Customer Overview
Virginia State University is a prominent higher education institution in the United States, known for its commitment to fostering student learning and innovation.
Business Challenges
Legacy infrastructure and student applications require a seamless transition within a tight deadline
The university faced escalating challenges with its IT infrastructure. Hosting critical applications for student learning, faculty engagement, and vendor management, the institution’s environment consisted of 90 servers (70% Windows and 30% Linux) and managed 20TB of data. Migrating 20TB of data while maintaining application performance presented logistical challenges and would require a detailed plan. The aging legacy infrastructure required judicious assessment and planning to ensure compatibility in a new AWS environment
Its existing VMware Cloud (VMC) infrastructure become increasingly expensive, particularly after a significant licensing cost hike following VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom. After the acquisition, VMWare licensing fees doubled, impacting the company’s operational budget. The university had a renewal deadline before which they wanted to migrate all the workloads to AWS.
Additionally, the university’s applications had critical dependencies. Applications essential for student learning and operations require a seamless transition with no disruptions. Service interruption had to be avoided at all costs. The institution’s ultimate goal was not only to modernize its infrastructure but also to maximize it by reducing hosting expenses while still delivering performance.
"Our existing VMware licensing fees were getting out of control. We knew this was the time to move to the AWS cloud.”
Maurice D. Ficklin, Director Technology Infrastructure and Operation, Virginia State University.
Solution Approach
An automated, three-phase migration saves labor and costs
Seeking a scalable and cost-effective alternative, the institution decided to migrate its workloads from VMWare to AWS using the Concierto platform through the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)
Concierto provided end-to-end support for the discovery, assessment, and migration of the university’s workloads, ensuring the migration adhered to industry best practices.
Starting with discovery, assessment, and move groups
The university used Concierto’s automation to map the university’s entire IT environment, including server and application interdependencies, infrastructure components, and upstream/downstream dependencies. Concierto generated an automated assessment report that identified potential migration roadblocks, end-of-life (EOL) systems, and application compatibility for AWS-native environments. The university used Concierto to conduct an automated Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis, estimating a 25%-30% reduction in hosting costs post-migration, providing the motivation needed to conduct the migration as soon as possible.
Concierto automation also provided an R-analysis for all of the university’s systems. An R-analysis evaluates legacy infrastructure and recommends which to replace, rehost, re-platform, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild, or repurchase. In this case, Concierto recommended rehosting or re-platforming most of the IT assets. To do that, Concierto automatically automated the grouping of workloads into logical migration waves based on business criticality and dependencies.
Carving a path to a seamless transition with a pilot migration
To ensure a seamless transition, the university started with a small pilot migration of non-production workloads.
"Since we could not afford any disruption during the cutover, Trianz suggested a small pilot migration to start. That gave us the confidence to ensure a smooth transition."
Maurice D. Ficklin
For secure data migration, the IT team created a secure tunnel to transfer data from VMware Cloud to AWS. Initial migration focused on non-production workloads, validating infrastructure integrity, server boot-up, and connectivity with DNS and VPN services. For post-migration validation, the team conducted application testing and infrastructure-level health checks, ensuring readiness for full-scale migration.
Successfully migrating over 90 servers to AWS with minimal manual intervention
With its successful pilot complete, the university used Concierto’s zero-touch automation to reduce manual intervention and successfully migrated over 90 servers to the AWS cloud within its defined time frame.
Additionally, the university ensured its workloads were mapped to appropriate AWS resources using Concierto’s real-time optimization tools. This served to maximize its cost efficiency and cloud performance.
Results
Saving 26% on hosting costs while improving reliability
Throughout the process, the Trianz team worked hand-in-hand with the university to avoid any disruption and to stay on task.
“Trianz demonstrated its leadership in digital transformation through structured execution and technical excellence. Their team's meticulous planning and outstanding project management ensured success at every step. Having overseen hundreds of technology projects in my over four-decade career, this implementation stands out for its comprehensive excellence in execution and results.”
Maurice D. Ficklin
With the help of the Trianz team, the university successfully migrated its critical applications and data disrupting academic or operational services during the transition. Using Concierto’s automated workflows, it accelerated its migration timelines and eliminated manual errors while establishing a modern, scalable cloud.
With its infrastructure migrated to the AWS cloud, the university reported a 26% reduction in hosting costs, addressing some of its initial budget constraints while improving reliability. Additionally, the university gained comprehensive insights into application dependencies and infrastructure interconnections, enabling informed resource allocation and cost optimization.
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