ClearCheck > Case studies

1. harmon.ie Saves Money on a project in Maintenance Mode by using GoMidjets ClearCheck

"With ClearCheck we have an ongoing assurance that our ClearCase environment and VOBs are working properly. Instead of occasional manual checking which cost us money and added one more task to a busy schedule, we now get notice if there is a problem and exactly what it is. ClearCheck has made my job much easier."

Evgeny Krassilshikov, Director of R&D at harmon.ie (formerly Mainsoft)

Background

One of the products offered by harmon.ie (previously known as Mainsoft) is a cross-platform enterprise solution, developed to function as an OEM system for some of the world's largest software vendors including Oracle Siebel, SAP Business Objects, IBM Rational, IBM Cognos, Mentor Graphics, Cadence Design and ESRI. Since 2008 the company has also been marketing enterprise collaboration products under its own brand.

The Challenge

Visual MainWin product is kept in "maintenance mode". There are several active releases of this product that have been deployed by harmon.ie customers for years. However, clients still ask for small changes, bug fixes, and other minor maintenance requests.

The Visual MainWin project was developed in IBM's Rational ClearCase environment, and is still stored on that platform. harmon.ie is highly committed to its clients and attaches great importance to ensuring that the Visual MainWin product is healthy, safely stored and capable of being updated as necessary. Thus, it was critical for them to follow IBM's recommendation to periodically check their VOBs' health.

Previously, harmon.ie used an external ClearCase specialist to conduct manual health checks of each VOB once or twice a week. This ongoing expense was necessary to verify the integrity of the database and protect the valuable projects stored there. Yet, this expense also increased the cost of maintaining delivered projects.

The Solution

The ClearCase specialist providing services to harmon.ie suggested that they try ClearCheck as an alternative to manual health checks. A pilot project was successful, and ClearCheck was quickly installed on the project maintenance environment.

After using the product successfully for over a year, harmon.ie was able to save a significant amount of money on ClearCase maintenance. ClearCheck checks all the VOBs automatically, using the most advanced checking methods. Once a problem is identified, it sends alerts so that the issue can be fixed quickly and effectively.

2. Taldor / ClearCheck over IBM Rational ClearCase

Industry: Defense industry
Using ClearCheck since: 2009
No. of ClearCase VOB databases: Hundreds
For more information: Taldor

"Thanks to GoMidjets ClearCheck, I now enjoy peace-of-mind in knowing that my VOB databases are healthy, and if something is wrong, I'll know about it straight away" says Yaron Norani, Chief of Configuration Management (CM) at Taldor. The company is one of the leading providers of business and technological solutions in Israel (TASE: TALD) and Yaron handles CM for a major defense customer.

The problem

Yaron looks after hundreds of users for his customer. He is responsible for dozens of ClearCase projects, hundreds of VOB databases, Base ClearCase and UCM ClearCase, based on IBM servers running UNIX AIX on the PowerPC platform.

"Before using ClearCheck, we rarely checked our database - probably no more than twice a year", he admits.

"One day we had some very serious problems with some of our most important VOBs" he added. "Unfortunately, one of them was a PVOB (a project VOB), which affects other VOB databases. Since then, we set out to acquire a smart turnkey solution to help us do the daily checking of our environments' health, and at the same time, contribute to our enterprise compliance, governance and risk reduction requirements".

The solution and benefits

Yaron decided to try GoMidjets ClearCheck, and had it up and running after just a few minutes of simple customization.

"We have many multi-platformed (interoperability) and complex environments, including Windows, UNIX and NAS filers (NetApp). GoMidjets ClearCheck seamlessly and automatically integrated with our servers and filers, and from that moment on has been taking care of them", says Yaron. He adds, "It has been working very well".

"Now, we have a daily check, including dbcheck and checkvob. These checks scan my important data, immediately recognize problems or errors, and also suggest solutions. This helps me guide IBM technical support, whenever I need to consult them".

Yaron concludes, "Since starting to use GoMidjets ClearCheck I feel far more secure against contingencies. I recommend it to any organization which uses IBM Rational ClearCase!"

3. Flash Networks

Industry: Telecom
For more information: Flash Networks

"Thanks to GoMidjets, we now enjoy convenient and rapid access to ClearCase environments for all of our development projects" says Zeevik Liak, Configuration Manager (CM) and automation team leader at Flash Networks, one of the leading providers of intelligent mobile internet solutions.

The problem

"Since our acquisition of a new company a few months ago, it was necessary to merge the two companies' IT resources, including domains, ClearCase servers and user work spaces in order to fully integrate our products" says Zeevik. Technically, the problem consisted of three requirements:

• a. Unification of two separate Windows (Active Directory) domains
• b. Upgrade of ClearCase version of servers and clients from v2002.05 to v7
• c. Migration of ClearCase server from Windows to RedHat Linux

The Challenge

"It was a very complicated project" says Zeevik. "It had to be done with great care, as it directly affects our databases and users. Data integrity and minimal downtime were essential."

The Solution

"We turned to GoMidjets to undertake the project since we knew they had the knowledge and experience of similarly complicated projects. They suggested implementing the integration project in two phases: First, building a test environment and executing the entire project in test and then, when it passed successfully, to repeat the whole process on our production environment. This is what we did.

GoMidjets built for us an entire test environment which represented our production environment. Following extensive testing which indicated everything worked well, we did the migration on the production environment. The operation had to be completed as quickly as possible and so parts of the project were done during the night. GoMidjets kept us updated at every stage of this process, automating steps where possible to reduce downtime and handling any problems that occurred on the way. Thanks to GoMidjets, this difficult and complicated process was carried it in an inspired and cool mood."

Zeevik adds, "During this process we were exposed to GoMidjets' new ClearCase add-ons, which helped us a lot in reducing the migration period and its resulting downtime. 'ClearCheck' helped us to verify that the ClearCase VOBs are healthy. We used it both before the migration, on the old Windows server, and after the migration, on the new Linux server. 'ClearEnv' helped us to create new and mass UCM environments. It was done easily, quickly and efficiently."

Benefits

Zeevik concludes, "The project was a complete success. The performance of all ClearCase environemnts increased as well, and users can now share their assets much easier. We'd like to thank GoMidjets for their great and devoted job and recommend their services wholeheartedly!"