How to find IT specialists for the cloud – CISCO implementation for ConnectEDU

As I said in an article some time ago, Cloud Computing Decreases Production Infrastructure Expenses by over 30% for Web Based Leader in Education Management, as a CTO, I had to find the best solution for implementing efficient and cost-effective production infrastructure. One of the challenges I had to face was migrating from all of my physical infrastructure to Navisite’s Managed Cloud Sevices for ConnectEDU.

In the Cloud Recruitment Perspectives I discussed the importance of professional assistance from specialized IT staffing companies for organizations searching to hire cloud IT specialist. Today I would like to talk about the process of hiring IT specialists based on my experience with the CISCO implementation for ConnectEDU.

First, we looked for migration specialists to map our 60+ servers into the cloud.  We analyzed the processing, memory and disk of each server and then estimated the size of the virtual (IaaS) servers that we would need. We were able to eliminate 15%+ of the servers just by adjusting what ran on each cloud server.

For example we found that we could combine some web services that did not require a tremendous amount of processing or used for overnight processing onto one large virtual server. This led to eliminating the number of servers required and also made things more efficient on the Cisco UCS Cloud Fabric.

When we could, we used physical to virtual conversions. There were several machines that could not be converted easily, like the massive data base servers. We estimated that it would take weeks to convert these massive data base servers so we rebuilt those physical to virtuals by hand and then transferred the data base from a restore point.

Once the system was running in parallel we were able to add additional virtualized load balanced servers for reliability.  It was very helpful working with a team of cloud computing experts that we contracted with during this phase. I also should mention that some of the existing IT staff was hesitant to help with this transition, because they felt like their jobs keeping physical servers running were going away. We worked with them on helping them train for new positions, but they still had a difficult time leaving the physical world. The support of the team was very important during this process. Believing in a better solution and working as a team had great benefits on achieving our goals.

The solution we implemented was a total success and we shared our success with other companies to help them migrate from proprietary application servers towards virtualization and cloud computing. The benefits are massive in terms of technology and employees’ activity. And if you have migrated or are looking for professional assistance please reach out to me, I would be interested in hearing about your successes or for those of you making the switch, I will share with you some of the things I have learned.

Photo source: https://www.sxc.hu/photo/1013679.