The Mexican Federal Electoral Institute Relies on Red Hat to Power National Electoral System

About Instituto Federal Electoral de México The Instituto Federal Electoral de México (IFE) officially launched its operation on October 11, 1990. IFE is an autonomous, public entity in charge of organizing federal elections, such as the election of the president of the United Mexican States and the representatives and senators forming part of the Congress of the Union. As the electoral arbiter in Mexico, IFE is one of the most trusted institutions in Mexico. IFE is responsible for carrying out the federal electoral process, meticulously counting votes and announcing results on a timely basis.

National elections demanded reliability, stability, and cost effectiveness

The Instituto Federal Electoral de México (IFE) sought to reduce proprietary licensing investment costs, seamlessly integrate a high-availability platform for critical applications (such as monitoring the federal electoral process), and maintain transparency in the results given to citizens.

“We have used Red Hat since our inception due to the open source value provided by the solution and the enterprise support we require,” said René Miranda Jaimes, engineer and General Coordinator of the Information Systems Unit of IFE. “Since the creation of our Information Services Unit in 1999, IFE has opted for the use of open source systems.”

Operations also needed to be centralized to truly reduce ongoing infrastructure costs.

While planning for the 2012 national election, IFE wanted to create a virtualized IT environment that would provide enhanced scalability, performance, security, and reliability. The platform would handle a large number of users and prove that it was a cost-effective solution that would integrate seamlessly with IFE’s demanding applications.

Red Hat solution proves flexible and secure

Following market research, IFE opted to integrate JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. This comprehensive Red Hat open source solution provided flexibility and support to Java-based applications with a high degree of scalability. According to IFE, the security, robustness, and flexibility of Red Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform were among the most important reasons for choosing the platform.

The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform supported the 2011–2012 Federal Election coordination and control systems, and the Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) during this electoral process. This platform created a single, centralized system that enabled the consolidation of 300 remote sites. The PREP consolidation created a secure and reliable system that delivered timely, consistent electoral results.

Previously, the 300 consolidated sites had one server for each district board running Linux. Applications were executed using Tomcat and PostgresSQL as the database. This architecture demanded a great deal of effort from IFE to keep the 300 regional servers updated and active, in addition to having to accept timeframes for information consolidation and integration that on many occasions were not expedient or resulted in outdated information.

IFE headquarters is currently using a base of 30 physical servers and about 100 virtual servers running Red Hat. The institute can now provide services to an average of 30,000 users without exceeding 10% of the capacity of the installed infrastructure.

Benefits of Red Hat Solution

Since their implementation, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Global File System technologies, along with JBoss middleware has allowed the institute to  strengthen its infrastructure, optimize performance, and achieve greater flexibility. Today, IFE’s centralized platform provides access to the electoral systems, the daily operation systems, the main portal of the institute, mailing systems, and other systems based on Red Hat technology.

About 30% savings were achieved in the maintenance of the processing infrastructure, and system availability grew to 99%.

“To IFE, achieving a seamless and timely flow of information is of the utmost importance. We want the information supplied by IFE to generate confidence among citizens,” said Jaimes.

“Red Hat provided us with the flexibility required to adapt and fine-tune the solution from the operating system, and when we added JBoss middleware, performance boosted up.” “By consolidating and reducing the hardware, we preserved scalable capacity. Thanks to JBoss response, we’re providing services to an average of 30,000 users all while using no more than 10% of the infrastructure capacity,” said Jaimes.

“Thanks to Red Hat Enterprise Linux with integrated virtualization, IFE has managed to become an organization in charge of the federal electoral processes that develops its activities with transparency, swiftness, and professionalism, as demanded by the community,” said Miranda Jaimes.

IFE’s virtualized Red Hat portal maintained response times of two seconds, with 500,000 simultaneous users, reaching 100 million inquiries in two days.