CASE STUDIESNEW PLATFORM · LOCAL GOVERNMENT2025

City of Rüsselsheim am Main

110 machines on four nodes across two fire compartments. The city’s team carried out the migration.

PROJECT AT A GLANCE

THE TASK: Build a resilient platform for city administration.
OUR CONTRIBUTION: Support architecture and procurement, implement the environment and carry out failure tests.
THE OUTCOME: The city’s team migrated around 110 VMs itself and now operates and develops the platform.

THE PROJECT

Starting point
and requirements.

The City of Rüsselsheim's platform hosts municipal applications, networking and print services. Five internal specialists worked on the project.

The city's applications could not be shut down for several days or moved elsewhere at short notice. The architecture therefore had to withstand the loss of an entire fire compartment. The city's team was involved from the start.

NON-NEGOTIABLE REQUIREMENTS

If one fire compartment fails, operations must continue in the other.

IMPLEMENTATION

What Sysfacts
took on.

Designed a Proxmox VE cluster with Ceph: four nodes, two per fire compartment. The two locations are represented as a separate level in data placement
Planned a fifth node at a third location. It participates in cluster voting but hosts neither data nor virtual machines
Supported procurement with vendor-neutral requirements suitable for a public tender
Implemented the environment. The city's five-person team then migrated the virtual machines itself, with Sysfacts supporting as needed
Tested failures by shutting down an entire fire compartment and individual hosts. HA behaviour was checked and documented

AFTER THE PROJECT

What changed for the client.

OUTCOME AND OPERATIONS

Around 110 virtual machines run on the platform. If a node fails, its machines restart on another. The city's team operates, expands and maintains the platform itself.

PROJECT DATA

virtual machines on four nodes: 110
TB raw capacity across two fire compartments: 545

Technical context

Applications and target platform

Around 110 virtual machines host municipal applications, networking and print services. The target architecture uses Proxmox VE and Ceph on four nodes across two fire compartments.

Distribution and quorum

Each fire compartment contains two nodes. Data placement takes the compartments into account. An additional node at a third location provides a vote without hosting virtual machines or production data.

Storage capacity

The documented configuration provides 545 TB of raw capacity and around 130 TB of usable storage. Raw capacity and space available to applications were treated separately in planning.

Failure testing and handover

Tests shut down individual hosts and a complete fire compartment. HA behaviour was documented. After implementation, the city's team migrated the VMs itself and took over maintenance and expansion.