Success Story: Orchestrating a High-Stakes Datacenter Evacuation for a Global Private Equity Firm

Client: International Private Equity Firm

Project: Time-Sensitive Datacenter Evacuation to a Hybrid Azure Cloud

Team: Virtuserv VMware PSO Architects & Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

The Challenge: A Zero-Failure Datacenter Exit Amidst Global Disruption

In early 2020, a leading international private equity firm faced a critical, time-bound business objective: the complete evacuation of its primary London data center. This was not a simple lift-and-shift; it was a complex undertaking involving over 400 production servers supporting core financial operations and a Horizon VDI environment serving more than 800 users, including investment professionals whose productivity is measured in millions. The project had an immovable deadline, driven by a lease expiration, demanding a flawless exit strategy.

Compounding this challenge, the project coincided with the onset of the global pandemic, forcing the entire operation to be executed remotely. The firm needed a trusted partner to architect and deliver a rapid transition to a modern, secure, and more flexible cloud-based model, all while empowering a newly remote workforce without any degradation in performance or security.

The Solution: A Multi-Pronged, Prescriptive Cloud Migration

Engaged for our deep expertise, the VMware Professional Services Organization (PSO) architected and executed a sophisticated, dual-track cloud migration strategy to ensure a rapid and successful transition to Microsoft Azure.

1. Strategic Workload Disposition: We began with a rapid, precise analysis of the entire 400+ server estate. Each workload was dispositioned for its optimal cloud destination, ensuring a migration path that maximized performance, cost-efficiency, and operational continuity.
2. Azure VMware Solution (AVS) for Core Infrastructure: For the firm’s mission-critical VMware workloads, including its extensive Horizon VDI environment, we deployed and configured Azure VMware Solution (AVS). This created an instant VMware SDDC in Azure, providing a familiar operational model. We utilized VMware HCX to establish a high-throughput migration pipeline, enabling the live, low-downtime migration of hundreds of servers and the 800+ persistent Horizon VDI VMs directly from the on-premise data center to AVS.
3. Azure Native for Cloud-Optimized Workloads: Concurrently, we leveraged Azure Migrate to move suitable workloads from the on-prem VCF environment directly to Azure native IaaS and PaaS services. This allowed the firm to right-size resources and benefit from the full elasticity and cost advantages of the native Azure fabric for applications that were ready for modernization.
4. Modernizing the End-User Experience: We implemented a state-of-the-art Horizon Cloud on Azure VMware Solution environment. This involved deploying the full suite of modern components, including Unified Access Gateways (UAGs) for robust security, App Volumes for streamlined application delivery, and Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) for granular user personalization and policy control.
5. Pragmatic Engineering for Branch Locations: Recognizing the diverse needs of the firm, we engineered a tailored and cost-effective Hyper-V based solution for smaller branch offices. This demonstrated our commitment to providing the right technology for the specific use case, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

The Result: A Seamless Cloud Transition Executed Under Unprecedented Conditions

The project was an unqualified success, achieving all strategic objectives within the aggressive timeline and setting a new standard for operational resilience at the firm.

• Flawless Datacenter Evacuation: The entire infrastructure footprint of over 400 servers and 800 desktops was successfully migrated to Azure ahead of the critical deadline, enabling a penalty-free exit from the data center lease.
• Empowered a Secure Hybrid Workforce: The new Horizon on AVS platform, delivered in the midst of a global shift to remote work, provided the firm’s investment professionals with secure, high-performance, and reliable access to their critical desktops and applications from anywhere in the world.
• Achieved Financial and Operational Agility: By transitioning from a capital-intensive on-premise model to a flexible OpEx model in Azure, the firm gained significant financial agility. They can now scale resources dynamically to support the fast-paced demands of new acquisitions and portfolio company integrations.
• Strengthened Security and Governance: The modernized platform, with its robust access controls and cloud-native security features, dramatically improved the firm’s overall security posture for its most sensitive financial data.
• Demonstrated World-Class Remote Execution: Completing a datacenter exit of this magnitude entirely remotely is a powerful testament to the expertise of the VMware PSO team and the maturity of the VMware and Microsoft Azure cloud technologies.