Infrastructure Achievements
Server Consolidation
Server consolidation is a way to make a more efficient IT environment by combining servers or replacing legacy servers with virtual systems for more effective usage. The benefits of Server Consolidation are a reduction in power and cooling costs, reduction in server load growth and data center expansion; thus by reducing the data center footprint, reduction in warranty and licensing, etc. Apart from the benefits, it also offers a highly scalable, robust & redundant server infrastructure.
DoIT has adopted the Server Virtualization strategy in 2010 with a minimal number of servers. Currently, the percentage of Virtual servers have reached 97% in contrast to what we had in 2018, which was 95%. The plan is to bring this percentage up to 99% by the end of 2019.
When DoIT has adopted virtualization strategy, the features & resources were minimal, and hence some of the virtual machines were provisioned in standalone ESXi servers. Currently, DoIT equipped with server infrastructure which is powerful enough to host the entire business critical server infrastructure. Hence, it is highly crucial to migrating the remaining stand-alone virtual machines to VMware HA. DoIT had 20 ESXi standalone servers in 2018. Presently, there are only eight left with ten virtual machines which is currently being migrated to VMware HA. The present status of servers infrastructure is as follows:
The reduction in the physical server and power consumption for three consecutive years are as follows:
Active Directory Upgradation:
Active Directory Services (ADS) is a collection of resources that includes, but is not limited to, user accounts, computer objects, and other Active Directory objects. It is the primary mechanism, which provides account authentication services for the entire UAEU business critical Applications and users login to workstations. The UAEU has two domains uaeu.ac.ae (UAEU) and aa.uaeu.ac.ae (ACADEMICS) which is currently driven by the Windows Server 2008R2 operating system. Upgrading Active Directory to the latest stable Windows Server 2016 operating system is essential to avail the new features and functionalities provided by the most recent Windows Operating System.
Windows 2016 Active Directory has many security enhancements compared to the previous versions. Many new features introduced like Group Membership Expiration, Azure AD Join, Microsoft Passport and also provides much efficient authentication & replication mechanisms and better performance for overall Active Directory infrastructure.
Presently, the upgrade project has already been tested and verified successfully in the Test Domains. We have already introduced new Windows 2016 Domain Controllers on both ACADEMICS and UAEU Domains. There will be more Windows 2016 Domain Controllers deployed for redundancy and to provide the authentication for all UAEU AD integrated services and thereby demoting the Windows 2008R2 Domain Controllers and the target to achieve this by the end of 2019.
Upgradation of Privileged Access Management System (ARCOS):
Privileged Access Management (PAM) refers to a class of solutions that help secure, control, manage and monitor privileged access to critical assets. PAM solutions typically take the credentials of privileged accounts – i.e., the admin accounts – and put them inside a secure repository (a vault) isolating the use of privileged accounts to reduce the risk of those credentials stolen. Once inside the depository, system administrators need to go through the PAM system to access their credentials, at which point they authenticated, and their access logged. When a credential checked back in, it is reset to ensure administrators have to go through the PAM system next time they want to use the credential. By centralizing privileged credentials in one place, PAM systems can secure a high level of security for them, control who is accessing them, log all accesses and monitor for any suspicious activity.
UAEU has implemented ARCOS for achieving the PAM functionalities. We have upgraded the ARCOS to the new stable version 4.8.5.0 with the enhanced features that has a brand new UI and several Client and Server Manager improved features.
