Reference Projects
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Success Stories
Reference Projects at IP-Projects
In recent years, we have implemented a large number of projects together with our customers. These include high-availability server clusters, some of which were built across several data centers. In consultation with our customers we are allowed to present some of these reference projects as "Success Story".
doorout.com GmbH & Co. KG
Outdoor experience - that is the motto of the company doorout.com!
Since 2001, the company doorout.com stands for a wide range of high-quality products for the outdoor area. In the Onlineshop www.doorout.com find interested over 10,000 products of more than 140 manufacturers.
Over 60 coworkers stand behind the enterprise doorout.com. With authority you offer by telephone and on-line many services approximately around outdoor and camping. Professional knowledge shares doorout.com with interested parties in its own blog, self-created product and guide videos, as well as via social media such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc..
Project description
The doorout.com GmbH & Co. KG was looking for a new hosting service provider in 2019 to operate its Shopware-based online store doorout.com. In the process, an operating environment was to be created that ensured not only fast loading times but also high availability of the store.
Together with doorout, we were able to find a solution for this challenge that meets the desired requirements and implement it together at the end of 2019.
Solution
Our solution for doorout's requirements was to build a 3-node cluster. In addition to pure high availability, this also guarantees data integrity of the cluster storages through an odd number of data providers.
The entire cluster structure is protected by a high-availability firewall appliance. This ensures that only services required for the provision of the online store are available on the Internet.
After being checked by the firewall, valid requests are forwarded to a redundant Varnish cache using load balancers. Static content can be delivered directly from a fast cache, content that is not yet in the cache or dynamic content, such as a shopping cart, is requested by the Varnish Cache service from the cluster environment.
A 3-node web cluster is available as the web cluster, a Galera cluster as the database system, and an Elasticsearch cluster for dynamic online shop searches.
The central media storage, which among other things provides the product images for the products displayed in the online store, is provided as a highly available central storage using a Ceph cluster. The Ceph cluster also contains a highly available Redis database instance for central administration of visitor sessions.
In the overall concept, one server system can fail without affecting the availability or performance of the online store. A failure of two server systems limits the availability of the online store, but does not yet jeopardize the data integrity of the storage.
Machineseeker Group GmbH
The Machineseeker Group operates Europe's leading network of online marketplaces for used machinery and commercial vehicles. More than 15 million visitors per month browse over 250,000 offers on the four platforms Maschinensucher, TruckScout24, Werktuigen and Gebrauchtmaschinen.de. Founded in 1999, the company is considered one of the pioneers in the online trade of used machinery and is growing year by year. A secure, reliable and scalable IT infrastructure is one of the cornerstones of the economic success of the Machineseeker Group and its numerous brands.
Project Description
In 2019, the Machineseeker Group was looking for a new service provider to operate its maschinensucher.de platform. A particular requirement was that the IT administrators of the Machinseeker Group should be able to perform administrative tasks themselves and have full administrative access to the entire environment despite the management of IP-Projects. Furthermore, the individual services were to be run on dedicated servers rather than on virtual machines.
Solution
Together with the IT administrators of the Machinseeker Group, we created a new hosting platform for the portal maschinensucher.de, which fully meets the requirements for comprehensive scalability and high availability and can deliver the portal with high performance even in the case of extreme requirements, such as hundreds of TV spots at prime time. This environment ensures further growth in the coming years and provides the Machineseeker Group with maximum flexibility when it comes to successfully operating its portals.
Schuh und Sport Mücke GmbH
For over 65 years: Schuh Mücke and its success story - The success story Schuh Mücke started already in 1954, if you look today at our branch network of 12 stores, 3 outlets and our sneaker lab, it is hard to believe that at that time the shoes were sold out of the VW- bus. This concept was developed from scratch a few years later.
Large areas, sufficient customer parking in front of the house and conveniently located locations, were a completely new concept at that time, which still proves to be successful today.
Schuh Mücke stands for high quality and extravagant styles! To ensure that every individual feels comfortable with us, we place special emphasis on our customer service. Here in our online store and also in our stores we offer both an extremely wide and deep range of women's shoes, men's shoes and children's shoes. In order to create your outfit perfectly, we have a wide selection of renowned shoe, textile and bag manufacturers. In our online store we offer everything your heart desires for women, men, girls and boys.
Project description
We have been cooperating with Schuh- und Sport Muecke GmbH since 2018. Initially, we provided server operation for a software for editing product images.
At the end of 2019, Schuh- und Sport Muecke approached us with another project - the operation of the online store schuhmuecke.de. The requirement for the operation of the Shopware-based online store was to create a highly available, scalable and performant solution that can be quickly expanded with the growing customer volumes.
Furthermore, an additional development environment was to be created in order to be able to test possible store updates in advance with the live systems.
