Client Overview
A mid-sized technology firm specializing in compliance and technological solutions for both public and private organizations needed to modernize their infrastructure while preserving critical legacy applications. With over 500 employees serving clients across multiple regulated industries, the company faced growing pressure to improve agility while maintaining the robust security and compliance capabilities that their customers depended on.
The Challenge
The client was operating an aging VMware infrastructure that was becoming increasingly costly to maintain and difficult to scale. As a provider of compliance and technological solutions, they faced unique challenges:
- Managing separate infrastructure silos for container and VM workloads
- Rising licensing costs for their virtualization platform
- Strict compliance requirements across multiple regulatory frameworks
- Need to maintain security certifications while modernizing infrastructure
- Limited ability to scale their compliance solutions to meet growing client demands
- Growing technical debt from maintaining legacy compliance systems
- Need for improved disaster recovery capabilities for client-facing services
The company needed a solution that would allow them to begin modernizing their application portfolio while maintaining critical compliance and security capabilities, all within a unified management framework that would reduce operational complexity while meeting stringent regulatory requirements.
The Solution
Shadow-Soft designed a comprehensive solution built around Red Hat OpenShift with OpenShift Virtualization. This approach allowed the client to:
- Deploy a unified platform capable of running both containerized applications and virtual machines
- Begin a phased migration away from their existing VMware infrastructure
- Create a foundation for gradual application modernization
- Implement a more cost-effective and scalable infrastructure
The solution leveraged Red Hat OpenShift 4.15 on bare metal infrastructure with Portworx providing software-defined storage capabilities. Shadow-Soft recommended a three-node cluster with mixed control/worker nodes that would meet the client's immediate needs while providing a foundation for future growth.
Implementation Process
Phase 1: OpenShift Deployment Design & Architecture
Shadow-Soft began with a thorough review of the client's environment and requirements:
- Conducted detailed analysis of existing workloads and performance requirements
- Validated Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription requirements
- Determined appropriate hardware sizing based on current and projected workloads
- Created a cluster sizing and growth plan aligned with the client's modernization roadmap
- Developed metrics for environment scenarios to ensure adequate performance
Phase 2: OpenShift Infrastructure Installation
The Shadow-Soft team then implemented the core infrastructure:
- Deployed a 3-node bare metal OpenShift 4.15 cluster with 2 mixed control/worker nodes
- Configured core OCP infrastructure services for optimal performance
- Implemented Portworx across all nodes as the persistent storage solution
- Enabled OpenShift virtualization capabilities across the cluster
- Validated all components were functioning correctly and meeting performance benchmarks
Phase 3: Initial Virtualized Workload Migration
With the infrastructure in place, Shadow-Soft demonstrated the platform's capabilities:
- Utilized OpenShift MTV (Migration Toolkit for Virtualization) to migrate 5 selected VMs from the client's VMware environment
- Set up proper resource quotas and management policies for the virtualized workloads
- Demonstrated live migration capabilities between nodes without application downtime
- Performed an in-place upgrade to OpenShift 4.16 to showcase the platform's seamless upgrade path
- Provided hands-on knowledge transfer sessions for the client's operations team
Key Features
- Unified management plane for both containers and virtual machines
- Software-defined storage with Portworx providing high availability for stateful workloads
- Live migration capabilities for virtualized workloads
- In-place platform upgrade path for minimal disruption
- Simplified operations with consistent tooling and processes
Tools Used
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.15/4.16
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS
- OpenShift Virtualization
- OpenShift Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV)
- Portworx Enterprise Storage
Results
The successful proof of concept delivered significant technical and business benefits:
- Reduction in projected infrastructure costs compared to renewing their VMware licenses
- Unified management experience for both VM and container workloads, reducing operational complexity
- Enhanced security posture with OpenShift's built-in security features
- Improved compliance reporting capabilities across multiple regulatory frameworks
- Accelerated path to modernizing their compliance and technological solutions
- Improved disaster recovery capabilities through OpenShift's native DR features
- Enhanced platform stability with seamless upgrade paths demonstrated during the POC
- Clear framework for managing both legacy applications and new cloud-native services
The client has now planning a full production implementation, with Shadow-Soft continuing as their trusted technical partner for the journey. The roadmap includes expanding the cluster to additional sites and beginning the modernization of several core compliance applications using the containerization capabilities of the platform, with particular focus on enhancing their security posture while maintaining regulatory compliance.