Case Study: A Complex SharePoint Migration

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Online Conference June 17 th and 18 th 2015 WWW.SPBIZCONF.COM Case Study: A Complex On-Premises SharePoint Migration Thursday, June 18 th , 2015 1PM – 2PM (EST) Matthew J. Bailey MCT, MCSE

Transcript of Case Study: A Complex SharePoint Migration

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 Online Conference

 June 17th and 18th 2015

WWW.SPBIZCONF.COM

Case Study:

A Complex On-Premises SharePoint Migration

Thursday, June 18th, 2015 1PM – 2PM (EST)

Matthew J. BaileyMCT, MCSE

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Matthew J. BaileyMCT, MCSE, Independent Contractor

Insert Your Picture here

Email : [email protected] : @matthewjbailey1Website : http://www.matthewjbailey.comLinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjbailey1

I consider myself a “SharePoint All-Rounder”. My job tasks have varied and included Administration, Development, Training, Analysis, UAT and Project Management. My job changes often but it keeps things interesting!

Currently, I am a MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainer) & MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) in SharePoint. I have worked with SharePoint for almost seven years. I don’t like to use the word “expert” but I have a fair amount of knowledge with the technology and currently use it daily in my career.

If I don’t know an answer to one of your questions, I will try to find it out or point you in the right direction!

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Before I Begin - Thanks To…

Although I worked hundreds of hours on this project, it absolutely would not have been successful without the help of others too. Special thanks go out to:

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Before I Begin - Thanks To…• The engineers at our new hosting provider• The internal network & infrastructure teams at

the company• My previous supervisor who helped me push the

project through the "red tape" and get the project approved• Trevor Seward (MVP) / Independent consultant

who helped troubleshoot claims issues.

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Agenda & My Role in Project1.Business Case

2.Project Plan Creation

3.Technical Migration Phasesa.Phase 1

b.Phase 2

c.Phase 3

4.Final Testing & Launch

5.Case Study Review, Rewards & Lessons Learned•  

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Business Case

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Business Case Summary• The current infrastructure setup is not working

well• Staff changes, budgets, organizational

restructuring and insufficient resources have occurred

• Dedicated staff and centralized hosting location are needed

• Marketing (whom controls the site) needs full transparency into the platform

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Business Case Summary (cont.)In other words, things aren't working the way they are now so let's grab all the servers and move them to our own host where we can control everything

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Existing SharePoint EnvironmentA previously developed & architected SharePoint environment consisting of:– 3 SharePoint farms (authoring, staging, production)– 1 AD domain– 1 Forest– 2 AD Domain Controllers– 1 SQL Server– 12 SharePoint servers (mixture of WFE & application)– 3 web applications in each farm– 18 language packs– SharePoint 2010 Enterprise SP1, SQL 2008 Enterprise, Windows

2008 R2

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Existing SharePoint Environment (2)Additional notes:• The environment has had multiple consulting

companies & employees who no longer work for the company develop and manage it. It is now being inherited by the Marketing department and newly hired employees dedicated to working with these applications (myself being one of these people).

• There is a development environment , however it was separate & not part of this project.

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Existing SharePoint Environment (3A)1. A public/internet facing SharePoint 2010 site in 18 languages

with publishing, several custom features and .wsp files. Functionality includes:• Content deployment to keep servers in sync between

environments, shared managed metadata service• Custom built workflows for multi-author publishing, many

custom web parts to provide advanced lookups and data pulls similar to that of a CQWP, custom page layouts for visual effects, slideshows and video

• An Active Directory trust to enable single sign on capabilities for content authors

• Customized web parts and page layouts to accommodate country specific requirements for sub-sites written in non-English languages

 

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Existing SharePoint Environment (3B)2. An extranet for partners of our organization. This includes:• Required authentication via FBA (Forms Based

Authentication), LDAP, Secure Token Service & claims

• Extremely detailed levels of item specific permissions for content based on login identity, custom developed management portal to allow creation and management of partner accounts

• A pricing task that imports information from another computer system and is modified and imported into the extranet

 

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Existing SharePoint Environment (3C)3. A blogging platform consisting of:• A few different blogs• Based on the CKS (Community Kit SharePoint)

CodePlex project 

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Issues with Existing Environment (a)Overcome Current Hosting Provider's Constraints• Production environment has single points of failure (i.e., only one SQL

server)        • Staging environment is rarely used yet has excessive resources that could be

applied to production or eliminated to reduce cost• The current hosting provider appears to have only one SharePoint specialist

on duty and has restricted hours of 9am to 6PM EST. This has limited us to when we can deploy changes and must be done during business hours affecting user’s ability to perform work.

