orcharhino at World4You Internet Services GmbH
For World4You, the manufacturer-independent orcharhino proved to be particularly practical.
orcharhino and World4You
“By using orcharhino, the ‘time-to-deploy’ in particular has been massively reduced.”
– Stefan Wandl, World4You
The challenge: finding a fully comprehensive and up-to-date automation tool
World4You has always relied on automated processes in its data center. When the previously used tool Spacewalk no longer met the contemporary requirements, a new solution had to be found. The decisive criteria for this were that this tool supports all Linux distributions used by World4You (e.g. CloudLinux) and offers automated deployment and patch management. In addition, the new solution had to fit the existing network concept.
The solution: Modern configuration & patch management with orcharhino
In search of a partner for an efficient automation solution, World4You came across ATIX AG, because ATIX AG is specialized in the automation of data centers. For this purpose, ATIX has developed its own tool for cloud and data center management. With orcharhino, processes such as the setup of new servers, configuration management or release and patch management are automated. A uniform interface is used to manage all integrated servers. This makes managing the infrastructure less complex – after all, it is controlled from a central location. In special cases, configurations for individual hosts can be overwritten.
In addition, orcharhino can be used to preconfigure various standard scenarios. This makes rolling out to multiple servers and configuring them up to five times faster than doing it manually. For special requests, however, the configurations from the templates can be overwritten at any time. With orcharhino, new systems can therefore be automatically set up, installed and preconfigured. This allows both existing and new systems that extend an existing environment to be kept at a consistent level in configuration and package versions.
The result: orcharhino enables automated configuration & patch management for all Linux distributions used
World4You has been using orcharhino as a data center automation tool since 2019. For World4You, the manufacturer-independent nature of orcharhino proved to be particularly practical: The service provider currently relies purely on Ansible for configuration management. Due to its flexibility, orcharhino could be quickly adapted to this situation.
At World4You, orcharhino is also used in a rather unusual place: the automation tool was included in the development process for the web interface that World4You provides to its customers. By using orcharhino, the service provider enables its developers to “self-deploy”. This means that they can upload new software via orcharhino and distribute it directly in the corresponding lifecycle.
Until orcharhino was deployed, the automation of processes in the data center did not take place to the desired extent due to the technically outdated tool previously used. Thanks to orcharhino, the deployment, configuration and patch management processes have been massively simplified and modernized.
“By using orcharhino, the ‘time to deploy’ in particular has been massively reduced. With the solution developed by ATIX, we have found exactly the tool that covers all our requirements. In case of questions, ATIX consultants and support can be reached within a short time. Bugs reported by us are often included in the next orcharhino release. We would make the decision to use orcharhino as an automation tool again.”
– Stefan Wandl, World4You
Keyfacts
Field of activity:
Internet service provider for web hosting and domain products.
Corporate Headquarters:
Linz, Austria
Company information:
World4You Internet Services GmbH employs 50 professionals at its locations in Linz and Vienna. Since 2018, World4You has been wholly owned by the United Internet Group and its subsidiary 1&1 Internet SE.
About World4You Internet Services GmbH:
World4You Internet Services GmbH was founded by Johannes Kührer in 1998 and moved into its first own data center in 2005. Since 2011, World4You has been the world’s largest domain registrar for .at domains. The company has about 130,000 customers with over 275,000 registered domains.
