Shadow-Soft Standardizes Retailer’s Multi-Architecture Environment with Red Hat Satellite

Background

As a leading retailer, the customer relies on a complex, business-critical IT infrastructure. A key component of this is a large and growing fleet of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) servers, spanning both IBM Z series (s390x) and x86_64 architectures. As a long-standing and trusted partner, Shadow-Soft embarked on an 18-month strategic engagement to help the customer address the challenges of managing this diverse, multi-architecture environment.

Challenge

The primary challenge for the customer was the lack of a centralized and consistent approach to managing its RHEL environments. This resulted in significant operational overhead, security and compliance challenges, and inconsistencies across their infrastructure. The initial engagement focused on a critical set of 7 servers, with the goal of proving a scalable model for centralized content management, patching, and provisioning that could be expanded across their entire RHEL footprint.

Approach & Implementation

Shadow-Soft proposed and implemented a solution centered around Red Hat Satellite. The 18-month engagement was delivered through a series of collaborative working sessions, allowing for a phased approach that grew with the customer's needs. The key contributions of Shadow-Soft included:

• Architecture and Design: Shadow-Soft designed a centralized Satellite architecture to meet the customer's specific requirements, including support for their multi-architecture environment.
  
• Phased Implementation and Expansion: The engagement began with a successful 7-server pilot. Based on the success of this initial phase, the solution was expanded to cover over 30 servers, demonstrating the scalability and value of the Red Hat Satellite platform.
• Automation: To improve efficiency and consistency, Shadow-Soft developed an automated kickstart-based process for provisioning new RHEL instances.
• Mentoring and Knowledge Transfer: Throughout the engagement, Shadow-Soft's consultants worked closely with the customer's team, providing hands-on training and comprehensive documentation to ensure a successful handover and long-term self-sufficiency.

Outcomes

The deployment of Red Hat Satellite has provided the customer with a centralized, consistent, and automated platform for managing its entire RHEL environment. The key outcomes of this engagement include:

• Reduced Operational Overhead: The centralized management capabilities of Satellite have significantly reduced the manual effort required to manage the 30+ server environment, freeing up the customer's IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
• Improved Security and Compliance: The automated patching and configuration management capabilities of Satellite have improved the security and compliance posture of the entire RHEL fleet.
• Increased Agility: The automated provisioning process has significantly reduced the time it takes to deploy new RHEL instances, enabling the customer to respond more quickly to business needs.

As a result of the success of this engagement, the customer is now exploring additional services from Shadow-Soft to assist with its ongoing automation initiatives with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, further solidifying a successful and ongoing partnership.