Business Requirement

The customer represents a growing manufacturing business with prior systems deployed on the local data centers.

As the business grew, the customer’s local server space couldn’t accommodate the influx of data. Moreover, server monitoring was a pain as it demanded physical presence at the site every time an issue erupted.

With this project, the business expected to avail Azure cloud migration services and cut down on the infrastructure management hassle.  They approached The Apple Consulting Group (ACG) for end to end Azure cloud consulting.

Approach

After initial proposal documenting, The customer engaged in a detailed blueprinting & scoping of the migration activity in the discussion. The ACG team recommended a deeper analysis of the existing architecture before outlining key business requirements. Subsequently, initial system learning and setup were commenced followed by server configurations.

The implementation project was completely performed under the offshore development engagement model by ACG team.

Solution

Using the ‘Lift & Shift Migration’ process, we proposed system migration to Azure Cloud while making use of Azure Site Recovery 3 followed by deployment of Test Failovers. This was essential to validate the system’s existing ability to handle failures.

Going forward, the customer agreed to comply with the following prerequisites.

• Owner access on Azure Subscription
• Setting up the Configuration server
• S2S VPN connectivity between Azure & VMware infrastructure

System Setup

Azure CSP provides a full set of tools, including a self-service portal and accompanying APIs to easily provision, manage, and provide billing for customers and their subscriptions.

Based on the knowledge retrieved from the current system, The ACG team performed all activities related to retrieving Cloud Service Provider (CSP) subscription in Azure

Server Configuration

The Recovery Service Vault (RSV) from Azure is configured followed by registering the configuration server. These tasks were jointly performed by us and the customer’s teams. The Azure Recovery Service Vault (RSV) was set up to perform the replication. Subsequently, the customer performed VHD files Upload before handing over the control to THG team.

Failover – Test & Final

After the VHD files were successfully uploaded by the customer’s team, ACG teams proceeded with the deployment of the VMs. The Test Failover of the first batch of the VMs was scheduled in an isolated Virtual Network.

The customer team then validated the correctness of the configuration of VMs on Azure. Based on the remarks from the customer’s data team, the final Failover on the production network was successfully performed.

Knowledge Transfer

The entire migration activity was duly documented to assist the customer in post-implementation knowledge transfer more effectively. Live training and Demo sessions were also conducted to help the teams understand the new environment.

Post Implementation Benefits

After migration to Microsoft Azure, the customer can seek the following benefits from managed hosting.

• .Net developers can provide run-time support by learning Azure SDK.
• Ease in spam filtering & running security audits
• Easy scale-up and scale-out available in Pay-As-You-Go model