Leitstelle für Informationstechnologie der sächsischen Justiz (LIT)

The Client

The Control Center for Information Technology of the Saxon Justice System (LIT) is the IT service provider in the State Ministry of Justice and for Democracy, Europe and Equality. Among other things, LIT operates a computer center and equips the workstations of the public prosecutors' offices with hardware and software, for example. More information is available at https://www.justiz.sachsen.de/lit/was-wir-tun-3989.html. 

The Goal

The Control Center for Information Technology of the Saxon Justice System (LIT) managed the databases of various specialized procedures on different systems. The databases were managed by the administrators of the specialized procedures. On the one hand, this resulted in a heterogeneous infrastructure, and on the other hand, the knowledge about the operation of the infrastructure was distributed among many people.During a restructuring, the database operation was to be combined in one department in order to bundle the know-how there. In the course of this, the infrastructure was also to be consolidated and brought onto a consistent and sustainable platform.

The Implementation

Within the scope of the project, the heterogeneous landscape was replaced by standardized Oracle Database Appliances (ODA) as a powerful and cost-efficient basis for the operation of the databases. By distributing the ODAs over several locations as well as fire compartments and using Data Guard as a disaster solution, it was possible to achieve very good availability and fail-safety. In addition, the processor architecture of the Intel-based ODAs as well as the NVMe-based storage means a partly significant performance gain compared to the legacy systems. The expandability of the ODAs in terms of storage ensures operation even with growing data volumes over the entire operating period. Going on, the regular updating of the ODA software, which also includes the latest security patches, keeps the entire stack up to date and thus fulfills the system security requirements to the greatest possible extent.

The Benefit

Consolidation has significantly simplified and shortened various operating processes. For example, the creation of databases for new specialist procedures is now much easier, faster and more efficient to complete than was previously the case. Furthermore, the high degree of standardization ensures that the operation of currently around 100 databases can be handled by 3-4 people. Furthermore, the consolidation has improved the availability, performance and security of the specialized procedures. Previously, each specialized procedure had to operate on its own, but now this is a consolidated process.

In the future, LIT will continue to rely on ODAs, either as a replacement for the existing environment or as an extension of the infrastructure, in order to meet the challenges ahead.