Introduction
As AI adoption accelerates throughout industries, companies face an simple reality — AI is barely as highly effective as the information that fuels it. To really harness AI’s potential, organizations should successfully handle, retailer, and course of high-scale knowledge whereas guaranteeing value effectivity, resilience, efficiency and operational agility.
At Cisco Help Case Administration – IT, we confronted this problem head-on. Our workforce delivers a centralized IT platform that manages the whole lifecycle of Cisco product and repair instances. Our mission is to supply prospects with the quickest and best case decision, leveraging best-in-class applied sciences and AI-driven automation. We obtain this whereas sustaining a platform that’s extremely scalable, extremely out there, and cost-efficient. To ship the very best buyer expertise, we should effectively retailer and course of huge volumes of rising knowledge. This knowledge fuels and trains our AI fashions, which energy crucial automation options to ship quicker and extra correct resolutions. Our largest problem was hanging the correct steadiness between constructing a extremely scalable and dependable database cluster whereas guaranteeing value and operational effectivity.
Conventional approaches to excessive availability typically depend on separate clusters per datacenter, resulting in vital prices, not only for the preliminary setup however to take care of and handle the information replication course of and excessive availability. Nonetheless, AI workloads demand real-time knowledge entry, fast processing, and uninterrupted availability, one thing legacy architectures wrestle to ship.
So, how do you architect a multi-datacenter infrastructure that may persist and course of huge knowledge to assist AI and data-intensive workloads, all whereas holding operational prices low? That’s precisely the problem our workforce got down to resolve.
On this weblog, we’ll discover how we constructed an clever, scalable, and AI-ready knowledge infrastructure that permits real-time decision-making, optimizes useful resource utilization, reduces prices and redefines operational effectivity.
Rethinking AI-ready case administration at scale
In immediately’s AI-driven world, buyer assist is not nearly resolving instances, it’s about repeatedly studying and automating to make decision quicker and higher whereas effectively dealing with the associated fee and operational agility.
The identical wealthy dataset that powers case administration should additionally gasoline AI fashions and automation workflows, lowering case decision time from hours or days to mere minutes, which helps in elevated buyer satisfaction.
This created a basic problem: decoupling the first database that serves mainstream case administration transactional system from an AI-ready, search-friendly database, a necessity for scaling automation with out overburdening the core platform. Whereas the concept made good sense, it launched two main considerations: value and scalability. As AI workloads develop, so does the quantity of knowledge. Managing this ever-expanding dataset whereas guaranteeing excessive efficiency, resilience, and minimal handbook intervention throughout outages required a completely new method.
Fairly than following the standard mannequin of deploying separate database clusters per knowledge heart for top availability, we took a daring step towards constructing a single stretched database cluster spanning a number of knowledge facilities. This structure not solely optimized useful resource utilization and decreased each preliminary and upkeep prices but additionally ensured seamless knowledge availability.
By rethinking conventional index database infrastructure fashions, we redefined AI-powered automation for Cisco case administration, paving the way in which for quicker, smarter, and more cost effective assist options.
How we solved it – The expertise basis
Constructing a multi-data heart trendy index database cluster required a strong technological basis, able to dealing with high-scale knowledge processing, ultra-low latency for quicker knowledge replication, and cautious design method to construct a fault-tolerance to assist excessive availability with out compromising efficiency, or cost-efficiency.
Community Necessities
A key problem in stretching an index database cluster throughout a number of knowledge facilities is community efficiency. Conventional excessive availability architectures depend on separate clusters per knowledge heart, typically battling knowledge replication, latency, and synchronization bottlenecks. To start with, we performed a detailed community evaluation throughout our Cisco knowledge facilities specializing in:
- Latency and bandwidth necessities – Our AI-powered automation workloads demand real-time knowledge entry. We analyzed latency and bandwidth between two separate knowledge facilities to find out if a stretched cluster was viable.
- Capability planning – We assessed our anticipated knowledge progress, AI question patterns, and indexing charges to make sure that the infrastructure might scale effectively.
- Resiliency and failover readiness – The community wanted to deal with automated failovers, guaranteeing uninterrupted knowledge availability, even throughout outages.
