DevOps Services for a European Hypermarket Chain

About the Customer

Since 2019, ScienceSoft has been partnering with a European MSP, handling the share of its clients’ ITSM requests, such as server configuration, database setup, network troubleshooting, and more. Our end Customer is one of the MSP's clients, a large chain of hypermarkets across Europe with over 50,000 employees.

Need for Server Support and Configuration Automation

The end Customer has a server network that supports all its day-to-day operations (inventory management, transaction processing, etc.). Recognizing their limited in-house resources and expertise, the end Customer searched for a trustworthy partner who could enable the automated management of the servers responsible for running the help desk ticketing system and its databases. Trusting ScienceSoft's 16-year track record in help desk services and 10-year expertise in DevOps, the MSP entrusted us with delivering the required services to the end Customer.

Maintaining Servers and Databases for the Ticketing System

ScienceSoft’s team of three DevOps engineers assists the end Customer with the following operations:

• Maintenance of servers. To automate and orchestrate server management, the combination of Microsoft System Center – Service Manager (SCSM) and Microsoft System Center Orchestrator tools were used.
• Configuring SCSM and System Center Orchestrator and updating these tools to the latest versions.
• Maintenance of the ticketing databases (configuration, backup, recovery, compression, etc.) using SQL Server Management Studio.
• Addressing critical issues (e.g., incorrect data processing in the database).

Optimizing Server and Database Operations with PowerShell Scripts

As the end Customer’s ticketing databases constantly grow in size and complexity, their manual editing and updating became increasingly time-consuming and error-prone. ScienceSoft’s DevOps engineers created new PowerShell scripts that enabled the automated editing and updating of the databases and seamlessly integrated the scripts into System Center Orchestrator, streamlining the management of large ticket databases.

Additionally, due to the limited default automated processes in Microsoft System Center Orchestrator, our team implemented the PowerShell scripts to automate recurring server processes, facilitating routine activities like cache clearing, system log cleaning, and configuring automated notifications.

By streamlining these routine tasks, our team significantly reduced the time and effort for the end Customer’s in-house IT team to handle high-value tasks, ensuring uninterrupted and efficient server operations.

Handling .NET Incompatibility Issues

The end Customer’s help desk was set up to create dedicated Microsoft Teams chats for the issue watchers every time a new ticket was created. However, after the end Customer's team performed a scheduled server update, this process became corrupted. Our support team traced back the root cause of this problem to an incompatibility between the latest version of .NET and the old process. To address this issue, ScienceSoft’s DevOps engineers utilized Microsoft System Center Orchestrator to establish a new rule within the process properties. This rule enforced the use of the previous version of .NET, restoring the proper functionality of the process.

Smoothly Running Automated Server Management

As a result of the ongoing cooperation with ScienceSoft, the end Customer has experienced a range of positive outcomes, which include:

• Reliable servers requiring minimal manual management.
• Reduced efforts for editing and updating the ticketing databases due to the well-configured processes in Microsoft System Orchestrator.
• Smooth ticket issue registration due to fixed .NET compatibility error.
• Thanks to entrusting server and database management to ScienceSoft, the end Customer’s internal IT team gained valuable time and effort to focus on high-value tasks.

Techs and Tools

PowerShell, Microsoft System Center Orchestrator, Microsoft System Center – Service Manager, Cireson, SQL Server Management Studio, Active Directory, Atlassian Jira.