250+ virtual machines transitioned to Azure within three weeks.
When product development moved from one country to another, the incoming team needed its development environment within three weeks. Specialist technology talent based in Serbia supported the transition.
Book a discovery call- 250+
- virtual machines transitioned to Azure
- 3 weeks
- from analysis to delivery
The challenge
- Sector
- Fashion retail
- Talent market
- Serbia
- Technology
- Microsoft Azure, VMware vSphere, Infrastructure as Code and VPN
- Published
The client is a multinational fast-fashion retailer with outlets across Europe and the United States.
When responsibility for product development moved from one country to another, the client had a time-critical infrastructure problem. The incoming development team needed the existing application development, build and test environment: more than 250 virtual machines on VMware vSphere, on-premises at the original location.
Rather than being rebuilt on-premises in the new country, the environment was to move to Microsoft Azure. One requirement was critical: the new environment had to replicate the existing one as closely as possible, and be running within three weeks. That would let the new team continue the previous team's work without disruption.
Testing added a further complication. It replicated the topology of the retailer's store infrastructure and relied on physical hardware test devices. Those devices had shared a local network with the test VMs. After the move, equivalent test devices would be installed at the new location while the test VMs ran in Azure.
The environment therefore had to be reproduced in the cloud while staying connected to physical test hardware in another location.
The delivery
The first priority was to understand precisely what had to be reproduced. The analysis covered the on-premises hardware, operating system settings, software and configuration, alongside the specific requirements of the application.
That analysis identified the VM images required. Their costs were assessed, and the Azure environment right-sized accordingly. Before implementation began, the cost of the full environment was estimated, presented to the client and agreed.
With the target defined, the images were built and the Azure environment provisioned using Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Build and test activities were then validated for functional parity with the original.
Finally, a VPN connection linked the physical test devices at the new location to Azure. The hardware and the cloud-hosted test VMs could then operate as the hybrid test environment that testing required.
The outcome
Within three weeks, the client had a faithful reproduction of its original development, build and test environment running in Microsoft Azure.
The transition enabled the incoming team to continue the previous team's work without disruption. The development environment no longer depends on the original on-premises VMware vSphere infrastructure.
- Functional parity maintained
- Build and test activities were validated against the original setup, so the new environment could support the work handed to the incoming team.
- Physical test hardware stayed connected
- VPN connectivity let the physical test devices at the new location work with the test VMs hosted in Azure.
- Costs understood before implementation
- The full cloud environment was costed in advance, and the estimate agreed with the client before implementation began.
This project was ultimately about continuity.
The client was not simply moving virtual machines from VMware vSphere to Azure. It was transferring an established development capability between countries, without interrupting the work already underway.
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