S7 Travel Retail: virtual data center in the MTS cloud

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It is difficult to imagine the life of a major brand without the use of information technology. Digitalization and the transition to cloud solutions are an integral part of the process that has a positive effect on business development. Companies have begun to realize that buying expensive wordpress web design agency equipment and maintaining a server park on their own is unprofitable. There is a worthy alternative to this approach in the form of cloud solutions. The Russian company S7 Travel Retail came to a similar conclusion by placing key services in the MTS cloud.


Features of IT services S7 Travel Retail
Do you know how the airline's internal kitchen works? We, as passengers, rarely think about it. But behind every flight there are people, planes, many servers and modern technologies. In addition to the ground service, there are separate teams that deal with cargo transportation, ticket sales or, for example, are responsible for the most technological part - IT infrastructure. Thus, the S7 Travel Retail service ensures the operation of the call center, ticket sales system and other services.




The company's infrastructure includes static and dynamic services. The static services include a web portal and a family of information sites, while the dynamic services include a system for booking and purchasing tickets, information about flights, and much more.

How the IT infrastructure was modernized
Initially, S7 Travel Retail's server IT infrastructure was located in its own data center. At that time, the on-premise model was the most feasible in terms of costs and future upgrades.

But over time, the built-in capacities became insufficient. To add computing resources, it was necessary to purchase equipment and wait for delivery, which took two to three weeks at best. If 10-15 years ago such terms were considered acceptable, now, in the era of high speeds and competition, you need to be more efficient.




By the way, virtualization technology allows for rapid provision of resources. In 2012, S7 Travel Retail decided to virtualize its own IT infrastructure based on VMware technologies. Virtualization deployed on top of its own hardware opens up opportunities for flexible scaling of virtual resources, but they are known to be limited by hardware resources. If the physical capacity is depleted, it is necessary to purchase additional equipment and expand. In order to avoid the costs of purchasing hardware, moving to the cloud was considered.

Virtual Data Center in the Cloud
Despite the difficulties that occurred in 2020, the demand for air tickets still remains. During the holiday season, the number of requests increases significantly, which requires a special approach to ensuring the reliability and availability of the service. Cloud technologies help to flexibly respond to demand and adapt to any load.




Note that today the S7 Travel Retail infrastructure operates from the cloud of several providers, where the web portal, information sites, booking system, ticket purchase, flight information and other solutions have been moved. The cloud is also used for development, deployment of test and production environments.