Administration Support on IBM DataPower, PennDOT
Overview
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Yassmin Gramian. Presently, PennDOT supports over 40,500 miles of state roads and highways, about 25,000 bridges, as well as new roadway construction, the exception being the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, although they currently follow PennDOT policies and procedures. In addition, other modes of transportation are supervised or supported by PennDOT.
Project Scope
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) required an IBM DataPower Administration Support expertise, managed by PennDOT Bureau of Infrastructure and Operations staff for IBM DataPower Infrastructure. It also needed support in implementing Enterprise architecture reference patterns and configuration of DataPower to comply with Commonwealth and PennDOT IT policies and documenting standard processes for using DataPower.
Solution
The objective of the project was to provide a continuous IBM DataPower Administration Support for deployment, configuration, and application integration of XI52 DataPower appliances in Pre-production and Production environments. With a methodical approach, the project was broken down into several components to ease the process of offering quality services. In the beginning, V Group Inc. helped in the development and maintenance of a detailed project plan with milestones and deliverables.
V Group successfully supported the department in this task by capturing all the parameters. Primarily, we helped in supporting the application development teams to implement Service Oriented Architecture and integration of custom-developed web services with DataPower features. We also helped in configuring Web service proxy for SOAP & REST-based web services using DataPower. Monitored, tuned, and helped in troubleshooting DataPower issues, as and when they were needed.
Going with the flow, we facilitated the client in configuring and supporting dynamic routing and configuring AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing) in DataPower. We also helped in configuring load balancing in DataPower and SSL/TLS connections. Configured DataPower with third party Single Sign-On technologies like CA’s SiteMinder. Helped in managing the deployment of XSLT, XSD’s, and WSDL’s.
We researched emerging IT Technologies for taking cost-effective measures and infrastructure flexibility. Besides, we installed DataPower firmware updates, as per the need. Worked with IBM support for the problem using the following technologies – Microsoft Windows 2008 R2/2012 R2 servers, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP BusinessObjects Server, and VMware. V Group’s support assisted in managing the scope as per the client’s requirement. Served as a liaison between Agency and solution’s contract and helped the client in IBM DataPower administration, performance tuning, monitoring, and implementation of best practices aligned with their business’ requirements reducing support overhead.