University

Physical Infrastructure

Unilink's hardware architecture is based on the Vmware and Vsphere virtualization systems and on physical servers located on three different server farms (Rome, Milan and Città di Castello). In addition, there is a IBM iSeries mainframe.

All the hardware is equipped with redundancy systems such as feeders, embedded fiber circuit boards for the connection with the storages and network cards for the connection with other devices.

We have activated maintenance contracts with the manifactures for all the devices, in order to guarantee immediate action in case of malfunction.
 

Logic Hardware Infrastructure

The Vmware Vsphere virtualization system allows the consolidation and optimization of the necessary hardware and guarantees the continuity of the services through highly reliable systems, in the case of hardware damage, the application and the services concerned will automatically be reactivated on other cluster nodes.

Furthermore, the virtualization makes it possible to expand by its own means with the new hardware allowing minimum data migration time.
 

Backup/Data Restoration

The current hardware solution provides for a backup through the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager management software installed on a physical server.

The procedure provides for a backup on hard drives and a following copy and historization on tape through IBM TS3100 libraries.
 

Data Network Infrastructure

The network infrastructure currently used is based on MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) technology based on fibre optics and vdsl, which allows VPN connection of the sites while meeting the necessary bandwidth and security requirements.

All sites access the Internet protected by a centralised FORTINET firewall that applies web filtering and application control policies based on authentication.