Conservation International

Synopsis

Conservation International had a need to move their RackSpace cloud infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) managed cloud. Hosting data and applications on AWS presented cost savings over the RackSpace environment. Conservation International required the transition of its in-use Windows 2008 R2, SharePoint 2013, SQL Server, and Active Directory.

As a non-profit organization, Conservation International was under significant time and budget constraints to complete this project. Enquizit developed and followed a comprehensive project plan and was able to accommodate all of our customer’s needs, including porting existing SQL Server licenses over to AWS and providing the additional out of scope service of load testing the website using Bees with Machineguns, post migration. Load test benchmarks revealed performance increases between 600 and 1,000 percent.

Initial State

Conservation International initially had their applications and servers hosted on Rackspace. Rackspace’s disaster recovery standards did not meet the expectations of Conservation International as evidenced by the time to recover during simulations. Additionally, Rackspace charged a high rate for cloud storage. Conservation International was intent on moving to the AWS platform as it provided better service for a lower cost.

Enquizit’s Solution

Enquizit proposed a new architecture that included auto-scaling and AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) divided into multiple availability zones with isolated VPCs for Management, Production, and Development/Quality Assurance (QA)/Staging teams. Auto-scaling and multi-zone design were implemented to ensure business continuity and high availability. Enquizit also designed and managed security controls, policies, and processes in compliance with relevant standards including FISMA, DIACAP, FedRAMP, ISO 27001, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2.

Enquizit created the infrastructure, deployed SQL Servers and databases onto the AWS cloud and performed testing. We also implemented AWS CloudFormation, including automation and troubleshooting activities. AWS CloudFormation allowed us to create a script that streamlined configuration, using automation to reduce the level of maintenance efforts.Windows Server Failover Clustering allowed us to launch a primary and secondary server in the cloud to prevent

Challenges

Enquizit encountered difficulty using the Microsoft DNA Listener (on an SQL Server inside a multi-subnet clustering) that was not working properly. After prolonged conversations with the Microsoft online support team, Enquizit alternatively remedied the issue in-house that Microsoft seemed to be unable to resolve.

Benefits

Conservation International was able to maintain application licenses as they moved across cloud platforms, allowing them to continue using their applications without loss of functionality or additional cost. They also saved money with a lowered monthly cost for on-demand instances. Additionally, our customer benefitted from enhanced security via VPN servers and limited IP address access, improved performance including website load time, and data backup availability via S3.

Tools and Technologies

Project Title:

Migration of SharePoint Server & SQL Server from Rackspace to AWS

Project Duration:

January 1, 2017 – March 31, 2017

Prime and Partners

Prime: Enquizit

Partners: N/A