Business Needs and Challenges:

• Uncover all the Azure components supporting the SaaS application
• Identify overloaded active Azure infrastructure components
• Identify underutilized and abandoned/orphaned infrastructure components (“cruft”)
• Identify opportunities for right-sizing infrastructure to reduce costs
• Understand and document the interdependencies between systems
• Understand and document the flow of data within the system

Solution:

• Application Data Flow and Connectivity Diagram
  • Infracore mapped the data traffic flows starting from the front-end firewall, through the load balancer and web server tiers, to the back-end database and supporting infrastructure. This helped the new DevOps team understand logical data flows within the application and their dependencies.


• Infrastructure Diagram
  • Infracore created network and infrastructure diagrams showing the Azure components: virtual machines, network gateways, VPN gateways, storage accounts and more. This allowed the new DevOps team to quickly get up to speed with the current state of the infrastructure and created a baseline state from which to plan improvements.


• Security Posture Assessment and Improvement Plan
  • Using the information obtained in the application data flow analysis, the security state of the Azure infrastructure was examined, and recommendations were provided to harden the infrastructure to prevent intrusion.


• Cost Optimization Recommendations
  • Infracore reviewed the current infrastructure. For situations in which the systems were active, needed and right-sized, Infracore provided options to purchase Azure Reserved Instances to reduce per-hour costs. In instances for which resources were orphaned or abandoned, Infracore recommended deleting or releasing the resources to reduce monthly recurring costs.


• Infrastructure Migration Plan and Implementation
  • In certain circumstances, right-sizing the infrastructure required moving from one type of infrastructure to another. Infracore built a migration plan to right-size the primary database server and worked with the development team to seamlessly cut over to the new system.

End Results:

Infracore’s involvement helped ensure success at a very challenging time for the client. At the conclusion of the project, the interim executive team and the new development team had a good understanding of the systems and infrastructure they had inherited, several performance issues suspected of leading to customer dissatisfaction with the application had been resolved, recurring costs to support the application had been reduced by 30%, and several security issues were remediated. As a result, a solid foundation was laid for the new incoming CEO, who now had a stable platform on which to build the next generation of their application.