Government transportation agency that oversees the planning, designing, construction, and maintenance of the state’s transportation infrastructure. The department’s 2,100+ employees manage infrastructure from aviation to transit to waterways and more throughout the state.
The client wanted to take advantage of Dynatrace’s observability features fully. However, they ran the Dynatrace on-prem solution known as Dyatrace Managed. To capitalize on the full range of features and reduce operating costs and risks, they needed to migrate to the SaaS Environment while preserving their current configurations.
They also required an embedded resource to work alongside their team for 12 months, training them on the platform's new features, supporting adoption, and helping troubleshoot issues.
Leading global technology solutions provider and Dynatrace brought the client to Shadow-Soft for support with their migration due to our experience with the platform as Certified Dynatrace Platform Professionals.
While the Dynatrace Managed Solution is robust, the organization could not use specific features with the on-prem environment. Specifically, they could not use Grail (the log monitoring system), which uses AWS and Azure to scale effectively.
Additionally, the solution had increased costs and risks associated with running the on-prem version vs. the cloud-based one. These risks include updating, maintaining, and managing the platform's lifecycle to stay current.
The client needed to move to a SaaS environment to fully utilize the platform and streamline platform operations.
Dynatrace and Technology Solution Provider brought in Shadow-Soft to support the migration.
We started with running an inventory of the existing platform configurations (alerting profiles, custom data visualization, evaluating management zones, migrating agents, etc.). During that evaluation, we identified which configurations could be moved automatically and which needed manual or custom configurations in the new platform.
Then, we migrated that configuration and the data to the Dynatrace SaaS environment while staying compliant in the highly restrictive and regulated government environment.
For custom configurations, we evaluated whether or not they could exist on the new platform. If they could, we built out that configuration. If not, we worked with the team to map out an alternative approach within the application.
The client used Puppet to manage their agents. As a result, our team quickly updated the Puppet code, pointing agents to the new environment. Then, we migrated over 700+ agents to the new environment in a few hours.
The next step was exporting records from their API endpoint and migrating them to the new platform. From there, we recreated any manual configurations and deprecated features from the on-prem environment to the SaaS environment.
The initial migrations took 4 weeks. The custom and manual migrations took another 6 weeks.
Our certified Dynatrace team followed the guidelines for migrating users from Manage to SaaS along with our experience with other migrations. Here’s our process:
Now that the client has migrated to the cloud version of Dynatrace, they have access to the application's full functionality.
Features:
We needed to migrate 100s of post-installation configuration changes made to Dynatrace on-premise. This would have taken a long time if done manually.
Instead, we scripted out the process in Puppet for them. As a result, we migrated the majority of their configurations (alerting profiles, custom data visualization, evaluating management zones, migrating agents, etc.) inside Dynatrace SaaS in one go.
During this time, we established clear lines of communication with the client and Dynatrace to ensure agent licensing expanded to support the migration. As a result, we avoided any unnecessary slowdowns with migration.
As with any project of this size that impacts numerous departments, numerous teams needed to be kept informed at each stage of the migration. We worked as a bridge between departments, relaying information to avoid misunderstandings and unnecessary frustration.
The client chose Dynatrace to speed up root cause analysis. Without an observability platform, it’s hard to tell if you’re monitoring every facet of your applications. With Dynatrace, the client has automated monitoring across their entire technology stack.
As leading Dynatrace partners with certified and experienced team members, we were in the best position to migrate their infrastructure to the cloud environment, train team members on the new features, and guide the adoption process.
Knowledge transfer is critical for successful operations in a government organization. Our team provided the expertise, capabilities, and coaching the client needed.
Our ability to provide workshops, documentation, and exposure to the application in a controlled environment helped them capture capability and provide a learning opportunity for their team.
Key Results:
With the migration complete, the transportation authority can now take full advantage of Dynatrace SaaS:
Additionally, our team works directly with the client to provide ongoing support, coaching, and adoption guidance.
During onboarding, we create new dashboards for new teams, tune new libraries, introduce new naming conventions, and continue to train their team on the platform. And our embedded team works with the client’s team, running weekly Q&A sessions while complexing tasks in Dynatrace or guiding the team through the process.
At any point during the engagement, the client has access to an architect, project manager, and engineer familiar with their operations and the project.