From museum piece to VM: a migration story
Recently, a client approached us with a classic case “It's been like this for years and nobody dares to touch it”. An old application was running that hadn't been updated for quite some time and was therefore several major releases behind.
After some research, we quickly saw: this is fixable. Time to roll up our digital sleeves. We started with an action plan.
The first step: virtualising
The app was running on a piece of dated hardware. Fortunately, the client had recently implemented a virtualisation platform (good move), so we advised running the application in a fresh VM.
Getting ready for migration
We installed the latest version of the application on the new VM and set up the environment to facilitate a smooth transition.
Then the real work began: figuring out how we could neatly migrate the old data to the new version.
We delved into the supplier's documentation – a comprehensive manual which quickly made it clear that the database structure had changed significantly over the years. A direct migration without preparation would pose a considerable risk of data corruption and a failed transition. Naturally, we wanted to prevent that.
Ansible to the rescue
We put together a few clever Ansible playbooks to transfer the data to the new database in a controlled manner. And sure enough, the application started up perfectly in its new location, complete with all customer data. Just a bit of fine-tuning settings to go. – and done.
Evening migration without downtime
At the customer's request, we carried out the entire operation during the evening hours. Result: nil downtime, no more sleepless end-users and an application that can last for years to come.
Do you also have outdated applications that need a good clean-up? USN is happy to help. Feel free to contact us to explore your situation together.
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