A Customer Success
from the Experts in
Business-Critical ContinuityTM.
Aramice capitalizes on its Avocent infrastructure to homogenize access to all
elements of its distributed IT system.
The Aramice IT center was born on January 1, 2008 following the merger of
CIGMA GCA and the Mornay Group’s IT systems management. Created as a
non-profit association, Aramice has three clients, Audiens, Mornay and NovalisTaitbout, each working in the social welfare sector (supplementary pensions,
personal insurance and social action). Aramice’s role is to provide IT systems to its
clients and ensure they are functioning correctly, as well as operating more than
900 servers and 6,500 workstations. With its headquarters in Saran, France and
offices in Paris and Lyon, there are almost 750 people working for Aramice.
Company
Aramice IT center
Location
France
Type of Business
Insurance
Web site
www.aramice.fr
Applications
Avocent MergePoint® Infrastructure Explorer
Software
DSView® 3 Management Software
DSView 3 Power Manager Plug-In
DSR® 1020/1030/2020/4020/4030 KVM over
IP Switch
A long-term user of Avocent solutions, via the Mornay group, Aramice wanted
to capitalize on all the benefits offered by these remote management and
administration solutions in order to facilitate the migration of two of its data
centers. However, more broadly, the IT center also benefits from the use of
Avocent tools which reduce operating costs, simplify the management and
increase availability.
“We will be relying greatly on MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer in the future to fix all our consolidation
problems. Ultimately, it will enable us to perform very
simple development simulations of our data centers, with
a granularity reaching the communications port of our
various pieces of equipment.”
– Maurice Dall’Agnol Mornay Group
Collaboration with Avocent before Aramice
In 2004, 200 distributed servers (AIX, Windows® and Linux®) migrated to two
clean rooms (one production, the other back-up) several kilometers from the
head office. And, to ensure continuous operation of its distributed computing,
Maurice Dall’Agnol, then head of the department responsible for the Mornay
Group’s distributed infrastructure and architecture, started looking for solutions
that would allow it to recover lost functions with the physical offset of IT systems.
“We needed tools to ensure remote control of 200 local consoles, but also remote
access to the 40 active elements constituting the local (LAN), remote (WAN)
and metropolitan (MAN) networks. Moreover, for a complete recovery in case
of system failure, we must also have full remote control of the power supply for
all active elements of our distributed IT systems,” says Dall’Agnol. So, Dall’Agnol
turned to Avocent to meet all his requirements. The bet was a winner as the
A Customer Success
from the Experts in
Business-Critical ContinuityTM.
Avocent solution allowed the management of Mornay Group’s IT
systems to take remote control of 320 key consoles, combining
servers, network elements and connectors, all spread over two
remote sites.
to closely monitor the power consumption of all the components
of its data centers. “Asked by management about my future energy
needs, I was able to provide the real-time power consumption of my
IT systems, almost to the watt,” recalls Dall’Agnol.
All this had been made possible through the use of 50 SPC power
device supply rails, 20 DSR KVM over IP switches (1020, 1030, 2020,
4010 and 4020) and management equipment for CCM and CPS
appliance serial ports. Everything was managed through DSView 3
software via IP and then through simple Web browsers.
Aramice has also started deploying the Avocent MergePoint
Infrastructure Explorer solution, a unique tool for the planning,
documentation, visualization, energy efficiency improvement and
management of the ever changing dynamic data center.
Avocent tools for standardizing IT system access control
After the merger with CIGMA GCA and the creation of Aramice in
2008, the number of data centers doubled. The Mornay Group’s two
Parisian centers were joined by CIGMA GCA’s two centers in Orleans.
Taking advantage of this merger, a consolidation process for the IT
systems of Aramice and two of its clients was put in place.
“This consolidation will allow us to halve our costs for administration,
licensing, etc.,” says Dall’Agnol. “This represents around 500
machines to be migrated to Saran before the end of the year.”
It is imperative, for reasons of cost, security and availability, to limit
the movements of an IT system management team spread over
different sites. Dall’Agnol explains that they must be able to take
control of all equipment distributed between the two Orleans data
centers. Without hesitation, Aramice turned to Avocent.
“We are pursuing our objective of standardization of remote access
control of our systems. With Avocent solutions, and DSView 3.7
[software] in particular, we are moving toward a homogenization
of access and access control for all elements of our distributed
information system,” explains Dall’Agnol. “And, all of this is
happening through a single layer of solutions, to keep the risk of
error or malfunction to a minimum.”
However, DSView 3 software is not only used to ensure access and
supervision of IT within the Aramice data centers. In fact, Aramice
makes use of the DSView 3 software Power Manager plug-in in order
“We will be relying greatly on MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer
in the future to fix all our consolidation problems,” says Dall’Agnol.
“Until now, the application was only in the test phase within our
organization. That’s why we haven’t been able to rely on it to
formalize the migration process for our data centers.”
In fact, Aramice is currently developing its knowledge of this
advanced mapping tool with the details of its facilities, in the
expectation that future versions will automate this task.
“Ultimately, MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer will enable us to
perform very simple development simulations of our data centers,
with a granularity reaching the communications port of our various
pieces of equipment,” Dall’Agnol explains. “It then becomes
extremely simple to verify whether the resources of our sites are
adapted to these developments in terms of air conditioning, physical
space, weight, power, storage, network ports, etc. Similarly, the
upgrading and updating of servers will become much easier.”
Ultimately, Aramice is extremely confident about its migration and
the remote control of its infrastructure.
“One of the great strengths of this provider is the way they listen to
clients’ needs. We benefit from this every day. The solutions they
offer have followed the development of distributed infrastructure by
integrating virtualization issues, among other things. We have 700
virtual machines and my teams can access them through a single
tool, an Avocent tool, which is also used to manage the entire IT
system,” says Dall’Agnol.
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