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Issues with Existing Environment (b)Overcome Current Hosting Provider's Constraints (continued)• No advanced monitoring software for hardware issues and site outages (they

do have basic). This has caused hardware and web page issues taking more time then needed to resolve.

• Security lockdown (beyond reasonable security concern lock outs) that prohibit us from viewing server OS based reports (i.e., Windows Event Log, CPU usage, etc.)

• Inability to install troubleshooting software on the current hosting provider's servers without paying a fee for evaluation of the software first.

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Issues with Existing Environment (c)Resolve internal support issues • Security lockdowns that cause excessive time to troubleshoot and deploy

changes• Lack of standards on what is and is not allowed to be completed and of

transparency on why errors, issues and limitations occur

Resolve non-unified environments issues• Keeping Term Store in sync due to firewall / network issues & allowing users

to make Term Store changes• Quickly obtaining copies of databases for backup and restores due to size

and time needed to upload to a place that is shared so we may obtain the db copy

• Time delays in troubleshooting Content Deployment issues easily as we have to make formal requests to 2 different environments to obtain logs to investigate issues

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New Vendor Requirements (1)Infrastructure• The provider must be able to offer a multi layer disaster recovery and site

outage replacement plan including solutions for short term outages, mid term outages and total losses of website and data.

• The provider must provide an advanced outage process and notification system that includes both hardware, software and web server features to shorten the period of outages.

• The new provider must provide monitoring services to suggest alterations and correct performance issues on the servers.

 

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New Vendor Requirements (2)Services & Support / ROI• The provider must allow code based changes and deployments to be made

during non working hours to avoid constant interruptions to employee’s work and provide the ability for us to deploy solutions more than once a month due to massive backlog of projects.

• The provider must have multiple layers and a larger team of expertise, experience & consultation services that have worked with other mid to large sized customized corporate SharePoint environments.

• The new selection must reduce the amount of time it takes to document, plan, troubleshoot and deploy even basic changes. It should allow for less people to be involved in the process full process of build to deploy.

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New Vendor Requirements (3)SLA• The provider must have a minimum of a 99% uptime guarantee.• The provider must have a hardware outage replacement guarantee of less

than 4 hours.• The provider must have competent & conscious staffing available 24/7 in

case issues arise.

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Architectural ChangesInfrastructureAlthough the temptation was great due to many challenges with the current architecture, we chose not to attempt to redesign and re-architect the system at the same time of migrating it due to the high level of risk involved. However, we have made some improvements to create a more stable, better performing & fault tolerant environment. This includes: • Current environment only has one SQL server per farm which creates a

single point of failure for environment. The new environment will have a virtualized SQL cluster with an active/passive failover sequence. *NOTE: It is not recommended to virtualize your SQL servers unless you have extremely powerful hardware to run them on, in this case we did. 

• Current environment did not have a dedicated, hardware based load balancer. New environment will. 

• New environment will have faster servers, more space, more CPUs and more memory. 

• Our staging environment was used very little and we decided to lessen the number of SharePoint servers on this farm to give our production environment more resources.

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Project Plan CreationProject Plan

Creation

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Project Plan CreationOur project plan needs to be extremely detailed and take into consideration:• Migrating Data (all SharePoint databases and other files on OS)• Installing Software

– Exact version match on SQL, SP, Windows– Language packs– AD trust

• Setting up Hardware (deciding which servers will be on which Hypervisors so that the servers are evenly balanced across the 4 physical boxes)

• Our company's business needs, exceptions and all stakeholders involved with the project as well as their availability and potential conflicts

• Emergency backup plans

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Project Plan Creation - Hardware• New DAS (Direct-attached storage)• 4 dedicated physical services (that will be virtualized to allow

many different servers to run), 64GB RAM each, 2 x 8 core CPUs each (16 cores each total)

• F5 load balancer• Cisco firewall• Cisco VPN

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Project Plan Creation – SoftwareSince this will be a "one for one" migration and our expected

outcome is to have the same environment functioning in a different location, we want to replicate the software versions identically to avoid any potential issues. These include knowing and confirming: • Exact version of Windows Server OS• Exact features & roles enabled on each Windows Server• Version of SQL Server• Exact version numbers of SharePoint• All language packs needed

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Project Plan Creation – Data/Code Migration• Partner accounts in AD for extranet• OS level files (i.e., DLL, .resx, web.config, etc.)• Extracted .wsp files / features• Content databases from SQL for all three web applications• Custom Scheduled Tasks on Windows Server we created• Managed metadata databases from SQL• URL rewrite rules from IIS

Additional guidance and best practices regarding content migration from Microsoft:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287899(v=office.14).aspx

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Project Plan Creation – People & Company• Find out when everyone will need time off to schedule around them• Find out special events at your company (i.e., end of month lock ups for IT or end

of quarter earnings releases freeze periods for us, audit times, etc. , holidays, users in other countries so their holidays are different than ours, conferences employees have to attend)

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Final Meeting Stakeholders Signoff• We want to review and get everyone's agreement to our detailed

project plan. During our conference call with all stakeholders present, we reviewed the spreadsheet below to confirm all timelines, tasks, risks, teams responsible for each task and any other details.

