guarantees the desired high-degree availability needed to support the university’s IT systems.

Since installing Red Hat solutions, administrative costs for Basel University have been considerably reduced in comparison with its previous OpenLDAP solution. In addition, the university also has the reliability of Red Hat’s professional support to leverage in the event of a problem or query.

“The ability to apply central management to the entire Directory Server environment is one of the greatest benefits we have gained with our migration to Red Hat Directory Server,” said Sindlinger. “It was also extremely helpful for our users to experience complete transparency during implementation.”

Red Hat Provides Cost-Effective Solution for Record Management

Customer: Highmark Healthcare

Industry: Healthcare

Geography: US: Pennsylvania

Business Challenge: To maintain secure health records for over 4.1 million insured customers through a manageable and cost-effective system.

Solution: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Directory Server, Red Hat Network, Red Hat Network Satellite

Hardware: JuTzu, Race servers, HPDL rat mouse server

Benefits: Approximately 30% savings in hardware/software licensing costs. An almost 50% reduction in hardware (78 CPUs to 42). More than $470,000 long-term savings through the directory server ($500,000 + future costs estimate from Sun versus one-time $30,000 cost from Red Hat). Higher performance and security. Readily available support.

Download the Case Study: PDF

BACKGROUND

Highmark Inc. is Pennsylvania’s largest health insurance company by membership. It was created in 1996 by the consolidation of two Pennsylvania licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association – Pennsylvania Blue Shield (now Highmark Blue Shield) and Blue Cross of Western Pennsylvania (now Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield). They are now one of the largest health insurers in the United States.

Highmark’s mission is to provide access to affordable, quality health care, enabling individuals to live longer, healthier lives. They have a long history of nearly 70 years serving health insurance needs, and currently provide fully insured and self-funded health products to about 4.6 million members in Pennsylvania.

Highmark completed the grand opening of its new data center in November 2005. The facility is located on 11.3 acres in an 87,000 square foot building with 49 employees. Its ISG division has approximately 700 people. Highmark has 107 Linux servers and four Linux systems administrators.

CHALLENGE

Highmark is a large Medicare intermediary and carrier that deals regularly with strict government regulations. The company is involved in seven to 10 government audits per year surrounding the security of the highly sensitive health care information it holds. Information like dental business coverage details for military personal, both retired and in service, and Medicare information. Five of these annual audits are large-scale and require an enormous focus on security. Therefore, the company must ensure that their health care records remain secure and manageable.

In addition to security and management issues, Highmark needed to find a cost-effective, high-performing, and consistent operating system in order to cover their IT budget and goals.

SOLUTION

In the face of these challenges, Highmark decided to consolidate to one operating system. While the company already had forms of Linux present in its environment, Highmark needed the consistency of one unified operating system – a solution that Red Hat provided.

Highmark migrated from Sun and AIX to Red Hat for two reasons. “First, we wanted to try to get a consistent operating system for management purposes,” said Dave Dipiazza, manager of Internet services at Highmark. “The second big thing was the cost in trying to cover our IT budgets.”

The migration to Red Hat is focused on four major areas: WebSphere, Oracle, Lotus Notes, and web presence. “Considering the four big applications that we have in our IT environment, we started out looking at both SUSE and Red Hat,” Dipiazza said. “We came to the decision that Red Hat would be better for our environment because the support we received from Red Hat was outstanding and Red Hat has better market share here in the United States. We simply had better experiences with Red Hat solutions.”

Dipiazza continued, “Security was one of our top priorities, and Red Hat provided an amazing solution for us. As a Medicare intermediary and carrier, we have to deal with many strict government regulations. The security and protection of our health care records is extremely important within our corporation, and Red Hat helped us to achieve this level of security.”

Don Matush, manager of operating systems at Highmark, expects to finish consolidating to one operating system by the end of 2006. They have already completed the migration of close to 90% of the WebSphere environment and have started on its Oracle and web server environments.

Highmark also implemented the Red Hat Directory Server into its environment to realize further cost reduction. They migrated from the iPlanet directory server, which operated on a per-entry pricing model, to the Red Hat Directory Server. With 1.3 million entries in the directory currently, per-entry costs were much higher than with Red Hat’s one-time fee.

Highmark’s environment is now operating from the Red Hat Network. “Our environment has grown in its position. It is more prudent to bring that functionality in-house and manage it ourselves instead of having over 107 servers connecting to the network to get something,” Dipiazza said.

BENEFITS

Highmark has seen numerous benefits since migrating to Red Hat – including cost savings, heightened performance and security, and excellent support resources. The company has experienced a 30% reduction in its hardware and software licensing costs. The ISB software that Highmark was previously running was priced per CPU. Because Highmark was able to make an almost 50% reduction of the amount of CPUs necessary for operation (78 CPUs to 42 CPUs), licensing costs were drastically reduced.

Highmark also saw a huge cost reduction in its directory server. With Sun, Highmark would have spent $500,000 up front with additional maintenance costs in the future. By implementing Red Hat instead, Highmark is spending a one-time fee of $30,000. “Red Hat is going to save us money every time we need to add users,” Dipiazza said. “I don’t need to purchase anything else for Red Hat Directory Server in the future. Red Hat saved us more than the difference between $500,000 and $30,000.”*

The Red Hat Satellite Server has helped Highmark with functionality and management. “The Satellite Server offers some additional administrative functionality to help us optimize our employees’ time managing the environment,” Matush said.

With the optimum service provided by Red Hat, the management of Highmark’s environment has become much easier. “Red Hat support was much more available than SUSE support,” Dipiazza said. “It was much easier for Highmark to find the right resources with Red Hat.”

Highmark has also benefited from Red Hat certification and on-site training. More than five members of their IT staff are currently Red Hat Certified Engineers® or are preparing for the certification test.

The company’s future plans and integration of Red Hat solutions include taking a look at virtualization. “We are definitely interested in seeing and evaluating virtualization when it becomes part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5,” Matush said.

Thus far Highmark has enjoyed a successful migration to Red Hat. “It’s definitely been a positive experience with Red Hat,” Matush said. “You can tell that Red Hat values their relationship with Highmark, and we certainly value it as well. We are working together to make sure this Linux initiative is a success at Highmark.”