How Cisco’s high-performance knowledge heart paved the way in which
Cisco’s high-performance knowledge heart networking laid a powerful basis for constructing the multi-data heart stretch single database cluster. The latency and bandwidth supplied by Cisco knowledge facilities exceeded our expectation to confidently transfer on to the subsequent step of designing a stretch cluster. Our implementation leveraged:
- Cisco Utility Centric Infrastructure (ACI) – Supplied a policy-driven, software-defined community, guaranteeing optimized routing, low-latency communication, and workload-aware visitors administration between knowledge facilities.
- Cisco Utility Coverage Infrastructure Controller (APIC) and Nexus 9000 Switches – Enabled high-throughput, resilient, and dynamically scalable interconnectivity, essential for fast knowledge synchronization throughout knowledge facilities.
The Cisco knowledge heart and networking expertise made this doable. It empowered Cisco IT to take this concept ahead and enabled us to construct this profitable cluster which saves vital prices and supplies excessive operational effectivity.
Our implementation – The multi-data heart stretch cluster leveraging Cisco knowledge heart and community energy
With the correct community infrastructure in place, we got down to construct a extremely out there, scalable, and AI-optimized database cluster spanning a number of knowledge facilities.
Cisco multi-data heart stretch Index database cluster
Key design selections
- Single logical, multi-data heart cluster for real-time AI-driven automation – As a substitute of sustaining separate clusters per knowledge heart which doubles prices, will increase upkeep efforts, and calls for vital handbook intervention, we constructed a stretched cluster throughout a number of knowledge facilities. This design leverages Cisco’s exceptionally highly effective knowledge heart community, enabling seamless knowledge synchronization and supporting real-time AI-driven automation with improved effectivity and scalability.
- Clever knowledge placement and synchronization – We strategically place knowledge nodes throughout a number of knowledge facilities utilizing customized knowledge allocation insurance policies to make sure every knowledge heart maintains a singular copy of the information, enhancing excessive availability and fault tolerance. Moreover, regionally hooked up storage disks on digital machines allow quicker knowledge synchronization, leveraging Cisco’s strong knowledge heart capabilities to attain minimal latency. This method optimizes each efficiency and cost-efficiency whereas guaranteeing knowledge resilience for AI fashions and important workloads. This method helps in quicker AI-driven queries, lowering knowledge retrieval latencies for automation workflows.
- Automated failover and excessive availability – With a single cluster stretched throughout a number of knowledge facilities, failover happens mechanically because of the cluster’s inherent fault tolerance. Within the occasion of digital machine, node, or knowledge heart outages, visitors is seamlessly rerouted to out there nodes or knowledge facilities with minimal to no human intervention. That is made doable by the strong community capabilities of Cisco’s knowledge facilities, enabling knowledge synchronization in lower than 5 milliseconds for minimal disruption and most uptime.
Outcomes
By implementing these AI-focused optimizations, we ensured that the case administration system might energy automation at scale, scale back decision time, and preserve resilience and effectivity. The outcomes had been realized shortly.
- Quicker case decision: Lowered decision time from hours/days to simply minutes by enabling real-time AI-powered automation.
- Value financial savings: Eradicated redundant clusters, reducing infrastructure prices whereas bettering useful resource utilization.
- Infrastructure value discount: 50% financial savings per quarter by limiting it to 1 single-stretch cluster, by finishing eliminating a separate backup cluster.
- License value discount: 50% financial savings per quarter because the licensing is required only for one cluster.
- Seamless AI mannequin coaching and automation workflows: Supplied scalable, high-performance indexing for steady AI studying and automation enhancements.
- Excessive resilience and minimal downtime: Automated failovers ensured 99.99% availability, even throughout upkeep or community disruptions.
- Future-ready scalability: Designed to deal with rising AI workloads, guaranteeing that as knowledge scales, the infrastructure stays environment friendly and cost-effective.
By rethinking conventional excessive availability methods and leveraging Cisco’s cutting-edge knowledge heart expertise, we created a next-gen case administration platform—one which’s smarter, quicker, and AI-driven.
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