Of course, even with the best of planning, things didn't go as hoped, but that's why we are here today! What fun would a project be that didn't have any issues (and why would we have jobs? grin).

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Emergency Backup Plan• Our existing web host will still be active. Although the prices have

dramatically increased, not switching the DNS records over to our new hosting provider is an option if we cannot get the environment working.

 • Since we pursued a "phased" approach, we at least knew that some

parts of the website were working farm before the cutoff date. In this case, should it have happened, we could have gone live with a "mostly working" site if it was needed. Fortunately we did not encounter this situation.

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Technical Migration Phasesand now the fun really begins…

Technical Migration Phases

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Technical Migration Phase BeginsItems to remember as we review the technical phase:• Each company functions differently. Limited funds prevented expertise assistance being

hired on to ensure a smoother transition. • A lot of learning on my part "happened along the way". Although there was a great deal

of due diligence done prior to migration beginning, there will always be the "I don't know what I don't know" aspect of a project.

• I am human, some items may seem like an obvious red flag or could have had a simpler solution, but everyone did the best they could with the budget and resources we had available.

• There will be a lot of information condensed into this presentation. We are covering 5 months of technical work in a one hour review. It’s ok to come back to these slides later and review them!

• Since our previous host was managed at a far more restrictive manner, we did not have as much insight as we thought in regards to trying to replicate some of the settings needed to configure at the new hosting provider.

• Eventually, the project was completed successfully, it just had some bumps along the way and was still very much worth the effort of going through.

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Technical Migration - Phase 1 (a)• 3 week estimate from hosting provider was given to setup hardware

environment & install SharePoint per our specific needs for our "private cloud" or dedicated/managed environment.

• Create web applications on SharePoint servers Deploy solution files we have as of that date Use PS to extract all .wsp files from current environment

• Copy any .dll files or .resx files over & match up Timer Jobs - MANUAL PROCESS

• Attach / restore content databases (which may be a bit old), we have empty shell dbs now, mount db, add service accounts to security & roles and Term Store files.

• We will bring over entire Term Store now and sync with the task instead of bringing over the other part of the Term Store later for extranet (using PowerShell script)

• Run Test-SPContentDatabase to review potential errors

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Technical Migration - Phase 1 (b)• Create service applications for web application (done as part of install by

hosting provider)• Compare Central Admin between 2 servers (existing and new)• Compare Central Administration setup and config files for each web

applications using text comparison software• Configure email on all servers & configure SMTP role in Windows Server• Pass along software license numbers to new host (our company has an

Enterprise Licensing Agreement, licenses were already paid for)• Configure State Service• Create, start & restore managed metadata service• Create the service using the same name as previous installation and

restore MMS database• Configure search in Central Admin (using SharePoint 2010 so much of this

was manual work)

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Technical Migration - Phase 2• Create VPN Tunnel from our company to new hosting

provider

Delays starting to happen from the hardware replacement not having arrived and configured at the hosting provider yet. Lesson Learned: I contacted our account manager at the new hosting company to inform them our management was growing concerned of the delays in our environment setup (although, in my opinion there wasn't much on their part they could do and they did not bill us for anything until our environment was up and running).

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Technical Migration - Phase 2• Work with Infrastructure & new hosting provider to establish

One way trust between our company and new hostAfter our hardware and delays started to happen and a couple of weeks had passed, it was finally discovered that the name of the Active Directory domain & NetBIOS name of, which was asked what to be by host, was the same name as our internal company Active Directory domain name. It is not possible create a domain trust between two AD domains that have the same name. It had been suggested that the hosting provider just create 2 new AD VMs and rejoin them to the rest of the farm but the hosting provider had seen previous issues with SharePoint not working after doing this, thus the decision was made a completely new install of all software on all servers was needed. All software had to be reinstalled from scratch on the entire environment with a different AD domain / NetBIOS name at the hosting provider. Also, as with most companies, the "blame game" started to occur.

 !