Solution
Our solution for the requirements of Schuh- und Sport Muecke GmbH was to set up a 3-node cluster. In addition to pure high availability, this guarantees data integrity of the cluster storages through an odd number of data providers.
The entire cluster structure is protected by a high-availability firewall appliance. This ensures that only services required for the provision of the online store are available on the Internet.
After being checked by the firewall, valid requests are forwarded to a redundant Varnish cache using load balancers. Static content can be delivered directly from a fast cache, content that is not yet in the cache or dynamic content such as a shopping cart is requested by the Varnish Cache service from the cluster environment.
A 3-node web cluster is available as the web cluster, a Galera cluster as the database system, and an Elasticsearch cluster for dynamic online shop searches.
The central media storage, which among other things provides the product images for the products displayed in the online store, is provided as a highly available central storage using a Ceph cluster. The Ceph cluster also contains a highly available Redis database instance for central administration of visitor sessions.
In the overall concept, one server system can fail without affecting the availability or performance of the online store. A failure of two server systems limits the availability of the online store, but does not yet jeopardize the data integrity of the storage.
Modulor GmbH
For more than 30 years, Modulor has been the number one place to go for artists, designers, architects and anyone who wants to design and be creative. Founded back in the 80s as a hip startup, it has long since become a unique Berlin institution. The concept store in the middle of Berlin-Kreuzberg offers on 3,000 m² everything that makes the creative heart beat faster: more than 35,000 products, competent advice, individual services and a worldwide unique atmosphere. It's about more than just consumption. At Modulor, people find encounter, exchange and inspiration. The online store modulor.de continues the diverse range of products digitally and is constantly being expanded with new functions.
Project description
In 2020, Modulor GmbH was looking for a provider to operate its OXID-based online store. A highly available and scalable operating environment was to be created to ensure stable operation of the store.
The special feature here is that Modulor GmbH would like to carry out the administrative support of the services within the virtual machines itself with the help of Docker-based containers and do without a central media storage in the cluster. However, the hypervisor and cluster setup are to be fully monitored and supported by the hosting service provider.
Solution
For the operating environment of Modulor GmbH's online store, the IT administrators opted for a cluster based on Proxmox as the hypervisor. This is secured by a redundant firewall gateway, so that only the services needed to display the store are available on the Internet.
The visitor traffic is distributed to the respective web servers with the help of redundant load balancers. Load balancers also serve as distributors of database requests to a redundant MySQL Galera database cluster.
However, the main feature, which differs significantly from other previous projects, is a hybrid approach. Here, the static content is delivered from an AWS CDN (Content Delivery Network). AWS also serves as media storage for the provision of store images and videos. This hybrid approach made it possible to dispense with local Ceph storage. The server cluster is therefore mainly used to provide dynamic content and to process customer orders.
Astendo GmbH
Digitize effectively, save costs and time.
astendo GmbH is a medium-sized company based in Berlin. For 18 years we have been selling individual software for customer relationship management (CRM), event and participant management and enterprise resource planning (ERP) and are the largest development partner of cobra CRM. As a result, our customers optimize their address management, accelerate their business processes, have more time for their core business and increase their success. Excellent IT service, data protection consulting and strong support round out our offering. Our software products and services are specially tailored for associations, non-profit organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises. Various state agencies and environmental associations are among our 500 customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Project description
We have been working with astendo GmbH on various projects since 2012. The projects mostly involve the firewall-protected operation of remote cobra installations at our data center locations. In 2021, astendo GmbH approached us with a new project - the operation of several independent web server instances on a highly certified and highly available data center environment. In addition, it should be possible to flexibly expand the system with additional physical servers during operation in order to be able to add further web servers in the future.
Solution
Since the storage space as well as system resource requirements of astendo are static and thus very well calculable, we decided on a hybrid approach for the solution. Here, the highly available Ceph storage is operated together with the individual virtual web servers on the same physical hardware. This saves additional server costs while improving system performance in some cases, as part of the data is provided directly from the locally installed storage and therefore does not have to take the slower route via the network.
The server systems were technically designed in such a way that the failure of a complete server can be covered by an automatic redistribution of the virtual web servers. Continued operation is therefore possible without any problems with the remaining server systems and the redistribution of the virtual web servers is carried out automatically within a few minutes.
Likewise, the web server instances can be moved to other physical servers in the cluster in real time without interruption for maintenance purposes, such as system updates. The cluster environment is thus completely maintenance-tolerant.
We operate the astendo cluster setup at our highly certified server location FRA1 - NTT. This allows us to fully meet the very high certification requirements of astendo's customers. Likewise, as with all cluster environments of IP-Projects, a highly available firewall is in use to protect the web servers.