Key highlights
~200
Mixed production and non-production workloads migrated
~50
Workloads with IP addresses retained through NSX-T overlay segments
Hybrid cloud
On-prem VCF and VMware Cloud on AWS deployed for resilient infrastructure
Summary
One of the largest American cities was running its IT operations on end-of-life Vblock infrastructure that hosted close to 200 servers, creating a risk of disruption and mounting storage and scalability issues. Zensar migrated close to 200 mixed production and non-production workloads to a modern hybrid cloud environment spanning on-prem VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Cloud on AWS, improving reliability, compliance, and cost efficiency without disrupting city services.
Client overview
Boosting service quality and reliability
One of the largest American cities, with over one million residents, employs more than 15,000 individuals to support general administration, fire and police departments, public utilities, libraries, and parks and recreation facilities. The administration decided to retire its legacy Vblock infrastructure, which was running end-of-life (EOL) hardware and an end-of-support (EOS) version of VMware vSphere. This legacy system hosted nearly 200 servers, which had to be migrated to a new environment to improve service quality and reliability.
Challenges
Held back by outdated tech
Risk of disruption: The Vblock infrastructure was approaching EOL/EOS with declining performance, and a system failure would have been difficult and time-consuming to resolve.
Lack of compatible tools: No migration tools were compatible with the existing version, which reached EOL in 2018, making migration without downtime or application impact difficult.
IP address dependency: IP addresses for nearly 50 workloads could not be changed and had to be retained after the move.
Inefficient data reclamation: Legacy VMFS data stores required frequent manual data reclamation, because auto-reclaim was not supported.
Unoptimized storage: Space freed by deleted OS blocks was not reclaimed by storage pools, frequently causing high-severity issues.
Poor scalability and resilience: There was no room to add storage disks, and disk failures delayed restoration.
Solution
Seamless migration to modern IT infrastructure
With meticulous planning, Zensar moved close to 200 mixed production and non-production workloads from legacy Vblock infrastructure to a more reliable, compliant, and efficient hybrid cloud environment. The solution built a private cloud on HPE GreenLake for on-prem hosting under a cloud-based subscription model, upgraded virtual servers, resolved high-severity storage issues, and deployed new infrastructure with the ability to scale resources to meet surges in demand.
Hybrid cloud migration
Moved workloads to on-prem VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on HPE GreenLake and to VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS).
Migration tooling
Leveraged Rubrik to move workloads to the on-prem VCF infrastructure and VMware HCX to move workloads to VMC on AWS.
IP address retention
Reconfigured gateways and created NSX-T overlay segments within the same subnet to retain IP addresses for dependent workloads.
Application mapping and decommissioning
Carried out application-to-infrastructure mapping and network traffic analysis using Aria, followed by a standardized Vblock decommissioning process.
Solution enablers
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
A comprehensive software-defined stack including VMware vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, and Aria Suite for compute, storage, and network.
VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS)
Enabled seamless integration with existing VMware environments, easing migration and scalability while reducing complexity and operational costs.
HPE GreenLake subscription
Enabled the client to reserve estimated capacity and pay only for the variable capacity it used.
Rigorous QA and testing
Brought together application vendors and city departments for extensive application and functional testing after each group of servers moved.
Business outcomes
Zensar helped the city modernize its IT infrastructure by migrating to a cloud-based environment that improved availability, performance, scalability, security, capacity planning, and reporting capabilities. The transformation reduced mean time to repair (MTTR) for service outages, lowered operational costs associated with data center hosting and Vblock maintenance, and improved overall service reliability.
By leveraging a cloud subscription model, the city achieved significant cost savings while creating a modern, resilient, and scalable IT foundation. The enhanced infrastructure and operational efficiency contributed to higher customer satisfaction, enabling the city to deliver more reliable and responsive services to its residents.
