OREANDA-NEWS. October 31, 2012. In terms of the autumn-winter period uninterrupted power supply and quick elimination of consequences of technological disturbances at power facilities is impossible without the use of information technology to ensure reliable operation of IT-equipment with continuous provision of IT — services.

IDGC of Centre refers to basic IT — services as follows: telecommunication services (corporate telephony, video and audio intercom, corporate data network services) and information systems (SAP/R3, e-mail, legal-reference systems, electronic document management systems, file shares, etc., operating on the basis of server hardware).

With the onset of the autumn-winter period, particular attention is paid to the monitoring and control over the state of IT infrastructure and organization of restoration activities on the equipment of automated process control systems (APCS). The company has organized both non-stop monitoring of the state of the communication channels to power facilities, and the correctness of the process equipment operation itself, the reliability of transmitted and received parameters of electrical networks and control features. To this end, experts of IDGC of Centre worked to integrate SCADA of Citect system, which is responsible for the performance of APCS equipment, and Zabbix system, whose task is to monitor the IT infrastructure of IDGC of Centre. As a result, it became possible for duty personnel in the workplace at the same time to watch both APCS and IT equipment, to keep a single alarm log and accordingly to coordinate staff actions.

In order to increase reliability and fault tolerance of server and network equipment IDGC of Centre had took additional steps to backup features of the equipment and means of constant monitoring of its performance.

IDGC of Centre based on Cisco Systems equipment implemented a resilient three-level model of a local area network (LAN) that provides good handling, functional separation and security of LAN facilities. Switching devices are chained together via fiber optic cable with a bandwidth of 10Gbit/s. It provides for physical and logical redundancy of the most critical internal and external communication channels through duplication of active equipment and involving different providers. This is particularly relevant, for example, when the operational headquarters IDGC of Centre are in action (permanent coordinating body of the company, which includes managers of IDGC of Centre, FGC, contractors, government officials at various levels, in order to develop effective and decision-making in conditions of a threat or occurrence of a power interruption of consumers).

Business telephone service is implemented based on Cisco Unified Call Manager also with the duplication of functions on the basis of two devices: the main from which the PBX control and setting is performed, and auxiliary — providing telephony functionality in the event of failure of the main one. For data backup of information systems optimized separated in time schemes of replication, backup and recovery are used.

In preparation for winter specialists of Operation Office of IT Department of IDGC of Centre completed checking the work function of the backup equipment in simulated emergency situations, watching the smooth delivery of IT services and fixing time of recovery. There was also a training exercise to eliminate a possible emergency situation on server hardware.