ETA2U ended 2014 successfully by completing the project of consolidation, solution and monitoring for an important client in our portfolio: Oradea Transport Local SA, a project that targeted several elements.

First of all it dealt with the consolidation of the VMware virtualization platform, with an upgrade to the latest stable version of vSphere ESX 5.1, the realization of redundancy for the connections to the storage hardware and an update of the versions of the virtual machines.

Then a real-time monitoring and alert system was implemented. By means of this system, administrators receive alerts related to any dysfunctional element (such as alerts on the UPS battery autonomy or the output power fluctuation, server outage, failure of a service – pop3, smtp etc., loss of connectivity with the active elements of the OTL infrastructure network) automatically, making them able to respond immediately. Furthermore, the system also offers chronological reports on the fluctuation of the parameters recorded by this equipment.

The implemented elements came in support of the e-ticketing system used by the OTL SA Company that uses an online database interrogation system for every release and use of travel cards. This system must always be accessible, given that the impact of its failure is significant for all the users of the public transportation system in Oradea.

The monitoring system allows the dispatchers to view the failure of certain elements in real time and to understand at a glance the system status and the location of the fault. Consequently, the support teams as well as the people who call the dispatching center receive information more promptly and accurately.

The hardware platform being used is made up of Dell servers, 24 GB of RAM each and 8 processor cores, HP switches that can handle gigabit connections and Dell SAN storage equipment.

The monitoring system is developed on a Nagios platform, customized by the ETA2U engineers and integrated with all the IT equipment of OTL, using the SNMP communication protocol.

The backup solution in use is created by VMware Data Protection, which copies the entire virtual machines on another piece of equipment, in order to be able to protect and restore the operations in case the storage hardware is compromised. Other availability elements include:

  • Parity-enabled RAID matrices and HotSpare disks for the storage equipment;
  • Redundant switches;
  • Redundant hosts and automatic High Availability for all the virtual machines;
  • Redundant controllers;
  • Multipath access configuration.

You take great joy and satisfaction when you receive words of praise from demanding clients for a difficult project, having tight deadlines. 

We place the project delivered to Oradea Transport Local SA, in ETA2U's project portfolio under the successfully concluded projects category.

Cristian Leoveanu
ETA2U, Business Unit Director