University of Groningen Ensures Continuity for Critical Applications Using F5 Solutions
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Europe
Country
- Netherlands
Product
- F5 BIG‑IP Local Traffic Manager
Tech Stack
- Sun Java Communications Suite
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Infrastructure Inspection
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
The University of Groningen (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) is a top European research university located in the city of Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. The university has 9,000 staff members and 25,000 students active across nine faculties, divided among approximately 150 buildings. The university also maintains strong ties with many of its 60,000 registered alumni. The Donald Smits Information Technology Centre (Centrum Informatie Technologie, or CIT) is responsible for all IT-related activities for the University of Groningen, including its collaboration environment (email, class scheduling), digital learning environment, and website, as well as the various workstations across the university. CIT manages a total of 9,600 registered workstations, comprising 7,800 Windows and 1,300 Linux PCs and several hundred Apple machines.
The Challenge
The University of Groningen was facing issues with its IT infrastructure, which was causing downtime for users and inefficient utilization of server capacity. The workload on the university’s servers had grown dramatically as the number of people accessing the IT infrastructure increased. In addition to staff members and students, the university had opened up the network for alumni to access and use certain academic facilities. The variety of devices connecting to the infrastructure had also increased as mobile devices and laptops became more prevalent. These factors combined to further add to the server load.
The Solution
To prevent future continuity problems, CIT started looking for an application delivery solution and decided to implement F5 BIG‑IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to maintain continuous access to its authentication services. The university has had the solution in place for nearly two years. Using BIG‑IP LTM means one data center can take over the activities of the other—without causing disruption to students and staff members. More recently, the university began using BIG‑IP LTM to manage access to and availability of the university’s new collaboration service. The collaboration service, based on Sun Java Communications Suite, consists of two data centers in a redundant setup with a third site serving as a snapshot backup. The data centers are both fronted by BIG‑IP LTM. A 2‑Gbps link to all campus locations enables users to connect with the central infrastructure.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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