Reliance Infosystems | Linux Server CBN Case Study

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Case Study: Lift & Shift (Ubuntu Linux & MySQL DB), Central Bank of Nigeria

Customer

Central Bank of Nigeria, Abuja Nigeria

Industry

Financial Services

Needs Expressed

Lift and Shift
High-Availability
Scalability
Secure Cloud Infrastructure
VPN
Backup and Disaster Recovery

Benefits Realized

High-Availability
Scalable Infrastructure (Storage and Compute)
Seamless and secure communication between Azure Infra, HQ and Branch Offices
Guaranteed Backup and disaster recovery.
Governance
Reduced cost

Background

As a regulator and governing body at the forefront of financial services sector in Nigeria, CBN has invested heavily in technology, both on-premises and the cloud. CBN is headquartered in Abuja with a branch in Lagos, the HQ and branch are connected via VPN, leverages checkpoint firewalls on-premises, offie365 as a productivity platform, and Azure for datacenter modernization.

Problem

CBN had its E-Library Server hosted on Vmware Infrastructure with Internet Solutions. CBN does not have access to the host, only the virtual machine, its users connect over the web to access E-Library.

Lack of visibility into host of the virtual machines and the cost of the maintenance cost was high, security was a concern, backup and DR were part of the experienced issues that triggered migration to Azure.

Objective

The objective was to migrate E-Library server from Internet Solutions cloud services, for consolidation of its workloads on Azure, make its Line of business applications highly-available, enjoy the compute and storage scale , as well as business and disaster recovery

Solution

Azure Site Recovery, Process server, Landing zone (Resource groups, Virtual Network, Virtual Network Gateway for IPsec VPN, NSG, DDoS, Application Gateway) Managed Disks, Azure Virtual Machine, Availability zones, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Point-to-Site VPN, RBAC for adequate governance. The applications are reachable to users anytime anywhere through a secure channel, either within the office or outside are reachable to users anytime anywhere through a secure channel, either within the office or outside

Implementation

Assessment of the servers were done pre-migration, Azure Migrate was leveraged for the migration, but the disk/vm files were exported first, VMDKK was converted to VHD, the VHD was tested and hosted on Hyper-V, and Azure Migrate was used to shift it to the cloud. This long route was due to inaccessibility to the VMware host. The Landing zone was created (Resource groups, Virtual Network, Virtual Network Gateway for IPsec VPN, NSG) extension of connectivity to on-premises via IPsec VPN and Point-to- site. Test-Failover was done to validate data synchronization and functionality, after which Failover was configured. Redirection of users to Azure VM was configured and on-premise server was shutdown. Both teams (Reliance and CBN) worked together to deliver on the project within time slice and handover training was conducted.

Solution in Action

The Server is Accessible from anywhere, connectivity of remote users and web users to the Line of business application. Protecting from all forms of attack. Remote desktop can be accessed over private IP addresses due to the VPN created. RBAC was configured for adequate access.

We have now consolidated our Cloud Infrastructure, and Azure makes life easier, due to the ease of use, scalability, cost and ROI