Client Profile:
One of the largest public institutions in Eastern Europe, operating as a nationally significant provider responsible for delivering logistics and postal services across the country. The organization handles processes of strategic importance for both the state and society, which entails strict requirements regarding business continuity, data security, and IT infrastructure reliability.
Detailed information about the Client cannot be disclosed in accordance with NDA provisions.
Client Needs
The Client was seeking comprehensive cloud services, including backup computing infrastructure, data storage, and advanced networking services, aimed at ensuring the continuity of critical IT systems.
The demand for a private cloud environment resulted from the need to increase operational capacity and provide a stable backup infrastructure for mission-critical systems operating 24/7
Challenges
The project was carried out in an environment with extremely high requirements for reliability, performance, and data transmission security, typical for strategically significant institutions.
The key challenges included:
- ensuring stable and high-throughput data transmission between data centers,
- integrating the private cloud with the Client’s existing infrastructure,
- implementing and maintaining Layer 2 (L2) connectivity between the external data center and the Client’s locations,
- delivering very high network throughput of at least 10 Gb/s,
- providing Internet access with a minimum bandwidth of 1 Gb/s,
- meeting strict formal and technical requirements, including CPU performance (≥ 2.4 GHz) and cybersecurity standards,
- complying with rigorous SLA and cybersecurity requirements.
Solution
Ucloud designed and implemented a dedicated single-tenant private cloud environment intended to support the Client’s backup infrastructure. The solution was fully integrated with the existing IT resources and designed to ensure stable and predictable operation of critical systems.
The environment was based on Hyper-V virtualization and integrated with the Client’s existing infrastructure, incorporating high-availability mechanisms such as Windows Failover Clustering, Live Migration, and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV).
The infrastructure was built using enterprise-grade servers:
- Manufacturer: Supermicro
- Processors: Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC (5th generation) (12 servers)
The network layer was designed as a highly available Ethernet architecture with no single points of failure (SPOF). Four independent 100 Gb/s channels were implemented to ensure full redundancy of L2 connections.
The infrastructure utilized networking equipment from:
- Juniper Networks
- Mellanox
- Extreme Networks
The storage layer was designed as a hybrid software-defined and hardware-based solution, delivering performance of up to 1.5 million IOPS. It included:
- virtual NVMe and HDD disks,
- enterprise-grade SSD drives (Kioxia),
- multiple storage performance tiers tailored to workload characteristics.
Scope of Work
The project scope included:
- designing the private cloud architecture,
- deploying the Hyper-V virtualization environment,
- configuring high-availability clusters,
- setting up virtual disks with varying performance parameters,
- providing colocation for telecommunications equipment,
- delivering Internet access with a minimum bandwidth of 1 Gb/s,
- implementing and ensuring redundancy of L2 connections between data centers,
- providing L2 bandwidth of at least 10 Gb/s,
- infrastructure monitoring on both the provider and Client sides,
- support for environment management and maintenance.
Outcome
The implemented solution enabled the Client to deploy a stable, secure, and fully controlled backup infrastructure that meets the requirements of a strategically significant institution.
Dedicated compute resources were used, eliminating the risk of resource sharing with other environments and ensuring consistent performance regardless of workload.
Achieved objectives:
- ensuring business continuity of critical IT systems,
- high availability and fault tolerance,
- fast and secure data transmission between locations,
- full control over the private cloud environment,
- ability to scale resources flexibly.
Technologies Used
Virtualization and systems:
Hyper-V, Windows Failover Clustering, Live Migration, Cluster Shared Volumes
Hardware and infrastructure:
Intel Xeon, AMD EPYC (5th generation), Supermicro, NVMe, SSD Kioxia
Networking:
Juniper Networks, Mellanox, Extreme Networks