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Technical Migration - Phase 2 Lesson Learned: Be willing to absorb a lot of other's frustration

and keep pursuing forward with the project. Don't disregard their opinions or comments but don't allow it to become so negative that it just creates more issues with the project instead of accepting responsibility and moving on.If you are ever going to create a domain trust between AD servers, make sure they never have the same NetBIOS name!

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Technical Migration - Phase 2• Create detailed plan for AD trust

In response to the issue above and the realization that we were starting to have challenges establishing an AD trust.

Lesson Learned: I needed to create a detailed plan & document trail to help resolve the issue. I also contacted our account manager at the hosting company to arrange a call with their engineers and ours to create a formal plan on how we were going to clean up the situation and establish new time lines. There should have also been a discussion prior to the project starting about this with our Infrastructure team in more depth as in this situation the previous host had performed more configuration than our new host and there was more "as we go along" learning that created delays.

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A Dose of Reality…

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Technical Migration - Phase 2• Obtain final copy of blog db from current hosting provider. Install CKS (codeplex blog

project), restore content database• New hosting provider creates a secondary AD tree for Partners of new hosting provider who

use the extranet for FBA (our extranet was created to use FBA with LDAP and a separate OU in the AD domain at the hosting provider. This kept our extranet users/external partners login identities completely separate from our own internal company's AD domains and servers)

• Content freeze on our blogs for users (selected the web application of least impact to use as our first test)

• Run full search crawls & pretest all new hosting provider environments (will have some old data on it but most functionality should be there)

• Install PDF Foxit filter, add file type in Central Admin (2010 task required)• Import existing search suggestions / type-ahead from previous environment (New-

SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase)• Set Up term store sync process (we used a PowerShell script ran on a scheduled task that

always ran before the scheduled content deployment job of the day that exported our MMS databases from one server to another. Content deployment jobs that run to another server where a term from the Term Store does not exist will create the term with a new and different ID which will create issues the next time a job is ran)

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Technical Migration - Phase 2• Ask current hosting provide for any final usage reports we may use (as we are not reimporting usage

log databases to new environment) - Just in case anyone wanted to know statistics from searches done on our website for analytics purposes as after the migration was complete this data would no longer be available. Search query reports help us to determine when we should create Best Bets to assist users (now referred to as promoted results in SharePoint 2013)

• CONTENT FREEZE - PUBLICWEBSITE.com & Term Store NO CHANGES - turn off CD, turn SQL databases for PUBLICWEBSITE.com to read-only at current hosting provider / Shut off CD (may be turned back on after freeze for emergencies maintain dual content entry)

• Obtain final set of databases, Term Store export and any other data from current hosting provider for PUBLICWEBSITE.com (1st web application)

• Attach last/most updated content databases from authoring to new hosting provider servers• Import final Term Store file to new hosting provider servers, re-verify web.config is the same at new

hosting provider as it was at current hosting provider• Take VM snapshots for backup purposes (now that we achieved a working state that has relative

purpose we want to be able to revert back to it if needed)• Make sure firewall rules are setup similar to current hosting provider (i.e. we had to make a special

rule for one of our customers in Canada to access our site)• Configure Anonymous authentication, other zones and security similar to existing environment• Make sure Central Admin has diagnostic logging and reporting functioning & analytics reports

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Technical Migration - Phase 2• Configure Blobcache, ULS and IIS logging to data drive (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-

us/library/cc770229(v=office.14).aspx)• Make sure all .resx files are copied / match on ALL SharePoint servers (since we 18 different

languages and some custom alterations this was a needed step)• Configure content deployment (add jobs, server names and extend timeout settings in

config file and Central Admin)• Set up & test content deployment jobs• Pretest mobile compatibility (we had a few mobile views that had been built with jQuery to

be tested)• Give infrastructure's team a list of DNS names that will need to be modified

Realization that the project timeline is in jeopardy and that even with everyone working extra time to try and catch up, it is starting to appear that the current timelines may not be met

Meeting and agreement reached with stakeholders that the current timelines are not going to be met. Extending project another month or two

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Technical Migration - Phase 3 Due to continued challenges, unavailability of resources and delays, our project plan

has been changed to launch all 3 web applications at the same time at our new host which differed from our phased approach of launching each web application separately (in hopes of having less issues). We were able to test everything at the new hosting provider using hosts file tricks and such before we changed our DNS records.

Lesson Learned: "Agile" definitely has a new meaning to me at this point…lol. Being able to adapt to change, especially when you cannot control the exterior factors affecting your project, is a necessary skill.

As project timelines have changed, reorganizing availability with everyone involved for testing and support needed to recompleted as well. Employee burn out and other work commitments start to pull stakeholder's full attention away from project.

