One weekend and it was done. No hitches, no consequences and 6 hours faster than planned. The client could finally breathe a sigh of relief - 18 months of analysis, optimization and testing paid off. Judge for yourself the amount of patience and diligence migration of the Volkswagen datacentre (but also elsewhere) swallows.
of the moved HW
MOVING TO A BETTER STANDARD
Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS)also known as ŠkoFIN, specialises in the promotion of Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA, Porsche, Ducati, Bentley and Lamborghini. One in three cars sold leaves the Volkswagen Group with VWFS financing including loans, operating leases, branded insurance, service packages and other mobility services.
Strict security requirements that give financial institutions no breathing space led VWFS to decide Strengthen security standards for the operation of the primary datacentre. They decided to find a partner to guide the company through the selection, preparation and implementation of a solution that would secure their services for a long time.
VWFS turned to ORBIT, which has a many years of experience with similar projects. Our initial analysis at the beginning of 2018 confirmed that migrating the datacentre to a more suitable location would be the best way forward for Volkswagen FS. And the odyssey could begin.
WHY ODYSEA?
We didn't want to back down from the principle that the move would take place after optimization of the IT environment. This is the only way to ensure that migration will not impact the customer's business. Changing the network topology from two to three data centres and increasing LAN and WAN redundancy to high-availability levels proved to be the most difficult.
But most importantly: the management of the VWFS IT network was outsourced to the expert team of the parent company in Germany. We also had to call in the Cisco network solutions specialists from NTT and ITS to provide the infrastructure of the new datacenter and the physical implementation of the migration.
The consequence? The mutual cooperation of so many people was extremely difficult despite the intense efforts of all involved. The lengthy troubleshooting of the causes of the repeated instability of the new network design led to extension of the project by almost a year.
CREATING A VOLKSWAGEN DATACENTER MIGRATION SCENARIO
Preparations for the move included a number of changes to the VWFS IT infrastructure as well as an analysis of disaster recovery plans (see window Key benefits of ORBIT in the project). Our aim was to prepare a detailed DC migration plan in which each activity had an assigned time and a researcher. From physical disassembly/transport/assembly of HW through the individual steps of backup and shutdown to system power-up, middleware and application layer starts.
We therefore developed a communication matrix that determined continuous transfer of responsibility between the different members of the management team and defined all the roles involved. The matrix included:
- 25 preparatory activities
- 236 steps of migration
- 19 tasks after migration
- Dedicated migration time 54 hours
We also provided on-call and on-site expert support for all critical systems and applications.
AUTOMATE THE COORDINATION OF ACTIVITIES
During the migration and preparation of DR tests we tested the functionality of the new tool TaskControl. We developed it for automated real-time coordination of activities and today you can try it yourself.
UP TO A NEW ADDRESS
In August 2019, we were finally ready. The whole project culminated in one hectic weekend, during which many months of thorough preparation came to fruition: datacenter migration Volkswagen FS took place in just 48 hours. So we managed to complete it 6 h faster than planned.
The power-up of the systems was almost free of unwanted events (no unprocessed data in a non-standard state or a broken system or application layer), so the client's business has not experienced any negative impacts.
Throughout the project ORBIT represented communication, organisational and analytical hub for all VWFS departments involved, the German VWFS HQ and subcontractors of partial services. We centralized all information on ongoing troubleshooting, analyzed it and suggested alternative approaches if the recommended course of action did not work.
KEY CONTRIBUTIONS OF ORBIT IN THE PROJECT
- Status analysis disaster recovery solutions at the network, system and backup level and subsequent preparation of detailed design of feasible DR tests
- Completion of documentation to all infrastructure and application systems, then assignment for new primary DC
- Complete mapping the prospects (e.g. private circuits to financial registers, various connections to the dealer network, legacy EDI circuit, etc.) and a proposal to ensure functionality after DC migration
- Mapping of all application and system data flows
- Preparation migration plan "step-by-step and Methodologies realization of moving
- Realization of moving in cooperation with IT Operations & Digitalization, VWFS application specialists and suppliers
- Collaboration with the client on the creation of the set regression tests necessary to verify the functionality of the new DC immediately after migration
The Volkswagen Financial Services datacenter migration project has demonstrated that the ability to ensure the transfer of information between many entitiesfrom the very technical level to the highest managerial representation, is one of the strong competences of ORBIT consultants.