Our client develops modern technology solutions in the post-acute care industry.
Business Challenge
Our client’s long-term goal is cloud migration, and the first step was implementing a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan into the cloud. They asked SoftServe’s help to create a plan and implement cloud DR for three of its products. Our client’s existing infrastructure was well documented and very complicated, including many manual processes. Additional challenges appeared as SoftServe engaged our client in discovery conversations. For example, one key challenge was enabling public peering as the client’s products only support private peering. Also, its SQL environment needed to be upgraded to support “Always On”, a way to deliver High Availability (HA) in SQL Server.
SoftServe proposed a fully automated solution to reduce costs and potential errors in operations. Upon reviewing SoftServe’s proposal, our client chose to update their infrastructure with advanced DR practices such as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and SQL Always On. SoftServe built its strategy in a way that would migrate three different datacenters to the cloud.
Project Description
The project was divided into several phases, each of which handled separate steps of the DR plan. The first phase, Disaster Recovery project planning, covered infrastructure changes and the establishment of a backup procedure. Using Infrastructure as Code all the information that described the infrastructure environment and configuration was stored as files, enabling a smooth and quick migration to the cloud.
The Disaster Recovery architecture solution ensured data resilience and several ways to replicate data. It also supports the ability to automate failover and failback using production-ready and application-specific scripts developed by SoftServe.
Setting up the backup procedure was one of the main challenges for SoftServe. Because our client’s infrastructure only supported private peering, there was no way SoftServe could use it to establish external backups without purchasing new equipment for public peering support.
SoftServe addressed this problem with Private Link. PrivateLink provides private endpoints for Azure Playtform as a Service (PaaS) services like blobs, Azure SQL, etc. With PrivateLink the endpoints could be accessed through ExpressRoute private peering, eliminating the use of public peering (and new hardware).
The second phase, Preparation of the Cloud Site, was mainly centered around SQL Always On. When Always On is successfully implemented, it provides a low RPO (recovery point objective) and RTO (recovery time objective) in case of disaster.
Value Delivered
SoftServe delivered to the client a fully implemented Disaster Recovery solution. It ensures that our client’s datacenters can quickly resume mission-critical functions following a disaster.
The use of Infrastructure as Code SoftServe provided greater flexibility, less downtime and greater overall cost efficiency. Because the infrastructure environment and configuration are stored as files, the same code may be reused to build new environments in future.
In the event of a disaster, our client’s DR solution will minimize data loss and system downtime. The implementation of SQL Always On will provide a low RTO and RPO, limiting the data loss to minutes.