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Technical Migration - Phase 3 Realization that our internal networking IP schemes and how our new host had configured their IP schemes were

quite different. Our internal network relies heavily on NAT IPs. The new host had assigned all public IP addresses to our hardware and needed now to have NAT IP addressing configured

Lesson Learned: We should have included an IP mapping plan and requirements for IP security architecture section to our project plan.

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Technical Migration - Phase 3• Create service applications for web application including STS (secure token service).

Ensure the token in the web.config is the same from previous environment.

Employee on Infrastructure team leaves company. VPN tunnel & AD trust project comes to a halt. Time to pull another resource from the Infrastructure team and bring them up to speed on the project is needed.

• Configure search (not sure if each box has be done individually or not)

Our extranet has SSL, this creates a unique configuration for our search crawl to use a different port. The hosting provider recommends we use a different port for this crawl or it will not work. Our internal IT team wasn't in agreement, however we proceeded with suggestion and search worked (mostly)Lessons Learned: Research special issues that are going to occur with SharePoint in SSL situations.Understand, once again, IT architecture is an "art" not a "science" and that some people may recommending doing things differently than others.

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Final Testing & Launch

Final Testing & Launch

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UAT - Final Testing & Launch• UAT Scripts for all content authors must be completed• Technical review of Central Admin and other "daily IT duties" performed by administrator (myself) &

developer• Pretest all functionality on the extranet (email sending, downloads, new users, logging in as

customer or employee)• Notify Infrastructure's team and make appointment for DNS changeover and testing next week• Pretest load balancing with scripts• Infrastructure's team does security test on extranet (2 days)• FINAL STEP: Have IP addresses (mail servers, RDP) and DNS routing changed for domains and

other related URLs to propogate new IP around the globe

After Launch• Ask user's to do a bit of retesting the following Monday when they come back into work, remove

content freeze and allow users to return to their normal work• The extranet launches at new hosting provider• Make sure Google Analytics is still functioning as normal for web properties (I don't believe there

should be impact but would like to verify)• Take snapshots for backup reasons (as long you have the disk space! although some systems will

retain delta changes of snapshots and this can slow down your server)

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Case Study Review, Rewards & Lessons LearnedCase Study Review, Rewards

& Lessons Learned

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FINALLY!!!! – The Payoff• Between $55k – $100k annual savings from previous host’s billing compared

with new host• 40X Increase GB Increase in storage• 95% reduction in ability to deploy urgent code & server (72 hour minimum

mandated wait vs. approximately 3 hours) (sometimes longer depending on approvals from hosting company needed)

• 80% decrease in time to turn around medium priority requests• 3% increase in business hours uptime • Change in ability to solve P1 (critical outage) issues• 15 minute maximum of notice of soft or hard failures on server - Better

monitoring scraping• Database failover no single point of failure• 8.2 % reduction in Average Page Load Times• 34.9% reduction in Server Response Times

•  

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Lessons LearnedWhat did we do well?• The shared project tracking list with daily updates for all stakeholders to view gave everyone a

sense that the project was not being neglected, problems were being worked on and no one was left in the dark about issues that were occurring.

• Even though our project plan wasn't perfect, the easy to read color coded team assignment format made it easy for each team to understand their tasks.

What could we have done better / didn't work so well?• The project went over budget and time by approximately 60 days. This incurred an extra expense of

approximately $12k that was needed to be paid to the current host that had not been expected.• Understanding the depth of your own infrastructure and things you don't know. My learning

experience of how network configuration at every company can be so different and come from years of multiple persons working at that company who have come and gone leaves room for many surprises.

• Don't be afraid to ask people involved doing tasks you are not familiar with to create a document on how they will be doing it. This could spark a conversation far sooner about needing help or a lack of knowledge rather than having it unfold as things progress. 

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Lessons Learned - ContinuedWhat have we learned ?• When many people are involved, and responsibilities shift, go out of your way to get the same

person and continue to persist on them working on that task.• Infrastructure is more of an art than a science.• Never try to create an AD trust between to environments with the same NetBIOS name.• If we had known that creation of the AD trust would have caused so many challenges and such an

amount of delay, we probably would have stopped to do an actual evaluation on the usability of the site running 100% independently from our internal organization. Our company does not have a very large number of users that need to actually authenticate to the environment since it is mostly used as an informational source as an internet & extranet site.

• Unexpected delays from hardware and networking that is beyond your control can always pop-up.• NAT IP addressing & VPN tunnels are quite a bit to learn for someone unfamiliar with this.• Always prepare to be agile for the “What you don’t know you don’t know” such as employee

turnover, company changes, staffing and technical challenges. You can never have too many backup plans or prepare too much (IMHO).

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