Using the Power of Hyperconvergence to Make Jaipur a Smart Digital City

Jaipur Development Authority was established with a mission of a planned, holistic, and inclusive development of Jaipur, which is fast emerging as a metropolitan city with 725 villages and a 3000 sq.-km area under its jurisdiction. It is a body constituted under the Jaipur Development Authority Act 1982 (Act. 25) as a statutory vehicle to implement the urban development of Jaipur as envisaged by the Department of Urban Development and Housing, Government of Rajasthan.

Jaipur’s heritage

Ever since 1728 AD, when Jaipur was founded, the city has awestruck the world with its opulent architecture, historical stories, and the soothing pink color scheme of its historical buildings. Home to two UNESCO heritage sites – Amer Fort and Jantar Mantar – Jaipur is part of India’s golden triangle of tourism sites, with Delhi and Agra as the other two spokes. In 2019, the World Heritage Committee officially inscribed Jaipur as the “Pink City of India,” taking forward the legacy of its pink architecture and passing it to newer generations, with everything from tourism pamphlets to cricket league jerseys sporting the Jaipuri pink proudly.

Urban development

The largest city and the capital of Rajasthan state, Jaipur is today the tenth most populous city in India. Besides its architectural significance, Jaipur is also known for its commitment to city planning and structured development. The Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) has been instrumental in achieving and maintaining the highest level of urban planning. Maintaining a healthy pace of urban development while ensuring citizen comfort and quality of life has been JDA’s foundational motto, and the organization constantly strives to strike this balance, in different ways. JDA recently embarked on a smart digital city initiative that envisioned a better Jaipur with enhanced quality of life, robust citizen safety, and internet-based access and dissemination of information to residents and tourists. A critical part of this initiative was to make Jaipur a secure Wi-Fi city and kickstart a digital transformation journey.

Simple, yet secure

Unlike other government organizations, JDA has been at the forefront of innovation in many areas, and hence they know exactly what they wanted. Anurag Sharma, Senior System Administrator, knew from day one that they needed a simple yet secure digital transformation solution, based on hyperconvergence, that worked in the cloud. The IT architecture needed to be simplified and seamless, and the overall digital transformation solution needed to be centrally managed yet cost effective.

Collaboration with Cisco

JDA required a hyperconverged infrastructure that could integrate computing, networking, and storage through an easy-to-manage, cloud-based solution. Cisco’s hyperconvergence offering, Cisco HyperFlex™, was the best fit for JDA. The organization realized that, unlike any other solution in the market, the HyperFlex platform is faster to deploy, simpler to manage, and easier to scale and provides a unified pool of resources to power multiple applications. Additionally, the built-in automation capabilities of HyperFlex make management simple and more efficient and provide a single, unified management approach that delivers better insights.

Multipronged benefits

Owing to the simplified deployment that Cisco HyperFlex comes with, JDA could seamlessly configure the solution within days, eliminating the need for specialized IT resources and processes to integrate virtualization, server administration, networking, and storage. Additionally, with the integrated management console of HyperFlex – Cisco Intersight™ - the JDA team could manage data-center servers, storage, and virtualization with ease. Today, the team has successfully increased the productivity of its IT team in manifold ways and can manage its data center operations with ease. Anurag is thrilled about the fact that from a single pane of glass, his team has a comprehensive view of their entire virtual and storage inventory and is equipped to manage and monitor the entire network infrastructure seamlessly. He says, “With Cisco HyperFlex, there is a single TAC window for networking, server, storage, and VMware support, which ensures that any issues are resolved at the earliest.”

Cisco HyperFlex comes with a full set of built-in enterprise-class data management features, such as snapshots, thin provisioning, replication for disaster recovery and backup, data encryption, integration with third-party backup tools, and instant cloning.

“Cisco provides the best hyperconvergence solution, riding on the Intersight console. We trust Cisco for their timely support and an advanced, future-ready hyperconvergence solution.”

-Anurag Sharma, Senior System Administrator

A hyperconverged future

Anurag says, “Cisco provides the best hyperconvergence solution, riding on the Intersight console.” Additionally, Cisco has been able to impress JDA with its timely support and seamless integration with existing legacy infrastructure. Anurag rounds off by saying, “We trust Cisco for their timely support and an advanced, future-ready hyperconvergence solution.” Jaipur’s hyperconverged future is truly powered by Cisco.

Learn more

Learn more about Cisco Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) here.