Migration of resources on the Azure cloud and cloud-to-cloud migration from MS Azure to GCP

Azure sponsorship and migration of resources

OTA Sync developed a cloud-native system for managing hotels and private accommodation, which was hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud. As an innovative startup on a mission to transform the hospitality industry through cloud technologies, OTA Sync was awarded sponsorship credits on the Azure cloud. The company engaged Mainstream to move its existing resources to a new Azure subscription and design adequate CI/CD processes.

Project activities:  

Setting up and configuring new servers

• All the resources on the new subscription were deployed in the form of production and staging servers, using Ansible for resource configuration.

• Using Ansible, our team defined roles and playbooks that enable faster setup of services on instances, as well as easier setup of permissions and directory hierarchies. Thanks to this approach, we managed to configure the new servers quickly, in a way that ensured that they matched the client’s existing servers. Moreover, the use of Ansible enabled automated changes on the new servers.

CI/CD pipelines   

Since the client maintained their code on GitHub, and the goal was to maximise the benefits of Azure subscription, the Mainstream team completed the following tasks:

• We used Azure DevOps service for CI/CD architecture.
    
• We connected the client’s GitHub repositories to Azure DevOps through a webhook, enabling all code changes to automatically run on Azure DevOps.

For the client’s application, we created two pipelines (staging and production) and releases for both environments. In addition to the GuestApp application, the client developed another application, OTA Sync app. For this application we designed two releases with scripts that fetch changes from GitHub and apply them in the form of a build and deploy process.  

Given that OTA Sync also offers its clients website creation services, we created an additional release that runs a script on the production and staging servers and automatically creates new and unique websites, which are hosted on the Azure cloud. 

Monitoring, scaling and troubleshooting 

In order to maintain focus on its core business, the company relied on Mainstream to provide Azure cloud infrastructure monitoring, scaling services and comprehensive support, including support for ad-hoc problems.

Our experts were tasked with maintaining a backup script that ensured that data from the database would always be available. In addition, we also helped the client get the most value from its Azure subscription though cost optimisation.

Migration to Google Cloud  

After Azure’s sponsorship expired, OTA Sync’s potential was recognised by another leading cloud provider, Google Cloud. This marked the beginning of a new step in our cooperation – the transition from the Azure platform to GCP.

The migration of two virtual machines and a data base required in-death planning and careful execution. To optimise costs and enable the client to take advantage of GCP’s advanced services and tools, we completed the transition from Azure DevOps to GitHub Action for CI/CD processes. One of the biggest challenges, which our team solved successfully, was to achieve zero downtime during migration. In addition, the application had to be adjusted to the new environment and adequate security mechanisms had to be implemented. 

Since Ansible was already used and was regularly maintained to keep track of all the changes that had happened on Azure, setting up the servers to be identical to those on Azure was relatively simple,

After migration, our team continued to monitor the cloud environment and provide continuous, proactive support for solving all infrastructure problems.

Benefits     

• End-to-end support for cloud-to-cloud migration

• Migration from Azure to the GCP platform with zero downtime

• By migrating to the GCP platform, the client opened opportunities to use GCP’s advanced services without compromising security and regulatory compliance.