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Publication:
May 2020
Categoria:
E-learning
Client:
Unineptune
The client and the context
TheInternational Telematic University UNINETTUNO, established in 2005 and developed from the experience of the NETTUNO Consortium-which already in 1992 brought together more than 70 Italian and international universities to promote distance learning-represents today an internationally recognized model in e-learning. Thanks to the innovative psycho-pedagogical method conceived by the Rector Maria Amata Garito and refined in more than 25 years of research, UNINETTUNO offers flexible and multilingual (Italian, English, French, Arabic) academic paths, with the aim of training the professionals of the future in fields such as law, economics, engineering, psychology, cultural heritage and communication sciences. More than 28,000 students from all over the world study through a platform that integrates physical and digital spaces, followed by about 5,000 faculty members from universities of excellence. UNINETTUNO is also the only Italian university that is a member of theEuropean Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and continues to invest in the evolution of its IT systems, a strategic element to guarantee continuous access, educational quality and constant support to students.
The challenge
Uninettuno, after an initial migration to the AWS cloud focused on storage and streaming, faced new challenges related to constant student growth and the need to ensure stable performance even during seasonal peaks, such as during enrollment months. The existing infrastructure, based on Amazon EC2 with dedicated hosts and manual configurations, was not flexible enough to adapt efficiently to variability in demand, thus generating high costs and operational rigidity. In addition, the university was interested in leveraging AWS’s advanced services more broadly to enhance resilience and scalability, but developing the necessary expertise in-house would have taken too long. Therefore, it decided to rely on VMEngine, AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, to identify the pain points and optimize its cloud architecture.
The VMEngine Solution
VMEngine initially analyzed the platform to identify critical issues and define a development roadmap. It was found that the dedicated EC2 hosts were consuming a lot of CPU and memory resources, leading the university to pay for too much capacity relative to needs, with limited ability to scale the CMS. By migrating to an Amazon EC2 Classic architecture and using AWS OpsWorks, the university can now dynamically scale the number of virtual machines and automate tasks such as software updates and configurations during low-traffic hours, greatly reducing the load on the platform.
With amore flexible architecture, UNINETTUNO has eliminated the complex management of Windows licenses, saving time and costs. It can now increase the number of instances as needed, such as for nightly backups, or reduce them on weekends when traffic is lower. To further lighten the load, VMEngine implemented Amazon CloudFront, speeding up the deployment of static content and improving availability. With AWS Regions, students access content from edge nodes, with reduced latency. CloudFront‘s built-in protection against DDoS attacks, along with the use of AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall), has enhanced security, allowing suspicious activities to be blocked and service interruptions to be prevented.
Benefits
Thanks to theoptimization of the platform implemented by VMEngine, UNINETTUNO has achieved an overall savings of 35 percent and greater operational efficiency, being able to rapidly scale the delivery of professional courses for public bodies and companies, such as Enel. The platform, which is now more scalable and available, enables fast delivery of educational content, regardless of student location, and smoother management of peak usage, such as in the case of enrollments or activation of training contracts. In addition, the integration of tools such as AWS WAF, Amazon CloudFront and AWS OpsWorks has enhanced security and introduced a higher level of automation, improving threat protection and simplifying platform management.
"VMEngine helped us solve our most pressing technology challenges. Being able to rely on his expertise and deep knowledge of AWS services has been crucial. We could not have found a better partner."
Raimondo Sepe
CTO - Uninettuno