Migrations per week at peak
Coordinated waves supported sustained delivery across the estate.
Leading Global University & Research Institution
~5,000 VMs migrated to AWS.
498 SQL Servers modernized.
One governed workflow combined workload migration and SQL modernization for an institution operating around the clock.
~217Applications
8Business units
81Scheduled cutover events
~12 monthsMigration delivery
The challenge
A firm deadline. Continuous operations.
Escalating VMware renewal costs set a financial and operational deadline for moving approximately 5,000 workloads. Teaching, research and institutional operations needed to continue throughout the program.
The estate also included 498 SQL Server 2014 systems beyond support. The institution needed to modernize those systems while advancing its data-center exit and sustainability commitments.
The approach
Migration and modernization in the same workflow.
RiverMeadow worked with AWS and the customer’s teams to coordinate application waves, execute workload moves and modernize SQL Server during migration.
Workload placement followed technical and economic requirements across Amazon EC2 and Nutanix NC2 on AWS. The program upgraded SQL Server from 2014 to 2019 and migrated 82 Oracle servers to NC2 on AWS.
The results
Application delivery at enterprise scale.
SQL Servers upgraded
Modernization ran within the migration workflow, with landing on NC2 on AWS.
Oracle servers migrated
Database workloads moved to NC2 on AWS based on placement requirements.
- VMware renewal exposure eliminated on schedule.
- Owned data-center capacity retired in support of sustainability objectives.
- Workloads placed across EC2 and NC2 to fit their technical and operational requirements.
Platform scope
From the source estate to AWS.
- Source
- VMware vSphere in owned data centers
- Targets
- Amazon EC2 and Nutanix NC2 on AWS
- Workloads
- Windows, Linux, applications and data
- Modernization
- SQL Server 2014 to 2019
One governed workflow
Seven states. Evidence through closure.
- Discover
- Plan
- Assure
- Migrate
- Validate
- Complete
- Closed
Complete records cutover and evidence while the source remains retained. Closed records accepted evidence and approved source retirement.