Research and Production Corporation United Wagon Company (RPC UWC) is the largest manufacturer of freight rolling stock in Russia, and one of the top three global suppliers of freight cars. The growth and development of the company prompted the implementation of a modern data center at a RPC UWC industrial site in Tikhvin, Leningrad Region. VMware technologies, which formed the basis for the new data center, provided network virtualization and security.
RPC UWС is a technology leader of the industry, and it is crucial for the company to ensure reliable IT support at production sites. Following the requirements of the digital age and pursuing internal business challenges, RPC UWC decided to build a robust IT infrastructure in the data center with the increased failure resistance and disaster tolerance at the production site of the company in Tikhvin to ensure a high level of data security and increase network performance.
Digital transformation of industrial companies requires modern solutions that will ensure reliable and safe operation of all segments of the IT infrastructure. An important step for the company was choosing technologies and IT solutions for the data center. After market analysis and evaluating competitors, RPC UWC chose VMware NSX Data Center, the network virtualization platform for software-defined data centers, and VMware vRealize Network Insight. for infrastructure monitoring and reducing the time needed to respond to IT events.
VMware NSX Data Center delivers network and security services using a fully software-defined approach, abstracting them from the base physical infrastructure. vRealize Network Insight supports building of an optimized, highly available, and secure network infrastructure in multi-cloud environments. By implementing NSX Data Center with vRealize Network Insight, RPC UWC can now increase the transparency of IT systems without adding additional employees and acquiring physical equipment.
To date, one of the three stages of the project has been completed: the specialists have integrated the VMware NSX platform with the data center at the industrial site and connected it to another data center. In order to carry out this task, the network specialists of the RPC UWC headquarters and personnel of the Tikhvin industrial site worked together with VMware consultants to set up all data center hosts and deploy the NSX platform.
The work allowed RPC UWC to utilize key services efficiently and proceed to the next stages to set up the target configuration at the Tikhvin industrial site. Company IT specialists note that data security management has already become much simpler, due to the opportunity to run policies, restricting the access to information depending on user’s professional duties. At the same time, RPC UWC has improved the availability of services for users from all over the world, and made administration simpler.
“After the VMware NSX Data Center deployment, only the minimum number of experts will be required for infrastructure management. By automating processes, we eliminate the need for intervention by network administration staff,” commented Anton Saykin, Chief Information Officer for RPC UWC
Going forward, the company plans to connect the updated data center to external networks and complete the implementation of monitoring and microsegmentation tools using a distributed firewall, which is a component of VMware NSX. Thus, after the implementation of the project, the data center will become the default traffic exchange point.Upon completion of all stages, RPC UWC plans to deploy software-defined networks at all in the organization.
