Our Approach
Going into the project, the goal was to streamline their operating system (OS) environment and supported platforms into an open source framework. The company was already using Red Hat products in their middleware application layer and on some operating systems. “We worked with them to develop a business case to ascertain if it made financial sense to simplify their environment by making a larger stake in the Red Hat product line,” said Shea Stewart, National Infrastructure and Cloud Team Lead at Scalar.
It is very easy to set up and deploy, but it is important to customize the tool to ensure it is tailored to the client’s business process.
After agreeing that the Red Hat platform could help reduce the overall spend and simplify license management, the team reviewed the technical capabilities and made the decision to go forward with a proof of concept.
Solution
A Red Hat licensing package was purchased to ensure all systems remained under subscription and under support. They also have the flexibility with the licensed technologies to change deployment models without having to go back to the vendor and spend more money. The subscription includes:
Private Cloud Infrastructure
The core subscription (Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure) provides heterogeneous coverage and includes the ability to deploy their VMware Hypervisor virtualization environment. It also provides automated provisioning, configuration management, and software management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Self-Service Portal
Typically, standing up an environment for developers can take a lot of time and resources. This complexity is eliminated via a self-service portal (Red Hat CloudForms) that ensures developers get up and running quickly without burdening the IT team. The portal workflows required customization – “it is very easy to set up and deploy, but it is important to customize the tool to ensure it is tailored to the client’s business process,” said Stewart. Scalar worked with the client to understand how they work and put compliance and governance policies in place.
In all, the Cloud Infrastructure license has provided access to a suite of Red Hat products, including:
- CloudForms
- Satellite
- Enterprise Linux
- Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform
“The reality is that only about one third of our client’s environment is production grade, warranting the higher spend, and bells and whistles functionality. For the remaining two thirds which are used for development and testing, they just required the right platform at the right price – Red Hat has provided this,” said Stewart.
