Patronato De Liberados maximizes availability and security

To read the Spanish version of this case study click here.

Patronato de Liberados is the official parole board of the whole province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is responsible for the social and working rehabilitation of former convicts on probation or under judicial control, through the development of social assistance plans. Employing nearly 2,000 people and serving the whole area of Buenos Aires—over 15 million citizens—the organization collaborates and interacts with parole boards that manage other Argentinian cities, and works closely with judges and other professional figures from the court.

The rehabilitation schemes and social plans created by the parole board can vary considerably according to each individual’s past history and are tailored to help them become a productive part of their community.

Patronato de Liberados reports its overall activities and the specific course of each individual’s social scheme to the judicial and executive departments of the Argentinian government on a 24/7 basis. Constantino Valledor, IT Technical Manager at Patronato de Liberados, says: “The service we provide to the government and, more generally, to the country, is of extreme importance and of a rather tricky nature.”

“Dealing, in most cases, with former convicts, our social workers can sometimes experience reluctant and uneasy attitudes, and they always need to consider the huge differences that exist among these individuals. In order to keep providing such service, as well as protecting confidential data and information for reporting and social rehabilitation plans, we must keep the risk of a system crash to a minimum.”

Virtualizing the infrastructure
Patronato de Liberados wanted to set up an IT solution which could ensure the rapid and secure restart of key applications, minimize the risk of data loss in case of failure, and lower energy and cooling costs. The organization opted for IBM because of its high-quality products and its responsive, efficient and professional support.

The parole board implemented two IBM System x3650 class servers, virtualized using Microsoft Hyper-V and connected to an IBM System Storage DS3512.

IBM System x3650 servers provide outstanding performance for business-critical applications, and their energy-efficient Intel Xeon processors allow Patronato de Liberados to decrease electricity requirements and consumption.

Deploying twin servers linked to a separate storage environment allows Patronato de Liberados to continue working in the event of a hardware failure. Valledor explains: “If one of the two servers fails, the other one will take on its workload in just a few seconds, avoiding data loss and all other major operational issues. If a server failure occurs, we would only experience a reduction of the service, but not a complete outage.”

Accelerating recovery
The previous IT infrastructure at Patronato de Liberados was based on ten HP servers, running two line-of-business applications, designed and developed by the organization’s IT technicians. The application named “Tutelary Files” allows the parole board to manage all data related to social rehabilitation programs digitally, eliminating paperwork. Meanwhile, the “Organizer” application audits the effectiveness of each social worker’s performance and behavior, ensuring they are always aligned with the court regulations.

Patronato de Liberados had recognized that this infrastructure did not fully guarantee a rapid and secure restart of the applications in the event of a sudden crash of a critical server; additionally, deploying many physical machines was raising energy consumption and data-center cooling costs.

“Server failure would have implied transferring all the workload on to a different physical server, taking some time to perform,” says Valledor, “Minutes and hours are precious for us, because we always need to be prepared to respond to the government’s requests.”

“If a server had failed in the past, this would not only have been a matter for the IT staff and the company’s 2,000 users, but also a judicial problem. It would have hugely affected the development and performance of core business processes and operations—such as the creation of customized rehabilitation programs and the management of social workers’ activities—across the whole province of Buenos Aires. With the new IBM solution, we have significantly reduced the risk of such outages.”

Improving services and reporting
The highly available, scalable and resilient IBM System x servers have enabled Patronato de Liberados to minimize the impact of possible hardware failures and virtually eliminate the risk of losing vital data.

By enabling each physical x3650 server to host multiple virtual servers, Hyper-V virtualization has helped the parole board to cut energy costs, data center air conditioning and floor space requirements by around 35 percent.

Valledor adds: “The fact that we can now set up virtual servers in so little time has enabled us to implement some of our new core business applications and services more rapidly and securely. In the past, all our applications were running on standalone physical servers, so we had multiple single points of failure in the architecture. Today, we can focus all our attention on keeping just two servers running.”

Patronato de Liberado also now has more time to develop strategic projects to reinforce security and data protection, especially concerning user access to its corporate website. Valledor continues: “Extending the virtualized solution to this area would also help us to comply with the data safety regulations established by the judicial departments, which are very strict when dealing with such a sensitive environment.”

Valledor concludes: “We are absolutely satisfied with the level of security and cost-effectiveness that the IBM solution has provided. Relying on such a resilient and highly available hardware platform helps us to run our operations smoothly and securely, thus improving the quality of our services.”