Case Study | CSI Solar's Distributed JumpServer Deployment and Multi-Organization Management

CSI Solar Co., Ltd. is a professional company engaged in the manufacturing of solar photovoltaic modules and the R&D, design, manufacturing, and sales of solar application products for customers worldwide.

CSI Solar is headquartered in Canada, with its China headquarters in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Through a global strategy and diversified market footprint, CSI Solar has established branches in more than 150 countries and regions, making it a leading provider of integrated solar photovoltaic solutions worldwide.

IT Operations Pain Points and Requirements

Rapid business growth brought many challenges to CSI Solar's day-to-day IT operations management, which can be summarized as follows:

1. Server management model needed to change

Previously, servers at each site were managed independently by local teams. This decentralized approach was inefficient and made it difficult to establish unified management standards and practices. To improve management efficiency and ensure server stability and security, CSI Solar wanted to centralize server management at group headquarters.

2. Chaotic credential management created security risks

Account and password policies across business units lacked unified standards, resulting in messy credential management. Access to production systems was also loosely controlled, without strict approval workflows or monitoring. Anyone could log in at will, which posed a serious threat to system security.

CSI Solar hoped to address this by introducing a bastion host, establishing strict login approval and monitoring mechanisms, and ensuring that only authorized personnel could access designated systems.

3. Audit requirements and compliant operations

As the business grew and regulatory requirements tightened, CSI Solar's existing server and login management practices could no longer meet audit requirements. The company lacked unified audit standards and processes. CSI Solar wanted to establish comprehensive internal audit policies and workflows to ensure daily operations comply with regulations and audit requirements.

Bastion Host Selection

CSI Solar's operations administrators had been using JumpServer Community Edition for years and were impressed by its clean, intuitive UI and easy-to-learn workflows. JumpServer's account management, permission assignment, and log auditing capabilities aligned well with the company's daily operations needs. JumpServer is also released monthly, improving at a rapid pace.

As the business scaled, CSI Solar recognized the performance limitations of traditional centralized bastion hosts—especially in multi-business-unit, multi-node environments where file transfers and login operations often suffered from latency and poor user experience. CSI Solar therefore evaluated bastion hosts that support distributed deployment.

Few vendors in the domestic market offer distributed bastion host solutions. After multiple rounds of screening and testing, CSI Solar's operations team found that JumpServer met the company's distributed management needs well.

During selection, the team paid special attention to one-click scripted deployment and operational convenience. For non-specialist operations staff, complex deployment and maintenance add significant burden. CSI Solar preferred products with one-click installation and simple day-to-day operations. JumpServer's scripted deployment completes installation quickly, and its straightforward interface saves considerable time and effort.

JumpServer Architecture Design

Based on production requirements, CSI Solar chose a distributed deployment architecture to efficiently manage its large, geographically dispersed IT estate. Each business unit has a login entry matched to its operational needs. Users in each unit connect through their dedicated entry point. This architecture improves flexibility and scalability while reducing latency during routine operations.

Customized access entry points route user requests more directly to the service nodes that handle them. Load balancing intelligently distributes requests to less-loaded servers, shortening response times. Even under high concurrency, the system remains responsive.

With JumpServer's multi-organization management, users and assets in each business unit are effectively isolated, reducing the risk of sensitive information leakage from misoperations or improper permission management. Each organization can implement fine-grained access control policies so only authorized users reach specific resources, strengthening overall system security.

JumpServer Feature Highlights

In daily operations, CSI Solar's team highly values several JumpServer capabilities:

1. Multi-organization management

Under the distributed architecture, each business unit enjoys a high degree of autonomy, with designated administrators handling daily operations and maintenance. This improves efficiency and organizational responsiveness.

Headquarters can switch between organizations to monitor and review configurations across branch nodes. Whether checking real-time status, adjusting security policies, or troubleshooting and optimizing performance, headquarters can quickly switch to the relevant organization and obtain detailed configuration information—greatly improving enterprise-wide management efficiency and security.

2. Remote applications

Users can self-service access to remote applications through JumpServer via client or web, without installing local clients. After passing JumpServer's authentication system, users connect directly.

3. Command filtering

To address risks from unfamiliarity with systems or accidental misoperations, CSI Solar defined strict dangerous-command restrictions in JumpServer. Intelligent recognition and command interception automatically block risky commands, significantly reducing system failures and data loss from mistakes and providing a safer operating environment.

Value and Benefits

After JumpServer was deployed across CSI Solar Group, it delivered substantial value:

Meeting security audit requirements. Integrated logging and analysis record every login, operation, and system state change, providing solid data for compliance reviews. Comprehensive auditing helps detect vulnerabilities and violations early and provides accurate traceability during security incidents.

Reducing operational security risk. Strict permission boundaries and approval mechanisms help prevent threats from excessive privileges such as data leakage or system damage. Fine-grained management clarifies responsibilities while improving collaboration.

Improving operations management and collaboration efficiency. JumpServer provides each business unit with a unified, easy-to-use authorization system. Authorization becomes more standardized and accurate while reducing headquarters' direct involvement in approvals and permission changes. This lowers headquarters' operations burden and promotes information sharing and collaboration across sites, significantly improving organizational efficiency.