How we “moved” the entire infrastructure to the “cloud” in 5 days

A customer recently came to us and said: we need to transfer the work of the entire company to the “cloud” . It is desirable yesterday. In general, like all emergency projects, the task is a dream, because there is a lot of work, but there is no time.

In fact, it was necessary to design the IT architecture from scratch and transfer employee data there. From the customer’s side, the executive director and his partner, about 100 users at 4 sites, from our side, four small working groups. One was engaged in terminal access, the second - was responsible for mail. The third dealt with the infrastructure (VPN, network interaction), and the fourth with the backup setup.

We coped in five calendar days — after Wednesday we conducted a full audit of the IT infrastructure of the Tavros company, developed the main architectural solutions and chose the technical means for their implementation. For the next 2 days, CROC experts actively worked on the deployment of customer-specific infrastructure. On Saturday and Sunday dopilivali stuff and tested. On Monday, users of the company went to work and did not notice anything, but most of the IT objects were already in our “cloud” .
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Story

It was necessary to have time:

• Audit current IT infrastructure
• Develop basic architectural solutions
• Choose technical tools for the organization of IT systems in the "cloud"
• Organize a secure connection between the cloud and 4 customer sites
• Set up a domain controller in the "cloud"
• Install the mail system based on Microsoft Exchange
• Transfer to the "cloud" a few "test" employee accounts.
• Configure Terminal Servers
• Supply mail and terminal servers to support CROC
• Configure data backup of mail and terminal servers using the EMC Avamar software and hardware complex

As part of the project, we proposed a number of organizational solutions to reduce the cost of the project. The customer sought to minimize one-time costs in the process of moving and naturally to reduce periodic payments later.

First there was an audit. The infrastructure, it must be said, was simple, but still it was necessary to assess the scale of the upcoming reform. The infrastructure consisted of corporate mail, workflow, 1C and terminal farm. With the audit and infrastructure plan coped for the day.

The customer had been actively using terminal access based on Citrix XenApp ( like this ), decided not to invent a bicycle and took this product as a basis. Microsoft Exchange was used as a mail system. For the organization of mail took it as a basis. This later allowed the customer to migrate user data to the mail server in the cloud without any difficulties. As finished - screwed a general backup from the cloud .

Network access was organized like this:



For employees, the composition of the application software that they used before moving to the “cloud” has not changed at all. Only the location of the servers and the principle of their payment have changed. Accordingly, accountants noticed the time of payment, IT specialists noticed the location of the servers - by the way, they themselves moved the mailboxes (during the installation, CROC staff migrated only 5 accounts and users mailboxes from the customer’s site, and prepared instructions for migrating the rest). A regular user didn’t notice anything. Everything remained as comfortable as before. IT-shnik, perhaps, felt some relief, since KROK was now responsible for the platforms.

How often do we do that

For 5 days - quite rare. But by themselves, the task of transferring the IT infrastructure to the “cloud” appears quite often. If two years ago, such cases were rare, now even large companies under a thousand or more people almost completely move to public “clouds”. The truth is that they transfer everything gradually, the IT system after the IT system, step by step. They are eyeing the cloud service and, having made sure of its maturity, translate everything else.

The reasons are different. The most common is the convenience of maintaining infrastructure. After all, the zone of responsibility is shifting from the support of the data center and application software only to the support of the application level (like the same 1C, mail, etc.), because all the hardware is on our side.

The second reason is the unreliability of the infrastructure. One of our customers transferred everything, because electricity was cut off in their business center, sometimes for a couple of days. No one wanted to repeat history.

Why so fast?

To be honest, at first we were a little worried about the timing. It was at the end of April, on Tuesday, and if we hadn’t met before Wednesday of the next week, the May holidays would have postponed the completion of the project. And this option was not considered. Engineers to work on site were difficult to find before the May holidays. All customers had to, hands were snapped up. But found. Helped horizontal communication within our company.

In the end, everything turned out to be done even faster than necessary. This was facilitated by the fact that there were plenty of computing resources and licenses in the cloud and you could start using them on the same day. Qualified engineers were found. And the will to win only contributed to success.

If the project was carried out at the customer’s site, everything would be fast only in theory. In practice, there are no servers (they need to be ordered, brought, arranged), there are no licenses, there are no engineers - they are on vacation, there is something else, then there is no switchboard in the warehouse ... And here resources are allocated, in fact, for five minutes

Another interesting organizational moment - the contract between the two companies is usually quite problematic to agree and sign in one week. Especially in an environment where all coordinating parties on both sides were involved in the process of moving to the cloud. Therefore, it was decided to create a letter of guarantee, which was quickly agreed and signed. A contract agreed and signed a little later.

Technical support

The customer was offered the option of providing services of the 2nd level of technical support for the mail system and terminal servers. This meant that such routine operations as the establishment of mailboxes, an increase in their volume, recovery from backup copies of individual letters from users were transferred to the control of the helpdesk of the client company. CROC engineers are only responsible for administering the application software of the servers, for timely increasing the productivity of the machines, and for implementing updates.

On the one hand, this approach has significantly reduced the cost of external technical support. On the other hand, its technical support service is closer to the ordinary employees of the customer company. For example, it’s easier for bookkeeper Galina to call her employees and say: “My tsiferka ran away from this file to another. And in general, I can not find another file. Help me".

If the problems are bigger or their IT-specialists do not cope with the task - contact the second line of support, already ours. In this case, in general, the infrastructure of the first line of support manages itself, through the self-service portal of the cloud platform and through the management tools of the application software.

Total

For four months now the customer has been “in” our “cloud”. There is almost 100% of its IT infrastructure. The customer did not regret at all about the chosen strategy of IT development, besides, he is constantly evolving.

What is the result? The customer has a fulfilled desire to transfer non-core activities to professionals from a third-party company and optimize IT costs. The customer’s financial director has happiness due to the transformation of capital costs into operational ones, upon the provision of services. The company completely got rid of capital payments on IT. After all, all computing resources, software, technical support services, data backup service based on EMC Avamar are provided to it under the monthly payment scheme. Moreover, the customer can always predict the growth or reduction of costs during the consumption of CROC services, since the services are provided within pre-agreed tariffs. When changing the number of users, mailbox volume, server capacity, they always know what to expect in the invoice for services at the end of the month.

For users, nothing has changed. The IT department has less headaches due to infrastructure problems. And we had an excellent experience of operational implementation and the opportunity to go on holidays with a pleasant feeling, if not done, then the completed project.