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Ensuring Network Service Continuity
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The financial institution identified three main areas of improvement in their network infrastructure and service management. Firstly, they wanted to limit the risk of outage as their traditional Microsoft DHCP servers did not offer a real high availability and failover solution. Secondly, they aimed to improve IP addresses management as the use of spreadsheets showed strong limitations in terms of real time visibility over IP allocations, error prevention and scalability. Lastly, they wanted to centralize IP addresses, DNS and DHCP services that were managed as three different entities with no real consistency between them, leading to high risks of misconfigurations, low management reactivity and expensive operating costs.
About The Customer
The customer is a European financial institution whose activity heavily relies on access to the Internet and the capacity to find and communicate information in real time. For such a company, network service continuity is more than a necessity, it is a business imperative. This is why the customer's network administration decided to reinforce its infrastructure with a DHCP high availability solution to ensure the continuity of its critical network services.
The Solution
To address these issues, the customer chose EfficientIP solutions. The Microsoft servers were replaced by two SOLIDserver appliances, ensuring DHCP services continuity based on an active-active DHCP failover architecture and high availability hardware platforms. Deployment and management of such architecture is fully automated and carried out in a seamless process through the SmartArchitecture. This innovation offers a set of DNS/DHCP architecture templates that can be applied to a selection of servers. Once a model has been chosen, the SmartArchitecture automatically configures all the servers according to their role in the architecture. Appliances and architectures management is centralized through a web-based platform that reconciles the IP addressing plan with the DNS and DHCP data. They can therefore manage its network services as a single entity, thus eliminating risks of double allocation or configuration mistakes while guaranteeing network consistency. Finally, a third appliance is dedicated to the NetChangeIPLocator network discovery tool. This solution provides administrators with a real-time visibility into IP address connections on the network (switch, slot, port and VLAN) and with a history of past events.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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