After implementing approximately 70 Nutanix nodes for diverse applications over the years, the Region has adopted Nutanix Database Service (NDB) to migrate its databases. This migration enhances performance and enables service sharing with other entities, including health services, agencies, and territorial bodies.
Responsible for governing a complex region with over 600,000 businesses and nearly 5 million residents, Regione del Veneto Administration has prioritized technology as a core component of its citizen and business services. The Region aims to become a strategic regional hub, providing a viable cloud migration alternative for Local Public Administrations (Pubbliche Amministrazioni Locali, or PAL) — a goal strongly advocated by both the Agency for Digital Italy (Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale, or AgID) and the National Cybersecurity Agency (Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale, or ACN). The overarching objective is to share infrastructure services across the territory in an increasingly efficient and sustainable manner. In collaboration with the central government, and especially AgID, Regione del Veneto has developed its own Digital Agenda. The Infrastructure Convergence Project, initiated by a regional resolution in August 2019 and implemented since February 2020, is a key component of this agenda.
Enhanced Performance Through Dedicated Architecture
Dedicated Nutanix nodes, designed for the consolidation and management of open-source databases, resolved performance issues experienced with the previous infrastructure.
Simplified Management
Nutanix Database Service allowed for the reduction of infrastructure management workload by approximately 40%.
Open Gateway for Service Provision to Local Authorities
Leveraging Nutanix, Regione del Veneto is advancing its Regional Strategic Hub initiative and intends to provide database access and management capabilities to local authorities.
Nutanix is a partner that, alongside the quality of its technological solutions, has shown a greater openness to the market and consequently a lower level of lock-in.
Unique among Italian Regions, Region del Veneto does not have its own IT management company. Instead, a lean seven-person in-house team oversees infrastructure and cybersecurity. This team is responsible for managing two datacenters — the primary facility, owned by the Region, in Marghera, and a secondary co-location facility in Padua — as well as multiple cloud platforms from major hyperscalers and the National Strategic Hub (Polo Strategico Nazionale).
“The challenge began approximately a year ago,” explains Matteo Scarpa, responsible for the IT infrastructure's active equipment, “and it was twofold: first, to ensure effective and efficient management of all non-Oracle database technologies, both relational and open-source, by deploying dedicated hardware infrastructure to enhance performance, which was previously suboptimal. Second, to simplify the management and security of our application portfolio, encompassing roughly 350 application services using diverse technologies and database versions.”
The current Nutanix footprint comprises of approximately 70 nodes, evolving from a hyperconverged infrastructure core deployed by Regione del Veneto over six years ago. Seven nodes are dedicated to open-source database consolidation: four in the primary datacenter in Mestre, and three in the secondary datacenter in Padua. Database migration from the previous infrastructure involved transitioning roughly 50 databases across ten different technologies — including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, MySQL, Redis, and others.
“Currently, we are operating two high reliability clusters,” says Scarpa. “We are migrating all internal services reliant on open-source databases to these clusters. Leveraging the Nutanix Database Service (NDB) solution, we have implemented PostgreSQL and MS SQL Server thus far, and plan to activate MySQL and MongoDB in the near future.”
For External Services, Simplicity Becomes a Value
Nutanix technology features were already well-known and highly valued by Regione del Veneto. “The decision to adopt hyperconverged technology shortly before my appointment,” explains Scarpa, “proved to be prescient. From an initial core of just a few nodes, we have expanded to approximately seventy, achieving gains in scalability, sustainability, security (with one Nutanix cluster dedicated specifically to cybersecurity and business continuity functions) and, importantly, flexibility.”
While the Region's internal government services require database administrators to manage database parameters with significant granularity and necessitate different solutions for such complexity, the Nutanix Database Service (NDB) solution serves as the cornerstone for sharing services with external entities. In fact, NDB facilitates the streamlined management of various platforms and technologies, even in high reliability configurations. “Although it is premature to draw definitive conclusions,” states Scarpa, “we anticipate high performance for the services we will share in the coming months, and, most notably, we expect a substantial reduction in the workload required from the team managing node and database infrastructure. I believe Nutanix technology will enable us to achieve approximately a 40% reduction in management time — an advantage that should increase exponentially with activity growth. Furthermore, through the adoption of NDB and its console, Regione del Veneto aims to accelerate database consolidation and empower external agencies with autonomous management, enabling greater agility and full control over backup, update, and troubleshooting procedures.”
Nutanix Plays an Important Role in The Regional Strategic Hub's Evolution
Regione del Veneto plans to expand its data management capabilities across both non-relational open-source databases and traditional platforms. It is also exploring additional services enabled by Nutanix technology within the Regional Strategic Hub project.
“Future shared services, based on databases managed by our infrastructure,” says Scarpa, “will be accessible to three user categories: healthcare facilities — including the nine Local Health Units (Unità Sanitarie Locali, or USL), Azienda Zero, and the Veneto Oncology Institute (Istituto Oncologico Veneto); agencies, such as ARPA (Regional Environmental Protection Agency) and Veneto Lavoro (Veneto Employment Agency); and territorial entities.”
Learn more at www.nutanix.com
3/25