This week we helped a new client migrate off old server equipment originally purchased back in 2011.
The client was running an in-house application for CRM and order tracking on great old HP hardware for many years, mostly without too many issues — with the exception of rising power costs and anxiety if the server ever needed a reboot.
A recent office move was the right time to re-evaluate if it was still worthwhile running their own server hardware, maintaining a locked room with cooling and UPS — which also had battery issues.
Cloud365 designed a solution to migrate their application to our fully managed platform. This included a pre-move backup followed by shutdown and careful relocation of old hardware into our Melbourne Data Centre.
The hardware was relocated on a Friday night. Over the weekend we were able to migrate their Operating System, applications and databases onto our Cloud platform. On Monday morning all databases and applications were running as they were before — but virtualised, with hardware anxiety firmly sorted.
We were then able to take a complete copy of the client's server environment which was upgraded to a newer release Linux Operating System and Oracle database server software. Once tested, we switched the upgraded environment live and restored a current database backup before enabling business-as-usual access.
For our client this was a reasonably large undertaking since they no longer had staff who were onboard at the time of original server hardware purchase — current system administration staff were more application focused than Operating System or database server administrators.
Cloud365 provides our client with System Administration at Operating System and Database Server layers, alongside our fully managed cloud service including monitoring, alerts and daily backups.
We are also providing a database replication service between our Melbourne and Sydney data centres, with our Sydney facility available as a staging or Disaster Recovery environment.
The client's original HP hardware served them well — and I was happy to let them know that Cloud365's Managed Cloud platform is also based on (much newer) HP ProLiant infrastructure. The cost to run their fully managed service with Cloud365 is less than maintaining their own server, electricity and air-conditioning costs.
We also designed and deployed a fully managed Hosted PBX Service for the same client, removing the need to manage their old clunky phone system hardware — but that's a separate story I'll tell another time.
If your business has a challenge like this, I'm sure we can help. Please feel free to reach out and thanks for reading.
