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Case Study:
Firm Validates Server Redeployment
Strategy with Anue Systems
Summary
Anue Systems enabled a leading provider of IT services to test and
validate the relocation of a major aerospace client’s mainframe server
system, supporting thousands of users worldwide.
Client Profile
The company is a leading global information technology (IT) services
provider. With over 75,000 employees, they provide innovative
solutions for customers around the world by applying leading
technologies and their own advanced capabilities. These include
systems design and integration; IT and business process outsourcing;
applications software development; Web and application hosting; and
management consulting.
Project Initiative
The company won a contract to manage a multi-national defense
company’s complete IT infrastructure, from desktops to their mainframe server systems. In order to deliver the benefits of its comprehensive support and service infrastructure, the company had to move the client’s mainframe systems to their central service center situated over 1500 kilometers away. But before they could undertake a migration it was critical to test the impact of such a distance on
mainframe applications.
Project Implementation
The team needed to validate that the impairments associated with the
added distance would not affect the thousands of users accessing the
mainframe system. The company’s approach was to use the emulator
to replicate the network with limited-bandwidth and thus measure the“real user’s” experience.
Using the Anue Gigabit Ethernet Layer 2+ (GEL2) Network Emulator,
the team introduced delay into the production environment between
the users and the mainframe, exactly emulating the setup they wished
to implement. They then laid out a plan to ramp up multiple delay
and impairment scenarios over a period of three months. Transmission
latency times of up to 80 ms were emulated. Other impairments
included bandwidth throttling down to 40 Mbps, reordering and
corrupting of Ethernet frames, and introducing packet jitter. All of
these tests were designed to match impairments that could occur on
the production network.
This implementation allowed all day-to-day user functional requirements to be tested without
having to establish a formal test plan. At all times the team had a backup plan that would allow
them to effortlessly remove the delay or impairments should they detect that the user
experience would be compromised.
The first test showed that some critical business applications did not work with the delay that
the emulated distance introduced. The team was able to detect the failure in real time and dynamically eliminate the delay to circumvent end-user problems. The team then focused on optimizing these applications to operate with the several millisecond delay associated with the
server being located 1500 kilometers away. Once optimized, the team re-tested the
applications again using the Anue Network Emulator.
Customer Value
By conducting these tests, the company could truly define the impact of moving their client’s
mainframe. The benefit was two-fold:
1) They could test and understand all the issues before a single machine was actually
relocated, and
2) They were then able to construct a migration plan that would mitigate risk and above
all, minimize customer impact.
The company’s overall benefit was being one hundred percent proactive in meeting service level and maintaining quality of experience for the end user.
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