British Army Migrates Cloud Infrastructure to Red Hat Solutions
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ansible Tower by Red Hat help British
Army improve consistency and simplify management
LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), the world's leading provider of open source
solutions, today announced that the British Army has migrated its
private cloud environment to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is using
Ansible Tower by Red Hat for automation and orchestration. With Red Hat
Enterprise Linux and Ansible Tower by Red Hat, the British Army is able
to deliver applications more quickly and efficiently, with less
downtime, to better meet the needs of end users.
Headquartered in Andover, UK, the British Army has more than 19,000
soldiers deployed in commitments, in more than 27 countries across the
globe. The Army’s Information Application Services (IAS) team delivers
large corporate applications, hosting and web services that provide
support to military families, veterans and more. The IAS team has
applications in production running on two main hosting environments: a
joint server farm hosted in a private cloud, and a private hosting
environment, which consists of two private clouds designated for secure
data.
The IAS team was experiencing support and compatibility issues with the
legacy stack, resulting in unplanned downtime for upgrades and delayed
updates. The Army sought a solution that could not only deliver software
more quickly and without downtime, but would also enable them to embrace
DevOps methodologies.
As a result, the British Army migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
moved from a physical infrastructure to a software-defined datacenter.
Its main stack consists of five database servers and two applications
servers, all of which have a central spine of a clustered file system.
For this, the Army uses the Resilient Storage add-on for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, which offers robust file system capabilities that
enable users to access the same storage device over a network—using
either shared storage or a clustered file system—through a pool of data
that's available to each server in a group.
To help with management, the Army deployed Ansible Tower by Red Hat,
initially using the enterprise-grade agentless automation platform to
automate the installation of routine patches and configuration updates
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The British Army has expanded its Ansible
Tower implementation, now using it to provide rapid patching and system
reconfiguration for urgent requirements, and to provide other DevOps
functionality for routine system administration.
With the new Ansible automation-based system, the Army has accelerated
its pace of change by 75 percent. Upgrades that used to take a day can
now be achieved with high availability in less than two hours, and can
be scheduled after hours. Emergency patches that used to take
approximately three days can be implemented in a matter of hours.
Overall, delivering changes is now four times faster, on average, based
on the British Army’s internal calculations. With the time saved from
automating tasks with Ansible Tower by Red Hat, the Army has been able
to reallocate people to other parts of the organization.
The Army plans to extend the DevOps capability provided by Ansible, to
include other platforms, as well as managing its network switches and
servers.
Supporting Quotes
Lt Col. Dorian Seabrook, head of
Operations, IAS Branch, British Army
“We want to deliver
software quicker and more efficiently to meet the end users’
requirements and we absolutely made the right choice with Ansible. It
works for us on a number of levels, and the adoption throughout the
organization is now starting to really take hold. Previously,
communicating the delivery timescales for large projects could be quite
stressful. Now, in most cases, we’re delivering quicker than the users
can actually absorb the changes. Our users are just staggered by the
agility and the turnaround time and what we can now offer them.”
Joe Fitzgerald, vice president, Management, Red Hat
“The
British Army, like many organizations, is under constant pressure to
deliver software and services quickly with no downtime. An increasingly
large challenge IT organizations are facing is to modernize software
development and IT operations while still operating and maintaining
traditional applications and infrastructure. To keep up with the
requests from its users, the British Army decided to enhance its DevOps
capabilities by deploying Ansible. At the press of a button, Ansible
Tower can deliver software and updates to the correct places, which can
lead to fewer errors and help eliminate unplanned downtime.”
Additional Resources
Connect with Red Hat
About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world's leading provider
of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to
provide reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage
and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning
support, training, and consulting services. As a connective hub in a
global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities,
Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate
resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn
more at http://www.redhat.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute
"forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements
provide current expectations of future events based on certain
assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to
any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially
from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of
various important factors, including: risks related to the ability of
the Company to compete effectively; the ability to deliver and stimulate
demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis;
delays or reductions in information technology spending; the integration
of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired
technologies and products; the effects of industry consolidation;
uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements;
the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and
the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or
relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and
information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and
control over, the Company's growth and international operations;
fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key
personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Annual
Report on Form 10-K (copies of which may be accessed through the
Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov),
including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and
"Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results
of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance,
outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general
factors including (without limitation) general industry and market
conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions,
governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural
disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements
included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the
date of this press release and these views could change. However, while
the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some
point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation
to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as
representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date
of this press release.
###
Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo and Ansible,
are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its
subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered
trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170622005356/en/
Red Hat, Inc.
Sarah Weldon-Gamble, +44-7557-008974
sweldong@redhat.com
Source: Red Hat, Inc.