We have been working on many projects including the Sunplus infrastructure upgrade. Covid-19 has set us back a little bit but we planned for such an event by having a robust infrastructure and Disaster Recovery site. This situation is a global crisis and has made organizations of all sizes reconsider their priorities and technology needs to be able to support new modes of work including telecommuting. We are also taking necessary steps to ensure success of our existing projects and uptime of our services. In my opinion, having a business continuity plan in place especially during this global crisis is very important to safeguard our technology needs and operations. We must think and discuss more about an overall strategy in the coming months.
Our SunPlus infrastructure upgrade involves new equipment and setup at the GC Headquarters datacenter. However, due to our inability to travel and physically accomplish this at the moment, we received approval to temporarily build and run our new infrastructure at a Tier 4 Datacenter, managed and operated by our technology provider. The facility is manned 24/7 by authorized personnel.
You can read more about Datacenter tier ratings:
A Tier 4 data center is considered most robust and less prone to failures. Tier 4 is designed to host mission critical servers and computer systems, with fully redundant subsystems (cooling, power, network links, storage etc.) and compartmentalized security zones controlled by biometric access control methods. Naturally, the simplest is a Tier 1 data center used by small business or shops.
Tier 1 = Non-redundant capacity components (single uplink and servers).
Tier 2 = Tier 1 + Redundant capacity components.
Tier 3 = Tier 1 + Tier 2 + Dual-powered equipment and multiple uplinks.
Tier 4 = Tier 1 + Tier 2 + Tier 3 + all components are fully fault-tolerant including uplinks, storage, chillers, HVAC systems, servers etc. Everything is dual-powered.
https://uptimeinstitute.com/tiers
This arrangement is temporary and we plan to move everything to GC Headquarters, which also provides high standards of connectivity, power, security and redundancy, as soon as the crisis allows. For the SunPlus Infrastructure Upgrade, we are undergoing a full revamp and deployment at our Disaster Recovery site. Some of the tasks/deliverables we are working on are as follows:
• Hardware upgrade
• Virtualization layer using Microsoft Windows Server 2016 & HyperV
• Network Switches upgrade and redundancies
• Firewall Isolation for different workloads and zones to safeguard infrastructure layer
• Compliance and GDPR requirements
• VPN and remote access for telecommuting needs
• Self Service Portals (Microsoft Azure Pack) to manage existing and new workloads
• Cost analysis and metrics capabilities
• Veeam Backup Service for our entire technology footprint
• Infor OS Deployment for GC Headquarters and possible future development
• Security enhancements and monitoring
• 24/7 Support portal and availability
• Defining SLA for end users
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy and processes
Timeline:
We are working tirelessly to deliver all the mentioned projects and initiatives. We are expecting our first phase of deliverables sometime around ending April 2020. Over the next quarter, we anticipate we will have most of the deliverables finalized and in production. We will also start sending out periodic updates to all of our stakeholders so that everyone is synced with the latest developments.
I appreciate all of our team members with the support they have been giving us to keep moving forward. Please feel free to inquire more regarding any concerns or questions you may have.